Jazz Beat 43 - Aretha Franklin, 1942-2018, R.I.P

As with many of you, my Aretha Franklin vigil began with the news of August 13 that she'd entered hospice, and for the next two days I posted some reflections on Lady Soul on Facebook. Then on what proved to be the eve of her death, I listened to her throughout a three-hour drive to Cape Cod and could hardly contain myself. Hers is simply the most powerful-- and versatile-- voice of my lifetime. The line that's resonated most for me over the past ten days is from her 1968 song, "Since You've Been Gone (Sweet Sweet Baby)," where Aretha pleads, "If you walk in that door, I can get up off my knees." For as deeply and inexorably as she was tied to the civil rights and women's liberation movements (Martin Luther King was a family friend at whose funeral she sang "Precious Lord, Take My Hand;" "Respect" galvanized feminists), her music was mostly about the wages of love and the pain of abandonment. A simple note of appreciation sent last week by a 70-year-old female friend underscored what made Ree's pleas so universal: "Boy, did she ever get me through some tough times."