Aretha Franklin: Rare and Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Artist: Aretha Franklin List Price: £10.99 Our Price: £6.87 You Save: £4.12 (37%) Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours  |
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 | Product Details: Release Date: 03 March 2008 Record Label: Rhino Rating:  Sales Rank: 10092 | | Look for similar items by category:
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| | Customer Reviews: ESSENTIAL COLLECTION - 10 STARS RATING (30 October 2008)Just suppose a Martian arrived at your doorstep and wanted to know about "Soul Music" - this is what you would play. Aretha was at the very height of her powers, and all this stuff - demos amd out takes for me are even more enjoyable than what was released at the time. You will hear Aretha with sparce backing and mimimal production, going places only she could - she grabs hold of a song amd makes it her own - and only Joe Cocker rivals that special talemt. It is amazing these wonderful sounds have been kept in the vaults for so long - but I am so grateful this stuff has appeared. By a mile the greatest ever Aretha collection - worth easily 10x the typical reail price. This is an essential purchase - but be warned this is the real thing - it'll make you cry. Sadly after the 70's Aretha' recorded and live performances plummeted from these dizzy heights and bear no resemblance to what she was doing then. This is an essential purchase for any lover of the soul genre - you play it and think no, no, no, music cannot be this good - I must have died and gone to heaven. I cannot believe there will ever be a better CD. Nuff said!!! (17 February 2008)Soul nectar, from the Queen. This is jaw-dropping astonishing stuff. There is so much heart and soul in 'I'm Trying to Overcome' that I wonder why other singers actually bother... Even if you don't know much of her work, this double CD set is essential. Her cover versions, again, give old songs new meaning. Listen. Listen again. Enjoy. Essential for Aretha fans (29 December 2007)Aretha Franklin needs no introduction as the Queen of Soul and the number of Aretha collections available bears testimony to the longevity and the quality of her work. The period 1967 to 1974, when she recorded 10 studio albums and 3 live albums for Atlantic, is the Golden Reign referred to in the title of this set, and the tracks were all recorded during sessions for those albums. During those 7 years, her life had many ups and downs, and the music she made clearly reflected those highs and lows. Kicking off with the demo which started it all, Aretha does "Never Loved a Man" with just a piano, bass and drum for company, and then we're off and running into the bluesy "Dr Feelgood". From 2 well known tracks, "Sweet Bitter Love" has just the vocal and Aretha on piano. These 3 stripped down demos show the essence of Aretha's Golden Reign - her voice and her piano playing. What is surprising is that so many of these gems did not find release, either as singles or on album, and the sheer breadth of material Aretha attempted. So there's the Gospel infused Soul that is familiar, but also she interprets Blues from Little Willie John, Pop from the Beatles and songs made famous by a host of Soul artists, always adding her own style. She even does "My Way" and finds something new in the song. As well as the music, there are superb notes from Jerry Wexler and David Ritz. In fact they are worth the price of the album on their own, as no one could know more about working with Aretha than Jerry Wexler, the producer of most of the Atlantic albums. His insights are both informative and moving. If you have only ever heard Aretha on compilation albums, then this album may not be for you. Get some of those Atlantic albums first, get behind the hits and discover the full magic that Aretha had during that 7 year period. If you do then you will begin to appreciate just how significant this set is for Aretha aficionados. For us it is essential. Put simply, if you regard yourself as a fan of Aretha you MUST own this collection. Love is a Serious Business (18 December 2007)This is 140 minutes of almost all unreleased demos, outtakes, and alternate versions recorded by Aretha Franklin at her artistic and commercial prime at Atlantic. The demos are truly amazing. It took me half an hour to get past the first three tracks the first time I listened. Just Aretha's voice, her instinctive and organic piano playing, and a little percussion, it is just stunning. It has a different effect to the 'deep pocket' Memphis style grooves that we are used to (much as I love those grooves!). It leaves me believing that she would have been a star in any era in any genre. With fuller lyrics, I now understand the bracketed sub-title to Doctor Feelgood, hence my review title. This version of Van McCoy's 'Sweet Bitter Love' really does it for me. Her emotional connection with the lyrics really comes through. This release makes it the only song, as far as I know, that she releaesd on Columbia, Arista and now Atlantic. The alternate versions of tracks like 'Rock Steady' and 'I'm In Love' show her artistry, as she does exciting, different things with her voice, than we know on the hit versions. Disc 2 contains no less than seven outtakes and an alternate version from 'Hey Now Hey, The Other Side Of The Sky'. It is not an album that I know well, beyond its big hit single, but if these are the outtakes, I must get a copy. of it. I was a couple of months late getting this album. If there is any more stuff in the vaults that they release, I will put my name down on the pre-order list! Agree totally.. (16 December 2007)I agree totally with the other reviewers. My only beef is that there are still several Aretha albums never released on cd which really should have taken priority over this albeit stunning trawl through the vaults of her golden years. |
