Album Reviews

It seems appropriate to review Rhino’s sumptuous 4 LP set Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace The Complete Recordings, her enduring gospel album recorded in a Los Angeles church and released in June of 1972 on Atlantic Records, two days after Kanye West’s Easter morning “gospel service” at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival before 50,000 fans.

Granted, one was performed in The New Temple Missionary Baptist Church by one of the greatest singers of the 20th and 21st centuries, whose father was a minister, and who grew up performing gospel music in church while the other was more directed than performed, by a human puppeteer rap artist/promoter not known for his multi-octave singing abilities, outdoors in a meadow atop an artificial hill built specifically for the event.

One performance was reverential, devotional, humble, spiritual, inwardly directed, heartfelt, sanctified and disciplined—even when the material was secular—while the other was more a loud, boastful sprawling mess of a spectacle with religion worn more on sleeves than in hearts and with $50 Jesus Walks socks and $70 Trust God T-shirts among the items for sale in the “Church Clothes” merchandise tent.

Watching the Kanye spectacle, shot through a peephole lens, sounded and looked more than anything else like the scene from Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” in which people gathered on a hillside are mysteriously moved to chant the familiar five tone phrase.

Though I think Mr. West means well and his motives were pure (despite the merchandising), what went on at Coachella didn’t move me, Aretha’s record does every time—and I’m a certified agnostic. The 1972 two LP set (Atlantic SD 2-906) went on to become Aretha Franklin’s best selling album and the all time best selling live gospel album. Franklin also won a Grammy for Best Soul Gospel Performance.

That original song lineup was culled from two nights of performances with Franklin backed by three well-known New York studio musicians who formed the core back up group for her Atlantic Records recording sessions: Cornell Dupree on guitar, Chuck Rainey on bass, and Bernard “Pretty” Purdie on drums along with local organist Ken Lupper. The majestic Southern California Community Choir directed by James Cleveland can be heard throughout. Franklin plays piano on two tracks and celeste on one. Of course her voice at it’s peak back then is an electrifying, other-worldly instrument that to this day arguably has no equal in either the pop or gospel world. Franklin does more than reach personal religious ecstasy as she lives (and re-lives) these familiar songs: through force of will and the overwhelming physicality of her vocal prowess, she presses the holy spirit into the members of the church audience and through the recording into listeners at home. If you know this record, you know that’s not an exaggeration.

An all star tech team was also on hand to capture it all, led by live recording specialist Ray Thompson (for Wally Heider) whose long list of engineering credits can be found on Discogs.com. Assisting Thompson were three engineering greats: Jimmy Douglass, Gene Paul and George Piros. Arif Mardin mixed and edited. Of course the sound on the original LPs mastered by Piros is a live recording sonic spectacular, though the record changer friendly 1-4/2-3 sequencing is a pain for some.

In 1999 the complete concert was released for the first time on CD mastered by Dan Hersch and Bill Inglot at Digiprep. The occasion for this first-time-on-vinyl 4 LP set is the release of the long delayed concert film directed by the late Sydney Pollack (“Tootsie”, “Out of Africa”, etc.). The Pollack choice was unusual in that filming concerts is very different from feature film making but Warner Brothers, or whoever was in charge of decision making went with Pollack, who filmed without “slating” the picture to make it possible to synch it with the sound. With no clapperboard used, synching picture and sound was impossible. The elements sat in vaults for decades until 2008 when the producer Alan Elliott using the latest digital technology was able to finally synch picture and sound.

Nonetheless even after the finished film was ready, Ms. Franklin didn’t want it released unless her financial demands were met so again it sat on the shelf until shortly after her passing, when arrangements were made with her family, who upon seeing it for the first time agreed to allow its release.

So now, for the first time, the entire concert is available on vinyl in an impressively produced package on 4 180g records ($99.00) again re-mastered by Hersch and Inglot (unless the producers just used the files of whatever resolution were created in 1999) with lacquers cut at Capitol by Ian Sefchick. So how does it sound? While the original sounds “live” on a vivid 3 dimensional soundstage, with a “she’s there on the stage” Aretha, the reissue sounds flatter, more two-dimensional, dynamically compressed (though not excessively) and lacking in the original’s air and transient sparkle. The equalization is tasteful though somewhat "buttoned down" on top.

Here’s an excerpt of Marvin Gaye’s “Wholy Holy” with the two versions digitally spliced together. The recording is so fine, that if you’ve never heard the original you will enjoy the reissue. See if you can hear the “splice” and the difference in sonics—especially how the drum loses its "pop" and Franklin's voice seems to almost fade into the background as if she's walked off stage. There's but one "splice" after which you'll hear just the reissue:

”Wholy Holy”