Aretha Franklin
Bass Concert Hall, April 19
R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Such did a sold-out Bass Concert Hall find out exactly what that meant to them. “Whatchu want? Baby I got it.” And she did, Aretha Franklin. In her 65-year-old face spread the same smile of her 14-year-old self singing to the rafters in her father’s Memphis parish, joyful, elated, possessed of the Holy Spirit. The audience shook with the same. Brothers testified; mothers wept. One girl in a Fifties Marilyn Monroe dress looked like she was going to burst from excitement. So was the rapture. Opener “Respect” straight into “(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman” might be belted out every night on the big hair and bling circuit, but the Queen of Soul sold it from the tips of your toes to the fuzz on your neck. Drawing out the last line of “Natural Woman,” Franklin licked a finger and ran it up her thigh, turning to face the grand piano. Ten horns sounded, three keyboardists crescendoed, a female quartet howled, bass, guitar, drums, and a pair of percussionists heeded the bandleader’s closed fist. Eighty-six the tambourine. “Ooo baby, whatcha done to me?” The house sprang back to its feet for “Think,” but Franklin’s sumptuous reading of Curtis Mayfield’s “Something He Can Feel” gritted pay dirt, the leading lady clamping a hand on her posterior and giving a wiggle. A waggle. “Chain of Fools” and two new tunes prompted an intermission 35 minutes in, during which the band played on and the sanctified became restless. Give the lady 10. After that, more newbies, Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher,” big mama blues, and a shot of “Dr. Feelgood” preceded Franklin’s kicking off her shoes for a turn at the piano, and at the last, “Freeway of Love.” Respect.
This article appears in April 27 • 2007.
