1/8/2024 0 Comments Sparkle 1976 torrentI thought of her history and we certainly weren't going to produce her. 'We were not going to go down in history as the producers of Aretha Franklin's disco record! In the end she went with Van McCoy - we were shocked he would do it - but then, he did write "Do The Hustle" which IS a disco record. 'We had one meeting with her and we were so turned off, we couldn't believe Aretha wanted to do disco.'. " 'We never wrote anything for her,' Rodgers remembered. To supplement Aretha's recollections, Nile Rodgers related his own in Daryl Easlea's book " Chic & The Politics of Disco," which at least on the surface, seem to counter Aretha's recollections somewhat. They took those songs - " Upside Down" and " I'm Coming Out" - to Diana Ross. There were unmentionables concerning their attitudes, which just didn't fly with me. I was game, but my relationship with Rodgers and Edwards ended before it even began. I'm an interpreter, and I need to be involved with the total musical environment. Their idea for me was 'just come in and sing impromptu and we'll take it from there.' Well, I hadn't worked that way. But when preproduction started, things cooled off in a hurry. Good songs, in-the-pocket grooves, and cute lyrics. They presented me with material that I liked. Later during the disco era, I met with Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, whose group, Chic, was burning up the charts. " I liked some disco and thought that certain singers - Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor - were well suited to the style. Although as far as Nile and Bernard go, The Queen, it appears, was not impressed. Biographer Mark Bego in his book " Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul" suggests a disco album from the Queen of Soul was apparently highly anticipated at the time, calling it " a logical move.an assured bet that Aretha could go into the studio to create the hottest disco record of the year." Given that, I'd imagine that it was Atlantic's suggestion to usher in this change of direction by pairing her with a couple of the label's hottest producers at the time, Chic's Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards.Īretha claimed in her autobiography that the proposed Chic collaboration had gone into the actual pre-production stage, claiming that she'd originally been given the two tracks which would later helm Diana Ross' " Diana" (1980, Motown) album. A quick glance at the album's thank-yous, with Ahmet Ertegun's assistant and executive vice president Noreen Woods credited for " being a swellegant mediator in getting the LP out" along with a special thanks to " all musicians and singers, Marvin Gaye and George Benson, and numerous other artists whose LP's I enjoyed through numerous delays while waiting to finish mine" seemed to reveal as much. While her career context wasn't exactly rosy, the run-up to this album's recording sessions and eventual release seemed to be fairly turbulent in itself. I began to feel that the label's promotion and marketing were not creative enough and wondered whether a change was in order." Not too surprisingly, "La Diva" would be the last album she would do for them before jumping ship to Arista. In her autobiography with David Ritz, " From These Roots," Aretha briefly touched on this period, saying: " my records were falling short of the mark for gold. While " Sparkle" (1976, Atlantic) was a bright spot, its follow-up with Mayfield, " Almighty Fire" (1978, Atlantic) failed to sustain any of it's momentum. Having the dubious distinction of being one of her most, if not the most ill-received album she's ever released, "La Diva" was the first of her Atlantic studio albums to miss the Billboard top 100 altogether, and to this day, with barely any critics out there having anything good to say about it, it has ultimately gone down as one of the undisputed low-points in her career.ĭuring this time, her classic hits behind her and with her mentor, the late Jerry Wexler gone from the label, none of the changes in direction that she embarked on seemed to stick. Having nearly upstaged Obama at his own inauguration not so much with her performance, but with her rather spectacular church lady crown, I was suddenly inspired to take a listen to Her Soulful Highness's much maligned 1979 'disco' album, " La Diva." After signing with Atlantic and subsequently going from strength to strength in the late 60's and early 70's not unlike some of her contemporaries, the mid/late 70's and the onslaught of disco found Aretha in a commercial slump of sorts (the Sparkle soundtrack with Curtis Mayfield being a notable exception). Aretha Franklin - It's Gonna Get A Bit BetterĪretha Franklin - What If I Should Ever Need YouĪretha Franklin - You Brought Me Back To Life
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