I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You: Aretha Franklin, Respect, and the Making of a Soul Music Masterpiece (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Nikki Giovanni (Foreword) "Last fall I went to an Aretha Franklin concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, not without some trepidation..." (more)
Key Phrases: Muscle Shoals, Aretha Franklin, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post

"I don't know anybody that can sing a song like Aretha Franklin," Ray Charles once said. "Nobody. Period." But it took her 10 albums to finally reach a wide national audience. In I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You: Aretha Franklin, Respect, and the Making of a Soul Music Masterpiece (St. Martin's Griffin, $14.95), music journalist Matt Dobkin describes how that 10th, groundbreaking 1967 album -- which included such iconic songs as "Respect" and "I Never Loved a Man" -- was made. "A brash Jew from the Bronx, a lock-jaw old-money heir, and a southern country boy from Alabama -- these were the figures who ... helped a young girl in her twenties from Detroit, a mother since her teens who hadn't completed high school, become the embodiment of black womanhood." These music professionals -- Franklin's producer at Atlantic Records, the Columbia executive who first "discovered" her and the owner of a tiny studio in Muscle Shoals, Ala. -- helped her move from being "smothered ... under a phalanx of lush strings" to showing "the world that forty-one minutes ... of church-influenced soul music could be [a] lasting work of passion and craftsmanship." But Franklin led the way. One member of the "killer house band of fiercely funky white guys" remembers how she took control: "She kinda looks around, like, Nobody's watchin' me. I thought she thought for just a second, Is this not my session? And with all the talent she had, she just hit this unknown chord. Kind of kawunka-kawunka-kawung! Like a bell ringing. And every musician in the room stopped what they were doing, went to their guitars and started tunin' up. They knew someone had come who was gonna cut somethin' heavy on that day." Flash forward 34 years to journalist Touré's profile of Alicia Keys -- "Neo-Soul's newest princess" -- whose career didn't really take off until she "took the weight of writing and producing on herself." The profile appears in Never Drank the Kool-Aid (Picador, $15), a collection of Touré's profiles and essays. A longtime chronicler of the hip-hop world, Touré (yes, that's his full name) says he never drank the Kool-Aid: "I never bought into the philosophy of the rappers, singers, and celebrities I wrote about. I wasn't there to help extend their brands and the story they were selling. I was there to try to understand who they were beyond the image they want us to think they were." After all, he continues, "journalism is about truth-telling, but when you bring those instincts to the world of Black entertainment you step into a community that's not interested in or prepared for honesty. They don't want to hear the truth about their emperors' wardrobe." Nevertheless, in profiles of Biggie Smalls, Eminem, 50 Cent and many others, Touré tries to bring it home. But it gets complicated. When Tupac Shakur was shot (not, sadly, for the last time) while he was on trial for sexual assault, rumors went around that the police had set it up. Touré wrote an article for the Village Voice -- included here -- suggesting that it was just as likely that Shakur had set himself up: "In theory, and it was just a theory, it seemed plausible: Pac rolled away from the shooting physically unscathed, his reputation for bravery and boldness and badassness maximized. This gave us indisputable proof that he was indeed a modern phoenix, able to survive a rain of bullets." But the rapper told another journalist that when he read the piece, he cried. "I took him at his word and deconstructed his body and his life like they themselves were part of an art show," writes Touré. "But art doesn't cry if it gets a bad review." But sometimes the artist's life is the art. Or the art is what the artist wants his life to be. The subject of Joshua Gamson's The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, the Music, the Seventies in San Francisco (Picador, $15) knew he was destined to be famous from his early childhood in South Central Los Angeles. "He seemed to have made a decision very early on that he would be heard. 'If you said no,' his mother said, 'he was determined to let it be yes.'" As a teenager, Sylvester James, Jr., known as Dooni growing up and just Sylvester later on, found his way to the Disquotays, partying drag queens that "were a cross between a street gang and a sorority." And "in a world where 'ridiculous' was the highest of compliments, Miss Dooni was the most ridiculous of them all." He, or she, did become famous, her exuberant style coinciding perfectly with the 1970s. Disco, Sylvester said once, was about how "everyone can be strange and live out their fantasies on the dance floor ... . I've always lived out my fantasies of being whatever I wanted to be." Sylvester had a short life -- dying of AIDS in 1988 -- but it was a fabulous one. -- Rachel Hartigan Shea
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Booklist

Among the greatest singing voices ever recorded, Aretha Franklin's is so distinctive that the fact that the album that made her a star was her tenth is just dumbfounding. She essayed jazz singing for seven years under the sympathetic auspices of John Hammond, rediscoverer of Bessie Smith, discoverer of Billie Holiday, and organizer of the seminal Carnegie Hall "From Spirituals to Swing" concerts, but despite a fine first album, she had no hits. Then Atlantic Records' Jerry Wexler signed her, married her to the fine rhythm section--all twentysomething self-described rednecks--at Fame recording studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and ba-whommm! Dobkin gets seemingly every living soul responsible for Franklin's epoch-making album (save Aretha herself) to impart his or her perspective on its making. This involves much more than a track-by-track account of the recording sessions. Dobkin exuberantly, but never quite gushingly, relates Franklin's earlier life, other involvements, and the civil rights impact, for women as well as blacks, of the album's biggest hit, "Respect." A standout in the current crowd of classic-album histories. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (November 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312318286
• ISBN-13: 978-0312318284
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,566,590 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book - Concentrates mostly on music!, January 19, 2005

By	Music Lover "greatlandini" (Annapolis, MD) - See all my reviews

Just read this after finding it in the library. The book is mostly about the recording of Aretha Franklin's "I Never Loved A Man" single and album. I love hearing the details about recording and music. The author has interviewed several of the original musicians, Jerry Wexler and even Ted White (Franklin's ex-husband).

The book doesn't try to make anyone out to be totally bad. I was impressed by the author's take on Ted White, not totally making him out to be the evil guy everyone said he was. I'm not saying he was perfect, just human with flaws.

There is a chapter on the so-called trouble that went along with the session. Just about everyone has had their say on what happened almost 40 years ago. The author wisely collects several different accounts and doesn't try to definitively define what happened.

I wish more people would write books about the music, rather than deal with the tabloid details of an artist's life. I understand that a person's personal life is woven into their life as an artist and I believe that the author balanaces out both in discussing Aretha Franklin, her life and music.

I thought is was very interesting to read about Franklin's musical influences. If you have never listened to Dinah Washington, you should check her out and hear how she influenced Aretha Franklin.

For music fans, this is a good read. Let's have more books like this regarding Motown and other soul music!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Day In The Life of Aretha, August 11, 2005

By	Kevin S. O'Donnell "music bio buff" (Chapel Hill, NC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book focuses on the career-making debut album of Aretha Franklin on Atlantic Records. A fascinating glimpse at the first-recorded track for the album, the title track, takes the reader back into a point in time when our country was on the verge of a musical revolution, never to look back. Pop music historians will savor the exquisite detail afforded the description of this initial music session held in Mussel Shoals, Alabama, and then travel to Atlantic's New York Studios, under the watchful and supportive producer Jerry Wexler, for one of the Queen of Soul's most relevant sessions of her pioneering career. All of the chemistry is present in the production of this album, which tells the story of musical magic coming to life. A very engaging read!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I Need Aretha, February 5, 2005

By	The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (RAWSISTAZ.com and BlackBookReviews.net) - See all my reviews

If there is anything that remains constant in my life, it is knowing that Aretha Franklin is a sister spirit and that her voice can help to calm me in the most torrential times. It seems that when I listen to Aretha she is speaking directly to me, telling me she knows what I am going through and that everything will turn out fine. Matt Dobkin revisits the recording of a 1967 album that shot Aretha Franklin to the highest level of stardom and changed the voice of soul music forever and changed my life forever.

I NEVER LOVED A MAN THE WAY I LOVE YOU is not just a biography. Instead, it is a detailed analysis of Aretha's rise to superstardom and the recording sessions during what some would argue is Aretha's finest hour. Dobkin interviewed many of the direct participants of the recording of I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You to inject the history needed to make telling this story a success. However, he also included thoughts from the great poet Nikki Giovanni (her descriptions of both Aretha's presence and the tumultuous era in question were remarkable) and other contemporaries of the Queen of Soul for added context.

The album, I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You, included such cuts as "Do Right Woman," "Save Me," "Dr. Feelgood," (one of my favorite Aretha songs) and the female anthem, "Respect," an Otis Redding song that Aretha covered and made her own. But, as Dobkin seems to relay, one of the most important aspects of this recording was that it was interracial; most of the musicians on the album were young white men from Muscle Shoals, Alabama or neighboring cities. Dobkin also notes that the musical process that was utilized on this album (Aretha at the piano, leading the show) would become her M.O. for making music from that day forward.

Aretha has numerous albums to her credit, ranging from a Dinah Washington tribute album, recorded during her stint at Columbia Records, to the Atlantic Records late-sixties masterpiece that is the focus of this book. Dobkin seemed to know what he was talking about when retelling the story of the album's birth, and he provided much needed groundwork to help the reader understand just how important that album was in 1967 and still is today. I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You ushered in the reign of the Queen of Soul and widely introduced this timeless voice to the favorites list of music lovers worldwide. Dobkin gave Aretha her demanded Respect and took it a step further by praising her musical virtuosity.

Reviewed by CandaceK
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers