In 1967, John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkins were invited to write a song for Aretha Franklin. The song was Son of a Preacher Man and Aretha didn’t release it. Her producer, Jerry Wexler, passed it on to Dusty Springfield, who put it on her Dusty in Memphis album, had a massive international hit and scored a Grammy nomination.
On 15 January 1970, Aretha released This Girl’s In Love With You and side 1 track 1 was her recording of Son of a Preacher Man. Unfortunately, like most of the album, it sounds over-produced compared to the relative simplicity of Dusty’s recording, and the vocal pyrotechnics are overdone for an opening track. If the idea was to flip the bird to the British interloper, it fails. That’s a shame, because Aretha’s phrasing and understanding of the dynamics of the song are compelling.
The album also contains a couple of Lennon-McCartney covers: Let it Be and Eleanor Rigby. Again, neither really work for me, and once again it isn’t Aretha’s voice so much as the arrangements that let them down, especially Eleanor Rigby. Two much better tracks are Share Your Love With Me and a cracking cover of The Band’s The Weight, the latter being especially strong, probably the best track on the album, and featuring a young session guitarist called Duane Allman on slide.
When it was released in the UK in late April 1970, it was selected as ‘Pop Album of the Month’ in Melody Maker, the reviewer saying it was hard to resist the soul of the album while also warning about ‘wasting a great talent on too-standard material.’
I side more with the latter comment than the former. I would never accuse Aretha of phoning it in, but this isn’t her at her best; there’s definitely some soul, but not a lot of spirit.
The whole album is on Spotify, but here’s The Weight.
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