Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America [Hardcover]

Nick Salvatore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 2005

A prizewinning historian pens this biography of C.L. Franklin, the greatest African-American preacher of his generation, father of Aretha, and civil rights pioneer.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

C. L. Franklin, father of the "Queen of Soul," Aretha Franklin, was the original country preacher, embodying the hopes, dreams, and insecurities of southern blacks who sought to survive with dignity in the North. Salvatore recounts Franklin's struggles from sharecropper roots in Mississippi, his early career as a minister in Memphis, and his more than 30 years at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit. Franklin's life spanned the Depression through the post-civil rights era and reflects the struggle of a generation that moved from rural to urban culture and the parallel struggle within the black Baptist Church from conservatism to social and political activism. Franklin's limited formal education did not stifle his desire to learn and imagine possibilities beyond those promised in eternal salvation. His personal virtues and vices are interwoven in this recollection of the complex religious, political, and commercial life of a city dominated by the automobile industry and a union history with a racist undercurrent. This well-researched and scholarly, but accessible, biography reflects changes wrought by the black church on the broader American society. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

" Richly textured. ...[Salvatore] deftly interweaves Franklin's life with the swirling undercurrents of the fast-breaking events of the era." " -- Sunday's Boston Globe (2/20)

"I'm delighted [Nick Salvatore] thought enough of my dad to write the book and document some historical facts." -- Aretha Franklin in the DETROIT FREE PRESS

"Salvatore . . . tapped into the soul that moved Franklin in song and sermon and that thrived beneath the beat of Motown. -- Angela D. Dillard, New York Times Book Review

"Salvatore's biography reads on any random page like a gripping novel of mid-twentieth century America, raw, exciting and profoundly involving." -- Rick Kleffel, THE AGONY COLUMN BOOK REVIEW

The story of Franklin's charismatic and sometimes controversial life also is a story of Detroit." -- Cassandra Spratling, Detroit Free Press

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (February 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316160377
• ISBN-13: 978-0316160377
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.4 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,213,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A winning biography which includes so much more than civil rights history alone, September 5, 2005

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America (Hardcover)

Readers interested in both black church music and black history will relish Singing In A Strange Land: C.L. Franklin, The Black Church, And The Transformation Of America. More than just a biography of C.L. Franklin, Singing In A Strange Land uses Franklin's background to explore both African American religion and musical development in America. Salvatore spent eight years extensively researching, including interviewing Franklin's associates, to develop a winning biography which includes so much more than civil rights history alone.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Portrait of a Legend, January 12, 2007

By 

A. Griffin "aegriffin" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America (Hardcover)

"Singing in a Strange Land" is very valuable as a sketch of this highly successful, complex legend. It was a compelling read that prompted me to read biographies of two of the most famous supporting characters, Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward. For chronicles of these I read, and highly recommend, "Got to Tell It", Jules Schwerin's unsparing bio of Mahalia and "How I Got Over", Willa Ward-Royster's portrait of her gifted sister Clara Ward. Besides the priceless info about Mahalia and Clara, these biographies provide further details about C. L. Indeed, one of the vignettes in "Got to Tell It" (a conversation between Mahalia and Aretha about C. L.'s alleged drug use) paints a portrait of C. L. that leads me to suspect that daughter Erma Franklin's cooperation with "Singing in a Strange Land" was possibly conditioned on Salvatore's silence on some matters. Notwithstanding details of C. L.'s life unavailable elsewhere, and whatever self-exposure a preacher betrays in his sermons, "Singing in a Strange Land"'s shortcoming is the reader is left in the dark about C. L.'s thoughts and feelings. This is not the author's fault as Salvatore repeatedly refers to C. L.'s reticence to speak about personal feelings -- particularly about his early life in the Jim Crow South. Accordingly the reader is forced to draw inferences about the man, many of which may be unflattering due to the minister's impious personal life (e.g., his wife's decision to leave the philanderer though it meant painful separation from four of her young children).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some Things are never as they appear, April 15, 2009

By 

James Parks "Beauvall" (Tx) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SINGING IN A STRANGE LAND: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America (Paperback)

I loved the book and was surprised by some of the revelations about the subject.
He was a man who could preach the uncomprising gospel but in his personal life made mistakes that in essence manifested themselves in ways that determined the later part of his life (i.e. constant touring, clubbing, refusal to move to safer neighborhood after two break-ins at his house).
In some ways, I agree with the faction of New Bethel who lobbied for a new pastor after Franklin's debilitation. There was no way after an injury like that for him to do the job of a Pastor and those folks knew it. Aretha in her bio said that the minister in charge "tried to take daddy's church" well one Franklin was an employee who happened to be ceo and was in no shape to perform his duties so the church didnt belong to him personally..I came away with a view of man who through tenacity of spirit and sheer will rose from a sharecropper to dynamic evangelist. I also took from the book that his second wife Barbara was someone to be applauded and in some ways pitied. She gave birth to four children with the man and endured countless nights alone while Franklin "evangelized" and fathered a child with someone else, she forgave him and bore two more children only to be so disgusted that she left him and seeing the economic contrast between her and franklin agreed to leave the four she bore him behind to literally start over at 31 working first at a record store and then getting a nurse's aide position and working herself to death. I got the sense from reading both Aretha's bio and this book that whatever Franklin wanted in his household it was his way or the highway! No woman could put up with that and thus, his children were raised by his mother and frequent housekeepers and maternal figures from New Bethel.
In conclusion, great book worthy of a movie option in my estimation.