Aretha Franklin

This past summer while digging in the crates at a Montreal record store, I found a later pressing of Aretha Franklin's Greatest Hits.

I bought it along with some other records to make up the sale criteria.

As a boy, I saw a copy of that album along with some other old records.

I am old enough to remember her Jump to It single when it was released.

I also remember seeing the classic footage of her singing Respect and understood that she was
singing for as long as my parents were alive.

By the time I was old enough to ask my parents to buy records for me, Freeway of Love and Who's Zooming Who were released.  The Freeway of Love album would have been one I wanted but I didn't have enough of a connection or desire to add her music to my fledgling record collection.

The Fugees indeed went to the source. They went to the Queen of Soul that was there for my parents as well as myself, even if I didn't act on it.

A close family friend happened to have had the I Never Loved A Man CD in his collection and I believe it was after I checked the track listing that I realized I could no longer be flip about Franklin's music.

Upon understanding that the album had up to 4 of Aretha's first Atlantic Records classics, I realized that even the songs that weren't hits could be just as good or even more incredible. My quest for Aretha Franklin's Atlantic Records discography had then just begun.

I knew you were waiting for me was still a hot single but I might have been waiting for something more to gravitate me towards her music.
Aretha Franklin was a singer of my parents' generation. The proverbial script was flipped when Aretha Franklin teamed up with The Fugees for a remix to A Rose is Still A Rose.
I was falling out of hip hop music and searching for the source material