This study of the making of Franklin's acclaimed 1967 album, which included the eponymous song and the all-purpose empowerment anthem "Respect," is an obsessive, intermittently engaging example of the minute reconstruction of recording-session ephemera that has become central to pop music criticism. Dobkin (Getting Opera
) spends a couple of pages on the very first, unrecorded, warm-up chords Franklin played on the piano, which apparently galvanized her back-up musicians and crew into making music history. He proceeds to chronicle the assembly of the rhythm track and the horn parts, and gives a Rashomon-like blow-by-blow of a fight that almost derailed the project. Although Dobkin acknowledges that "words tend to fail" to convey Franklin's transcendent genius, that never inhibits his own effusive writing—"Aretha... verily becomes
the concept she's singing about. It's a kind of R&B quasi-syllogism: Aretha is respect is Aretha"—about her sublime musicianship and the impact of her songs on feminism and the Civil Rights movement. Fortunately, whenever the narrative hyperventilates less and focuses on the basics of how musicians perform their craft, it opens an enlightening window on the creative process. Photos. Agent, Scott Waxman. (Nov.)
