I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You Review

Six years at Columbia had her singing standards over orchestras. Wexler's idea was simply to put her behind a piano in Alabama with the FAME house band and let her run the room, and the first song they cut proves the idea in about forty seconds. Spooner Oldham's Wurlitzer figure on the title track came out of that session, Franklin sang the lead live, and the tape was effectively finished before the date collapsed in a fight between her husband and a trumpet player. Wexler flew the Muscle Shoals players to New York to finish the rest.

Half the songs are covers and she rewrites them anyway. Otis Redding's Respect is a tired man asking for consideration when he gets home; Franklin turns it into terms of trade, adds the spelled out chorus and the sock it to me line with her sisters Carolyn and Erma, and Redding conceded on stage that the song was gone. Do Right Woman, Do Right Man is Chips Moman and Dan Penn's, sung so patiently it sounds like an ultimatum. Her own credits matter too: Dr. Feelgood with Ted White is the filthiest and calmest thing here.

The production is the weak axis and always was. Rolling Stone said so in 1967, complaining that the drums were soft and the guitar thin and the mix unpolished, and that charge is fair. Thirty two minutes, almost no overdubs, nothing to hide behind. It works because she does not need anything to hide behind.