Sade at the Erwin Center in September, Gladys Knight and her brother “Bubba” the Pip at the Paramount, Diana Ross encored by Janet Jackson at the Moody: soul sisters have been doing it for themselves all year in Austin. Last night at the new Austin City Limits digs, the Queen of Soul – Aretha Franklin – sold out every last seat.
Throngs lavishing love and R-E-S-P-E-C-T on singular human beings/musicians fall into two camps: first-timers and grateful returnees. For the former majority, Franklin’s nearly two-hour set last night for ACL Live at the Moody Theater crowned the venue’s inaugural dream season and no doubt proved a once-in-a-lifetime high.
Franklin’s voice still somehow blooms in those ruby red cheeks of hers, shrill but sugary, tart but reverberating the same analog warmth found on her recorded canon. Hot as paradise but capable of iceberg chills, it’s a singular instrument – girlish, gospel, and gorgeous.
Compared to Franklin’s 2007 sell-out at the Bass Concert Hall, that vox populi has also softened around the edges. The singer, 69, faced serious health issues recently and though fitter here than four years ago, she looked somewhat drawn. Both sets were more or less the same, but the pacing was off Wednesday.
Following a 45-minute gospel rock-up by the Blind Boys of Alabama – now down to ever feisty sole original member Jimmy Carter – which guested two-thirds of Nickel Creek in siblings Sara and Sean Watkins (hold-out Chile Thile of the Punch Brothers opened for Paul Simon 10 days ago), Franklin had them dancing in the aisles initially.
Opening with Jackie Wilson’s eternal flame “Higher and Higher,” the Detroit powerhouse was into “Think” by the third song, and 30 minutes in – when she made her trademark early exit (into an black-curtained enclosure onstage ) – the Moody was losing its ever loving mind. Her 20-piece backing band, half of it horns, held the line as Franklin caught her breath and no doubt slipped out of her three-inch heels for 10 minutes, but when both halves were reunited the song selection devolved into a mixture of new and lesser known material.
The second half of the performance clocked in at well over an hour, but only with a distracted reading of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” did the audience have something to latch onto. Other than Franklin’s iconic cry that is. When she sat at the piano for Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me,” which then segued into the Simon & Garfunkel standard, her extemporaneous vocalizing – screeches, moans, howling – were feverish. Franklin’s “hallelujah,” almost under her breath at the end of “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” was the end of the mass, really.
Interminably, “Freeway of Love” jammed close the main set, but by then Franklin’s demand that the Theater’s air conditioning be turned off had begun emptying the balcony. Encore “Respect” received very little of the same from the headliner, while “The Greatest Love of All” proved a poor walk-off when “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” never made the cut. At Bass, the 1967 smash brought down the house.
This article appears in November 11 • 2011.
