I spent part of this Sunday at church—namely, a nearly empty ArcLight Theater on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, where the Aretha Franklin concert film “Amazing Grace” opened this week.
Aretha charted more times than any other female artist in history. One hundred and twelve times, to be exact. She recorded nearly fifty albums, and the biggest of them all was “Amazing Grace,” a double-platinum live gospel recording she made in 1972 at New Temple Baptist Church—which still stands, about fifteen miles from the ArcLight Theater on Sunset.
The 1972 concert that produced that album was also filmed by a movie crew directed by Sidney Pollack, but somehow he failed to link the film footage with the audio, and the film sat in the vaults for nearly forty years until 2008, when Pollack gave the footage to Alan Elliot. Elliott spent two years synchronizing the film and the music and planned to release the picture, but Aretha sued to block it. After Aretha’s death, Elliott showed the restored film to Franklin’s family and finally got permission late last year to pursue a distribution deal. The film opened this week in theaters across the country.
The backstory behind the “Amazing Grace” is only hinted at in the film, but it’s an exceedingly dramatic one. Aretha began her musical career singing in the largest black church in Detroit, where her father C. L. Franklin was pastor. C.L. took little Aretha on the road with him and oversaw the release of her first gospel recordings. Aretha, heavily influenced by religious singer Clara Ward, became a sensation in the world of black gospel, but when she was nineteen, she told her father that she wanted to record popular music and C. L. negotiated a contract for her with Columbia Records.
During her six years with Columbia Aretha had her first hits and became a successful concert performer, but she didn’t achieve the success that many had predicted for her, and in 1967 she signed with Atlantic Records. Producer Jerry Wexler let her accompany herself on piano and return to her gospel singing style, and he brought Franklin down south to record with the brilliant Muscle Shoals rhythm section. The first Atlantic single by Aretha was the "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)," a huge hit. Aretha was off to the races and within a year she was an international star.
Over the next five years Aretha freed herself from her father’s control and reached a level of musical and professional success that dwarfed that of Ward and other influences. But there was a slice of the black community that did not look kindly on Aretha turning her back on gospel music and leaving her church career, so in 1972 Franklin turned to friend and gospel music legend James Cleveland to help her produce a gospel record, one that would be recorded live at Cleveland’s church in Los Angeles.
The just-released film “Amazing Grace”documents the rehearsals and the two nights of performances at the New Temple Baptist Church. It is a phenomenal film.
James Cleveland was the musical director and soulful host, and his Southern California Community Choir wrapped its huge, joyful sound around the star. Aretha brought her peerless backing band—guitarist Cornell Depree, percussionist Pancho Morales, drummer extraordinaire Bernard Purdie, and the genius bassist Chuck Rainey—which was augmented with the keyboard work of Cleveland, Aretha herself, and Ken Luper.
Most importantly, Aretha brought herself. All of herself. Franklin was thirty years old in 1972, and the Aretha in this film is gorgeous and supremely confident. Vocally, she is at her peak. At the very end of the film, Aretha smiles and appears to relax, but up until that hint of release she is a woman on a mission. She means to show that she is the best singer in the world regardless of style and to do that by proving, once and for all, that she is the the unchallenged queen of gospel music. During the performances she is relentless in digging impossibly deep into the music. She has the church ushers seat her father and Clara Ward right in the middle of the front row so she can simultaneously pay tribute to them and show them in no uncertain terms just how far she has surpassed them both.
There are so many thrilling moments in the film that it’s almost unbearable, but Aretha’s soaring rendition of John Newton’s 1779 hymn “Amazing Grace” is truly shattering. Beginning a capella, Aretha takes the familiar hymn apart and rearranges it, taking each succeeding verse to ever more impossible emotional and musical heights. By the time she is midway through the song Aretha has the members of Cleveland’s choir spontaneously leaping, shouting, and crying, the audience is transported, and James Cleveland is utterly overcome and weeping into a handkerchief.
All cultures have compellingly told their stories in music, and song is the supreme expression of humanity. But Aretha’s performance in “Amazing Grace” leaves no doubt that black gospel music—a music born out of the degradation of slavery—and her unique voice have no equals when it comes to telling the story—all of it—of the human spirit. In these seemingly dark times, when it feels as if the loudest voices are the ones that are preaching hatred, revenge, fear, and cruelty, it is no overstatement to claim that experiencing this film can give us renewed hope and make us better people. Hopefully those theater seats will start filling up in the coming week and “Amazing Grace” will achieve the impact it deserves on a vast audience that sorely needs it.