This post is part of my ‘Living Memoirs’ series

On the 8th anniversary of Aretha Franklin’s transition, August 16th, I consider which of my precious memories of ‘The Queen of Soul,’ as a singular influence on my life, both musically and personally to share…and there are many.

As a prelude to the specific reference in this title’s post, a few words about the origins of my association with Aretha that morphed in later years into a for-real, much-treasured mutually-respectful friendship…

NINA SIMONE: “David, have you heard Aretha Franklin? She’s great!”

I never imagined when Nina Simone first shared her name with me on a June Saturday at Heathrow Airport in 1965 after she and I (as the teenage founder of the first UK appreciation society/fan club for ‘The High Priestess Of Soul’) met for the first time that Aretha would figure so prominently throughout the decades that have followed: such is synchro-destiny!

Not long after Nina’s reference to Aretha, noting that I should check out her music, I was at a Dionne Warwick/Shirelles fan club beach party in Littlehampton and on the battery-run record player, someone played a track from a prized US import LP: I literally gasped! ‘Who is THAT?’ I exclaimed. “Oh, that’s A-reth-a Franklin” was the reply, with a very English interpretation of the daughter of a preacher man’s name! The song? “Walk On By,” recorded by Aretha just months after Dionne’s big 1964 global hit, ironically with the same background vocalists, namely Dionne’s younger sister Dee Dee, aunt Cissy Houston and future Sweet Inspirations, Estelle Brown and Sylvia Shemwell.

Thus my journey into the world of Aretha Louise Franklin began; soon after, I purchased Yeah!!!, the only one of the then-six Columbia LPs released in four years since the start of her secular recording career, aged 18, in 1960, that had been released in the UK; I still remember how much I loved the cover as much as I loved the collection of mostly jazz and pop standards contained therein – and smile fondly noting that the very same photo adorned the programme for her ‘celebration of life’ service on August 31st, 2018.

THE LETTER, THE PHONE CALL AND THE MEETING…

So many memories…writing two fan letters to Aretha in the spring of 1966 (one addressed to her in care of her father’s church) and getting a handwritten reply a few months later; then, calling to wish her a merry Christmas in December 1966, when she told me, shyly, I was the first person she’d ever spoken to in England and learning during the call that she was getting ready for her first recordings for Atlantic Records the next month: neither she nor I could have had any knowledge that a few weeks later at the now-famous/infamous one-off session in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Aretha’s destiny would change forever.

Mine too, as it turned out when the lyrics of “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” became my as-lived experience with my first boyfriend, first name, ‘Franklin’: ‘You’re no good heartbreaker, you’re a liar and a cheat!’ I still remember singing along to it at a fan club party with all the soulfulness my English teenage voice could muster!

Through the years that followed, Aretha and her music formed much of the tapestry of my life during my twenties. I finally got to meet her (at Gatwick airport with her sister Carolyn and then-husband/manager Ted White) in 1968 and took my mother and sister to see Aretha’s first London concert at Hammersmith Odeon at which my mother smiled, ‘She reminds me of that gospel singer Mahalia Jackson,’ a very wise observation on the part of Mrs. Nathan!

MISTAKEN IDENTITY AND JERRY WEXLER’S NOTE…

I wrote my first of what would be dozens of articles on Aretha in 1966 for “Rhythm & Soul USA,’ the short-lived UK magazine for Dave Godin’s ‘Friends Of Rhythm & Blues Society’: excited as I was, I was later deeply embarassed that CBS Records that sent us a photo of her sister Erma for the story and we had printed it in error. Oops…

Subsequently, I expressed my passion for Aretha’s music, notably in 1967 for the UK Atlantic fanzine, ‘Uptight’an’Outtasight.’ earning me a personal typewritten letter from no less a luminary than Jerry Wexler, the wise executive who had signed Aretha to Atlantic in November 1966 (initially offering her contract to Jim Stewart at Stax Records who – in retrospect – thankfully passed on having her join the label’s roster). Along with his letter of thanks for me sharing about Aretha in print in the UK, Jerry had enclosed a promo copy of her then-forthcoming 45, “Baby I Love You”! Wow.

It was the ‘B’ side, Aretha’s spine-chilling version of bluesman Howlin’ Wolf’s “Going Down Slow” that really did it for me. Going through my own personal blues with boyfriend number two, William, I remember playing it over and over again on the record player in his tiny bedroom, although he seemed oblivious to just why Aretha’s gospel-fused wail seemed to resonate so much with me at age 19…

ALWAYS ON MY PLAYLIST…

I could, but I won’t, detail every subsequent Aretha ‘event’ in my life and career from then on, some of which was detailed in the chapter of my 1999 book, The Soulful Divas (which you can download at my website.) Instead, I’ll focus on a particularly special time in Aretha’s career and life and in mine too…

It’s September 7th, 1973, just a few weeks after Aretha’s completed another recording session in New York (which has been her home for some years) as part of what would become her February 1974 album, Let Me In Your Life.

It’s a rare one-off date, inasmuch as Aretha is recording just one tune distinct from the usual three or four she cuts at the same time. Present are ‘A’ list musicians, such as Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie on drums, Chuck Rainey on bass, Hugh McCracken on guitar, Richard Tee on organ. Kenneth Bichel on synthesizer and ‘The Sweehearts Of Soul’ (Margaret Branch, Ann S. Clark, Pat Smith), Aretha’s touring background vocal group on hand with special guest, fellow Atlantic recording artist Donny Hathaway on electric piano. Atlantic’s masterful arranger Arif Mardin, concert master Gene Orloff and a string session, engineer Lew Hahn and Jerry Wexler (credited wirh Arif Mardin and Aretha as co-producers of the session).

Aretha sets the tone on piano and as revealed many years later through vault research by yours truly, there’s a full demo of the song in which Wexler references the song as having a reggae-type beat, with that specific piece missing from the version of the demo released in 2012.

Released as a single in November, just a few months later, “Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do),” is clearly intended to be the last addition to the Let Me In Your Life album most likely because the previous sessions for Aretha’s 13th Atlantic LP in 7 remarkable years don’t seem to have yielded an obvious hit. It turns out to be just that when it’s her biggest pop & R&B chartmaker in two years and a certified gold 45 to boot…

A PHONE CALL FROM BACKSTAGE AT THE APOLLO THEATER, HARLEM…

While I had written much about Aretha from 1966 on, I hadn’t conducted a ‘proper’ interview with her for Blues & Soul (the publication I had started writing for ‘officially’ in 1970) until 1973. Of note: I used an informal conversation she and I in her dressing room at the UK television show Top Of The Pops in July 1970 as a feature which became my first-ever cover story for the magazine!

The opportunity to speak with Aretha arose ahead of the UK release of “Until You Come Back To Me” : I was more than delighted that the magazine’s founder and editor, John Abbey had ok’d it for me to conduct the interview which would be the cover story for the final year-end edition of Blues & Soul in 1973.

The logistics of the transatlantic call were a little challenging: Aretha was in the midst doing some shows at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem and the only way to get it done, given the time difference between London and New York, was mid-evening when I was at home in the flat I shared in Willesden with my friend Angus.

I still vividly recall that – way before any notion of a mobile phone – I had to wait by the dial-up phone in the hallway until the ‘magic’ hour when an international operator would connect us! With pen in hand (note: also the title of one of the tracks on Let Me In Your Life,retrieved from a 1971 recording session), I stood by the phone, waiting for the call.

I can still picture myself anxiously waiting. No call at the appointed hour. My instructions were to call a number for the backstage phone at the Apollo if the time came and went without a ring-a-ding. I complied, explaining that I was calling from London as arranged to speak with Miss Franklin. “Hold on,” the unidentified responder said. “Let me check with her manager.” A minute or two later: “I’m sorry, you’ll have to call back. Miss Franklin is running a little late.”

“Hi David, how are you? How’s everything in London?” The honeyed tones of Aretha thirty minutes later provided blessed assurance! A little banter and then, down to business. Talking about “Until You Come Back To Me,” Aretha noted, “Stevie [Wonder] and I are old friends, you know. He often drops material by at the studios for me – and this particular song was written with another old friend, Maurice Broadnax [and Clarence Paul].”

Referencing her then-upcoming LP for Atlantic (with whom, Aretha said, she was “almost re-signed”), she shared further: “Now, let’s see. We’ve got some really funky tunes in there and some nice ballads… I am very happy with the finished product, actually…there’s the old Wilson Pickett song, ‘I’m In Love’, the Etta James hit, ‘At Last’, ‘Eight Days On The Road’ and at least one of my own songs, ‘Oh Baby’, which I wrote with a friend, Bernice Hart. I haven’t written too much lately – just enough to let out what I wanted!” (Note: “At Last” didn’t make the final line-up at the time but was shelved until release in 2012).

We completed the call with Aretha mentioning that she’d been busy decorating her newly-acquired New York home and after some time off, she was getting back to live performances, noting that in the year ahead, 1974, “we’ll be doing a tour of Japan as well as [a] European trip.” We said our goodbyes, Aretha off to prepare for her next show at the Apollo, me taking in that I had just completed an exclusive interview with ‘Lady Soul’ (as she often referred to back then), balancing my notebook and phone at the same time and hoping my scribbled notes would be legible!

A PS: when Let Me In Your Life hits the streets in January 1974, the cover depicts Aretha looking simply radiant. I still consider it the most beautiful of all the album photos of Aretha, ever. The pic of the LP shows a smiling, relaxed young woman, experiencing a new zest for life and photographer Joel Brodsky truly captured a ‘brand new’ Aretha!

There is a story about the poster I had of the album cover which adorned the wall of my New York apartment bedroom for years but quite how it fell off the wall is a story not appropriate for THIS post, trust me! I promise to tell it one day!

OCTOBER 1974, RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL, NEW YORK CITY…

As it turned out, Aretha didn’t make it to London in 1974 as she had hoped – but I made it unexpectedly to New York almost a year after our interview. My then-London flatmate Gary had invited me to come to visit some months after he decided to stay in America: fortuitously, I arrived towards the end of October just in time to see Aretha perform at the vast Radio City Music Hall venue. In all, there were four shows, two each night on October 29th and October 30th. Thanks to Atlantic’s wiz publicist, the late Barbara Harris, I got two tickets to see Aretha at the hallowed theatre although I can’t recall which night.

All shows had the same sequence and memorably, the entire audience at the performance I attended with Gary audibly gasped when Aretha entered the famous stage through the floor dressed in a clown’s oufit with six clowns dancing alongside to the strains of the showbiz tune, “That’s Entertainment”! (Note: a song that she had recorded at Columbia Records in 1964 which remained unreleased until 2011).

The rest of the show had some great moments including the standout “Angel” and when she sat at the piano during the second half of the concert, the audience erupted in joy with an epic “Dr. Feelgood” followed by a rousing “Spirit In The Dark.” The entire four shows were recorded but remain (for reasons not completely known) in the tape vaults.

It was truly a night to remember, especially given this was my first time seeing Aretha in America; with another ’synchro-destiny’ experience, I saw Aretha at the very same venue in October 2014, forty years later: when I shared that with her, she smiled and asked what she did at the show in 1974: “You came up through the floor dressed as a clown!” I grinned. “Oh r-e-a-l-l-y? Right…yeah, I remember that!”

“I’M GOING OUT TO VOTE…”

My last phone conversation with Aretha occured in November 2016 when I was visiting Detroit for a Motown Museum meeting. I’d let her know beforehand that I would be in the city and she asked if I could bring her some souvenir from London before I headed out. I obliged and we talked about meeting up so I could give her the gift. “David, let’s see when we can do that,” she said during our conversation, “but right now, I have to go out and vote!” She was referring to the 2016 Presidential elections…

We didn’t actually get to say hello in person: I was unaware of the degree to which Aretha was dealing with health challenges at the time and although I was disappointed that we didn’t say ‘hello’ in person, I later understood…

I could, as it clear from this and the voluminous number of words I’ve written about Aretha, share so much more as I reflect on Aretha’s music and presence as a source of deep gratitude.

I smile thinking of our off-the-cuff conversations particularly in the last few decades that sometimes started with, ‘Hi David, how are you? So what’s the gossip?!’ (particularly when I lived in L.A.); of her unwavering support for The Rhythm & Blues Foundation and how on one occasion, she challenged two of the other ‘ladies’ in the house to match her donation of $50,000….. a story yet to be told; and of the time I shared that I sang along with her early Columbia recordings as a teenager in London, loved the song “Soulville” and thought she was singing about ‘fresh ice cream down in soulville’ only to find out from a friend that it was actually ‘black-eyed peas’ Aretha was singing about. When I told her, she hollered! ‘Well, the fresh ice cream would have been alright too!’

Clearly, there’s a whole book about my life and times with Aretha, just waiting to emerge…

The title of a phenomenal TV special performance from 1973 with Ray Charles sums it all up for me: when it comes to Aretha, ain’t but the one!

Ever grateful.

© 2026, David Nathan, All Rights Reserved.

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