A Bad Woman Feeling Good by Buzzy Jackson

Author:Buzzy Jackson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

The Rough Side of the Mountain

It would be difficult to conceive of a better preparation for the job of “Queen of Soul” than the childhood environment of Aretha Franklin. Imagine all the things lacking in the young Jamesetta Hawkins’s life—strong parenting, a stable home life, musical education, emotional support—and Franklin enjoyed them. She grew up in Detroit when the city was a thriving, safe place to raise a family and its black population was reaching an apex of cultural energy. The young Aretha Franklin lived a few doors down from Smokey Robinson, in a home where visitors included jazz pianists Art Tatum and Dorothy Donegan, singer Sam Cooke, and gospel legends Clara Ward and James Cleveland. Franklin’s two sisters, Erma and Carolyn, were also accomplished musicians and singers. Music was a big part of the girls’ lives, whether it was the singing and playing of their talented family and friends or listening to records by R&B artists such as Ray Charles, Clyde McPhatter, and Ruth Brown as well as jazz musicians such as Billie Holiday. Whether Aretha listened to Bessie Smith is not known, but one of her favorite gospel singers was the great Mahalia Jackson, who herself was greatly influenced by Smith. Musicians aside, it was Aretha’s father, Clarence LaVaughn—“C. L.”—Franklin who had the greatest influence on her. “I didn’t teach her,” he said, “but she heard me.”44

“Daddy was a minister,” Aretha once said, “and he was also a man.” Indeed, the Reverend C. L. Franklin excelled in both roles. As the minister of Detroit’s New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, Franklin was known not just throughout the city but throughout the country for his dramatic, inspirational sermons, which were broadcast on the radio and released as best-selling records on the Chess label. Tall and handsome, the Reverend acquired a reputation as a ladies’ man (Aretha’s parents separated when she was six; her mother died when she was ten) and as a flashy dresser—his nicknames included “Black Beauty.” As one parishioner put it, he was “stinky sharp.” Although C. L. Franklin’s career was always rooted in his religious community, he created a public persona that was much flashier and more outrageous than his world-famous daughter would ever achieve, or aspire to.45

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