Music

Go to the archives

Aretha Franklin: Amazing Grace

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Dec 09, 2018
Category: Soul

In 1972, when she was 29, Aretha Franklin made a concert film. Sydney Pollack — who had directed one noteworthy film (“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”) and would go on to make major hits (“The Way They Were,” “Tootsie,” and “Out of Africa”) — was the director. It was filmed, over two nights, in a church in Los Angeles, with Aretha playing the piano and singing with a gospel choir. Every account says it was magic: the greatest singer of her time making gospel standards her own.

Warner Bros. planned to release the documentary as a companion to the album.

The double record — “Amazing Grace” — soon appeared.

For 46 years, the film sat on the shelves.

The film wasn’t released because Aretha didn’t want it released. No one knows why. It may have been because, in the early ‘70s, she had crossed over from gospel to more popular music. But she never said. So although the record has sold well over the decades, it has not been especially honored. If any Aretha album is on “best of” lists, it’s Lady Soul. Since her death, on August 16, I’m sure there’s been considerable interest in her Greatest Hits.

Aretha left no will; she must have known that would liberate the owner of the film. It played for a week this month in New York and Los Angeles so it can qualify for awards; it will be streamed next year, possibly starting on January 21, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Perhaps the double album — two-and-a-half hours of music — will now, at last, will get some attention. In The New Yorker, David Remnick called it “perhaps her most shattering and indispensable recording.” Variety’s chief film critic Owen Gleiberman: “She sounds like the holiest of trumpets, with every note piercingly bright yet as soft as velvet. Listening to Franklin, you feel like you could ride that voice into the heavens. She’s not just a singer, she’s a human chariot.” [To buy the CD from Amazon, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]

The music? Thought you’d never ask.

Good luck resisting this.