"Respect": Everything You Didn't Know

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating facts about your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and more. I'm Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan run Tug and Jordan's today we are talking about respect. Not the intangible quality I crave from every father figure with a beard in a deep voice, but the odist reading tune that was rearranged by Aretha Franklin into an all time anthem of femininity and black America. Aretha's version top the charts fifty five years ago this June. And you know, Jordan, not to get all eric alper Twitter engagement trap here, that's a niche reference. I'm not sure how many people are really going to get that, but respect is probably at the top of those cover songs that have out shown their originals, right. I mean again, not to get all is feedlistical here, but there's Hendrick Stewing all along the watch Tower, Jeff Buckley or Rufus Waynewright's version of Holley Luyah, Johnny Cash is hurt? What else? I mean? I think Amy Winehouse's version of Valerie's way better than Sutons me and Bobby McGee Janice was way better than Roger Miller's original. I didn't realize that Betty Davis sized by Kim Karnes was actually a Jackie DeShannon song. But Kim Karn's version is way better. Santana's Black Magic Woman way better than Fleetwood Mac's original. Maybe the Beatles Twisted show better than the Isley Brothers in the Top Notes version, just strictly by virtue of the fact that John Lennon was like almost literally playing on Mike. Yeah, so that that's good there. Um, let's think Nilson's version of Without You uh stronger than Bad Fingers despite Bad Fingers tragic, horrific backstory. This gets it a very difficult conflict for us, which is is something better by virtue of being sadder? Right? Um? And now how do we feel about Whitney versus Dolly? I will always love you? Did I? It's Whitney? Is it Whitney? Okay? I wasn't sure if that was a a cancelable offense to Yeah, Dollies Dolly's Dolly, but like nobody's got the Whitney pipes? All right? But you have a hotter take about respect. I won't call it a hot take, but you know, I mean read the Franklin's version of respect is almost a victim of its own success and historical significance because it's just so ubiquitous as a cultural signifier. I'm not gonna say that it's a cliche, but half a century on, it's almost hurt hard to hear with fresh years, to experience that excitement of hearing it for the first time fifty five years ago. I'm sad that I'm not able to It's like not being able to hear Sergeant Pepper for the first time or something like that. It's I mean, I agree, but I also think you're right about respect being considerably more overexposed than Sergeant Pepper, Like maybe not loosen this guy with Timonds. I heard that song entirely too many damn times growing up. But yeah, I mean, this was like, this was like one of those songs that was just on like the oldies station that I've us and two and my parents with the car all the time. It was like one of the first songs I can like really remember. It's like this an old motown um. But we digress. ODIs Writing, Aretha Franklin and Respect go far deeper than just a bullet point in aalistical about covers. So from the song's origins as a vehicle for a band with the awesome name of the Singing Demons, to the drunken trumpeter who nearly derailed the recording, to Aretha's unheralded chops as a producer and a ranger. Here is everything you didn't know about Respect were so back number one. We are still not actually sure who wrote this song. I didn't know that until that's incredible. Well everyone just goes, oh, it's Notice writing song Thatice Writing wrote it. Um, goes way deeper than that. So in Respect Yourself, Stacks Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon Uh, the song's origins are basically put down at this reading. Had originally pitched the song as a ballad for his road manager, Earl Speedo Sims to sing with his band, The Singing Demons. All of that rules. Um, I love how much you know I'm like permanently in the middle of that Sam cooked bio dream boogie And it is so cool to me how all of these dudes just like took care of their buddies and families. They were like, I wrote a song, you wrote, I'm giving you the credits for this, Like so that you can just make money anyway with Sam cooked too. Yeah, yeah, we'll talk. We'll touch on that in a minute. So anyway, reading comes off the road and he's talking to book or T and the mg S drummer Al Jackson Jr. He's complaining about his life at home with his wife, and Jackson supposedly said, what are you griping about? You're on the road all the time. All you can look for is a little respect when you come home. Can I I'd like to add something here. And I was going to get into this later on, but this is an interesting segue. Al Jackson Jr. Was murdered in nineteen seventy five. Uh. He'd come home and found assailants in his home, apparently ransacking his home. They ordered him to get down on his knees and shot him five times in the back. His wife, hours later, was running out into the street going to neighbor's houses, you know, screaming at her husband had just been killed. Then things get a little weird. Um, then they get weird. Uh. It looked like on the surface like a robbery gone wrong, but none of the items in the home were touched, and Jackson's body still had his jewelry and his wallet on him. Then they do a little digging and Jackson's wife things had not been going great with her, and fairly recently she had shot him in the chest. He declined the press charges or even divorce her. And the person that was later suspected of having actually shot Jackson was the boyfriend of his wife's best friend, who then was later killed in a related shooting. So it's interesting that the person who uh kind of inspired this notion of respect when you come home was quite frankly set up to be killed by his wife. Anyway, lightbulb moment, Redding gets the lyrics, and then he also crucially gets the idea to change the song's tempo, moving and out of a ballad. So that's like the first step in the evolution of respect. It's no longer a ballad. Uh. Percy Welch, who's a musician in the circle at the time of the Stacks family, has said that the switch also came down to the fact that Simms couldn't sing every time Speedo would get in the studio, his voice would crack up. We said we'd recorded respect five or six times, and each time it'd get worse and worse. Otis told Speedo, you don't need to do that tune. I need to do it. You let me cut it. I'll give you credit, and he says Speedo should have made him sign a contract. Um. But Welch also said at one point that Simson Redding had gotten this song from an unnamed guitarist at a making Georgia recording studio. So, as I said at the top, long story short, we don't know who wrote this, but either way, the Otis writing version was cut in the stacks of Volt Studios in Memphis with the Labels house band one of the most iconic house bands of all time, the MG's It's Donald Duck done on bass, Al Jackson Jr. On drums, book or T playing keys, and Steve Cropper as a producer and guitarists and also Isaac Hayes played keys on this session. Let's still quick lightning around on some of the stuff that the Book of Teas and the MG's have done. I mean, you've definitely heard green onions. Uh. The instrumental song I think. I mean, I always think of that scene in Um in the sand Lot, but it's in a ton of movies and it's just like one of the most iconic instrumentals of all time. I think they did uh like Wilson Pickett, Oh right, Yeah, played hold on, I'm coming. Time is tight, Time is tight. I've been loving well, yeah, the otis I've been loving you too long to stop now. Um Staple Singers. They did a lot of those staple singers sides, Uh Delaney and Bonnie. I didn't know they played with yeah and uh soul Man, so soul Man. My favorite thing about about that record is the fact that instead of using a like traditional glass or metal slide um to do those sliding sixth that are the opening guitar part, which John Fogerty later stole for Fortunate Son and is has become the unofficial soundtrack of Vietnam because it's every single Vietnam movie. Brian Air, Oh, some folks born Anyway. Steve Copper played that guitar lick with a Zippo lighter. I didn't know about. Yeah, super cool anyway used to do that too. I think did a lot of things anyway, So Booker team the MGS are recording this album. Uh, otis blue Slash, otis reading sing soul. This is what Respect is on. They cut this record in twenty four hours, taking a break from eight pm Saturday to two am Sunday. Why so they could go play gigs, not sleep, not neat ones, play gigs. Oh it's so good. I mean that's insane. I uh And there was an interview before just before Otis Redding's death, where he claimed that it took him a day to write Respect and twenty minutes to arrange it. So these guys weren't fussy, but they were good. They were all on speed. That's the only solution that I have to this. How do you record for twenty four hours and then like two thirds of the way through that you're like, I'm gonna go play a gig. This is also when guys were playing like two sets a night, that each set was like two hours long. It's insane. And Beatle's first album was recorded in a day, but not twenty four hours. Yeah yeah, um okay, so Otis Redding's version is a hit. I think one of the things that also tends to get overshadowed when we're talking about Respect is how big of a star otis reading actually was at the time. This record, Ods Blue sold two thousand copies, bolstered not just by Respect, which did spend eleven weeks on the Hot one hundred, climbing as high as number thirty five, which is respectable. But I've been loving you too long? And Shake, Oh yeah, Shake was a really big song that was written by Sam Cook and recorded I think at the last session before his murder in December sixty four, and Rod Stewart actually cut a version of it in his mid sixties, robbed the mad phase like years and years and years before he was in Faces, So that's definitely worth checking out. Speaking of covers, there are a bunch of covers once Respect came out and kind of helped him cross over to the pop market. There is a cover by Johnny Rivers of Secret Agent Man Fame. I've never heard that, neither of I I don't want to, although I loved that song when I was a kid. I had a thing for like novelty songs when I was a kid and garage rockers. You can find if you google back to cover, you find garage rock covers of Respect from the UK, Greece, Australia, Michigan, and one of these was probably the one from Michigan was by a band called the Vagrants, and this band included Les West and Felix Popularity, later of the band Mountain, who did Mississippi Queen Marcisshipper Queen. So the man who wrote the definitive Otis biography, which is called an Unfinished Life, Jonathan Gould said Respect was a big song for Otis that year in an interview with Gun and Oh I'm Sorry Garden and Gun Magazine, in which I thought that I thought I was being messed with when I found that in Google it is a very real magazine. It was his first dance tune, Gould continued, because up until that point he had done ballads in this pleading sort of devotional mode. But in Respect, the arrangement was his and those were his hord lines, all his ideas. It was very distinctive, and within a year he'd record a cover of the Rolling Stones Satisfaction, which he redid with the help of Steve Croppers, just like Horn Driven March, which sounds a lot like his version of Respect, and the really funny thing is that the Rolling Stones when they cut their version of Satisfaction, the guitar riff was, you know, meant to be heard as a horn line. They initially wanted to make that that Dona as a as almost like a James Brown horn line, which is what ODIs writing ultimately did for it. So it's interesting to hear. But Otis had a soft spot for respect through the end of his much too short life. He died in a plane crash with many members of his band in December of sixty seven, and just before his death, he praised respect by saying, that's one of my favorite songs because it has a better groove than any of my records. It says something to those lines are great. I think he's talking about area. This version the band track is beautiful. Everybody wants respect, you know, do yourself a favorite listeners and just check out Otis at Monterey because you want to talk about I mean, the MG's are playing on that and it is just man. I love Otis. I I know James Brown is the hardest working man in business, but Otis could have given him a run for that. He is just so he's that man was a Dynamo. But at some point, of course, Aretha Franklin, here's this song. She told l Inten that she still remembered the first time she heard Respect. She said, I had just moved out of my father's home and I had my own little apartment. I was cleaning the place, and I had a good radio station on of the song, she says, I loved it. I loved it. I felt I could do something different with it. And my sister Caroline, who was an r C A recording artist, and I got together on the background, and so Otis and Aretha had actually met in nineteen sixty six when they were performing together at the Regal Theater in Chicago, and Franklin had already started incorporating Respect into her live set, and she told Otis that and she said, I want to record it, and reading for his part, told her that he loved her version of try Little Tenderness, which goes back too, and he wanted to record that, and he obviously did. And his big crucial change, also a great arrangement choice, was you know that song is traditionally a ballad, it goes back to the thirties. I think written is like a great American songbook ballad, and so he keeps that, you know, sort of ballad feel for just the first verse and then it goes into that classic four in the floor kind of stomp, and that's one of his defining tunes. And it also features the use of the phrase socket to me as does respect. And in that same interview, Franklin said that she picked that up from kids in her neighborhood in Detroit. We'll talk a little bit more about slang in my obsessive search forever the origin of every piece of slang in this song. I I love Otis's Try Little Tenderness. That's one of my favorite tracks, and I first learned a bit through the John Hughes classic Pretty and Pink when John Cryer's character Ducky lip syncs to it while trying to win over Mully Greenwald's character Um but Yes. Reddings producer Phil Walden later told Aretha Franklin's biographer David Ritz that his recording of Try Little Tenderness was straight up trying to quote channel Aretha and her take on the sixty two one. So, I mean it was It's interesting to see the cross pollination there. Weird tangent, but speaking of Aretha's biographer, David Ritz. He's kind of like the foremost authority on Aretha, so we're gonna be hanging a lot on him over this episode. He has a writing credit on Marvin Gay's sexual Healing. Did you know that? I sure didn't. Yeah. He Um, he like went and sought him out when Marvin was like overliving in that We're almost certainly gonna cut this out, so I'm just gonna I'm just gonna tell you. Uh. He went and saw Marvin Gay out when he was like living abroad almost anx like basically an exile in Belgium, and he walked in on him and apparently he was reading like B D. S M comic books and David Ritz was like, man, you need some like sexual healing or something, dude, And uh, suggested Horney. Yeah, and and suggested that that he write like a him to try to like express himself and get these thoughts out of him. And apparently that was the genesis. There's some dispute, as with most things in the Marvin Gay estate, but there's some dispute about about that in his role in writing it. But yeah, this like music journalist came over. I mean imagine like that's the music journalists like Apex right there is like of you your hero and you end up getting a writing credit on one of their defining songs. That's just that's so cool to me. Um, I'm surprised you didn't get a writing credit on my favorite Marvin Gay song. G You sure love to ball. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Too much information in just a moment. So the reader's digest version of a Reata's career as it stood at Evan, one might say at a crossroads is that she was dropped from Columbia in nineteen sixty six after a long period of them basically trying to market her as like Barbara streisand Detroit Edition. I guess was that their vision? What was the same way that like Marvin Gay wanted to be like like the black Frank Sinatra. It was like they were trying to make her this kind of string laden very like almost like the female Matt King Cole or something. But did she I don't did she want that or was that something that Columbia threw at her that I don't know? In seeing the Jennifer Hudson movie. It made it kind of seem like she wasn't all that they didn't really understand her. I don't know how much of that is just revisionism, considering all the success that followed with Atlantic and you know, the producer, Jerry Wexler. But yeah, I'm actually not sure. Yeah. I mean, one thing is for sure, Aretha had oops, that is true, but yeah, it's really insane the thick now. And she'd released nine studio albums on Columbia between nineteen sixty one and nineteen sixty seven and something like one singles, but it's just nothing worked. Um, And you know, not many people know this, but she actually made her recording debut when she was just fourteen years old, singing live at her father's church in Detroit, and her debut single was a powerful rendition of Never Grow Old on JVB Records, which featured just young Aretha just fourteen, accompanying herself on piano, and she would re visit the song many times over the course of her career, probably most famously as the closing track on her Landmark seventy two live album Amazing Grace. Yeah, Holy God, stop watching this or stop listening to us and go to Monterey and then go watch Amazing Grace. Oh it's so good. So anyway, Atlantic picks her ups upper contract and meetings begin to suss out material for her debut record of the label. Legendary Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler was a reading admirer and champion, and so he was happy when Franklin brought up Respect, which, as we mentioned, she'd been doing live for a while. But Wexler told Matt Dobkin for his book on Aretha and Respect, which is called I never loved a man the way I loved you, I love you that he was bold over. When it came time to record the tune, Wexler said, she walked in with this. I had no notion. I didn't know what she had in mind. She would work out the rhythm part, the piano arrangement, she worked out her vocals. She'd bring in her backup singers when they came in singing respect. They had the whole template. They had everything. And it is important to note here I feel that a lot of people when Aretha is being brought up, or even when you just hear her, like I grew up listening to, you know, the stuff on the radio. I had no idea she was a piano player, um and when Yeah, a great piano player. And then you know, when people talk about like Jerry Wexler a lot, I feel like it does kind of undercut the degree to which she was able to run her own musical ship. Engineer producer Aridif Martin, who I believe worked on this session, told Dobkin that I would be out there in the studio, pencil and music paper in hand, trying to ascertain what Aretha would be playing on piano, you and me both, Buddy, I would write down chord changes, the guitar player would look at her right hand and find out what position she was using. The bass player would listen to her left hand and try to come up with a bassline. This all stemmed from her piano. Yeah, and Jerry Wexler, who's obviously, you know, seen some good keyboardists in his time, said of her playing in a two thousand and four interview with Rolling Stone, she was a brilliant pianist, a combination of Mildred Falls Mahalia Jackson's accompanist and Thelonious Monk, one of the greatest jazz players of all times. In other words, Aretha brought a touch of jazz to her gospel piano, and it was all instinctual. I don't think she had any classical training. She just put it together. It was part of her genius. No one could copy her. How could they? She's all alone in her greatness. And what's even more amazing is that, like so many musical grades, she didn't read music um, which I guess caused a lot of problems working with the folks at Columbia who were used to working off, you know, chord charts and proper scores. She worked best with people that she could sing the parts two on the fly and they could just go with it, which is a totally different skill set, which leads us to so with this material in hand, Wexler booked Franklin for a series of recording dates in January and February of nine. Now we get to talk about Muscle Shoals. I love Muscle Shoals. I love the fact that the band was called the Swampers, I love the fact that it was called Fame Studios for Florence, Alabama Music Enterprises. But it is truly I'm just gonna say it's the least likely spot and personnel to have become an iconic soul music studio. You look at Motown in Troit, which had both a bunch of songwriters and producers and they had jazz trained musicians as the backing band. And then in Stacks and Son in Memphis. That's a city that just had like decades of white and black culture kind of commingling. But Muscle Shoals is kind of in the middle of nowhere. There's still not very much there other than the studio which was founded by Rick Hall, Billy Cheryl, and Tom Stafford in the late nineteen fifties above the City drug Store, and then they moved to a former tobacco warehouse in the nineteen sixties. And there is a great documentary. I we gotta stop sending people away from this podcast, but there's a great documentary called um So. This documentary just called Muscle Shoals. A lot of these guys are still living, but Rick Hall died in So, but but he is in that. In that documentary, it's just beautiful footage of all and them playing um and that attempts to answer the question of how studio. Also, it's important to underscore they're all white and at some point, what was this this? I mean this was in their their hot period sixty seven. Everyone wanted to go record there. People started hearing about this studio in the middle of nowhere that had these stanky ass white boys, and I mean they're playing not necessarily their dispositions or personalities. So everyone's going there, rolling stones are going there. The share record that's there. Obviously, Wilson Pickett was there. Who else? Jordan's Edda James had just recorded a track tell Mama there, which rips one of my favorite soul songs of all time. Oh uh, Paul Simon, did didn't you do Kode of Chrome there? I think it was? Yes, yes, yes. I love how it's called fame and it's in, you know, the least likely place for fame to occur, and it is literally all the photos of thirty fourteen Jackson Highway. It is just a concrete block in the middle of a lawn. It's like, it's I love it. It's so d I y rules And this place was such a mecca that a young Dwayne Alman literally pitched the tent in the parking lot in order just to be close to the action, just to be there, like like like a dead head. He's just he just wants to be there, sunk up the vibes. And this is how he later met Wilson Pickett, who was also recording now the legendary soul singer. Pickett came outside just on a lunch break and saw this goofy white kid, I guess, but the tent pitch in the parking lot, and they hit it off and eventually Dwyne Almond tadd him accords to the Beatles Hey Jude, which they then recorded together, which is one of my all time favorite Beatles covers. Dwyane plays this absolutely face melting solo at the end, and UH session musician Jimmy Johnson, who also played on the recording, said that Almond solo created Southern rock, which maybe has a little bit hyperbole, but not far off. And again, this was just the guy sleeping in a tent in the parking lot, and the people in Atlantic wanted to know who this dude was who played this incredible solo, and Rick Hall responded with this handwritten note some hippie cat who's been living in our parking lot, which you google. Recall he has a truly astounding mustache. He's got this like Salvador Dolly, like waxed mustache. He's a real Southern gent. That was how Dwayne Alman got offered a recording contract. Auditions for the Almond Brothers were later held at Fame Studios. UM all this to say, Fame Studios, it has a vibe. And Wexley had brought Wilson Pickett to the studio in n and so he was had these guys in mind for the Franklin session. But as we mentioned, not a hotbed of cultural wherewithal down the muscle shows, so they had no idea who she was. Um. I remember seeing her name on the schedule, Jimmy Johnson told Dobkin, and I said, a wretha who I didn't even know how to say her name. And one of my favorite session musicians Spooner Oldham baby guy who co wrote Dark End of the Street, he said I knew yep. He said I knew minimal about her, which I believe is a direct quote. Uh. And I definitely didn't know where she was going. That's uh. Spooner old and playing Oregon on When a Man Loves a Woman by Percy Sledge and Mustang Sally by the aforementioned Wilson Pickett, and you know how he got his nickname Spooner, right, please go ahead. When he was a little boy, he was reaching up for a frying pan on a shelf and a big spoon fell and hit him in the eye and blinded him. And the kids at school thought this was hilarious and started calling him Spooner just to tease him. That is some Faulkners. Anyway, Johnson and the others remember Aretha once she got there as a shy and reserved figure, but the sessions were pretty rowdy from the get go, largely thanks to Aretha's then husband and manager, Ted White. Uh. Ted White is a divisive figure to say the least. He frequently abused her in public, and I read that he once shot Sam Cook's brother Charles in the groin at Aretha's home in Detroit. Wow, I've so many guns in his era, like the in the standing in the Shadows of Motown thing. There's a whole thing about them, like playing at a club or something and the guy being like the promoter at the end, being like, well, I can't afford to pay you, guys, you didn't make you drank too much at the bar or something, and James Jamerson just pulled out a gun and put it on the table and was like, well, I gotta feed my family so many guns? Good lord, people, Is Ted White still alive or can we go in? Uh? Ted White died in Oh wow, God rest his soul. Uh real piece of that guy. Yeah, by all accounts, Uh, he was not a good guy. Edda. James compared Aretha and Ted White to icent Tina Turner that that didn't you really want a bastion of domestic bliss. He was called a pimp, hustler and one of the slickest operators in Detroit by an assortment of Aretha's friends and the Tultra's relationship came to an end in nineteen sixty nine, and according to one of Areta's biographers, Mark Beageo, the pair only spoke twice after their divorce in sixty nine. So, yeah, some animosity there for good reason. Yeah. So um Hall was recalling to The Guardian in that White brought in a bottle of vodka or sent out and got a bottle of vodka and he began to drink and pass the bottle around to some of the horn players and don't do that the horn players. By the way, everything was groovy until about two o'clock in the afternoon. It's funny too because Hall, I think it's David Hood, who's the bass player, who's the dad of Patterson Hood from Drive By Truckers or one of my favorite bands. I think it was David Hood who's recalling an article that Rick Hall didn't allow drugs or alcohol during the sessions. So the fact that Ted brings in a bottle of vodka and starts giving it to everyone is already and already off on the wrong foot. But I guess around two o'clock in the afternoon, White comes into the control room and he tells Hall that he wants the trumpet player, guy by the name of Ken Laxton, fired for either hitting on or making a pass at or doing something shady with Aretha um And in the Dobkin book, none of the guys that he interviews really dispute that. It does not seem like it was a false charge. They were like that guy sucked, but apparent. Hall says that White also took issue with the tenor player on the date. I don't know if he also said he was making a pass It at Aretha, but he's like, I want that guy gone too, so um yeah, he says. Tension begins to get thick in the studio and people start to get a little antsy and they know things aren't good and they wonder what's going on, and uh so Wexler decides to call the session off halfway through the recording of Do Right Woman, Do Right Man. The only song that they had completed at that point was I Never Loved a Man, And so Hal decides that he's going to go over to the hotel where White and frank Them are staying, kind of attempt to, you know, with an olive branch or whatever, bad idea. He wound up literally coming to blows with Ted White, who blew up at him, threatened to tank his career. He said, I'm gonna ruin your business. No one's coming down to here to record anymore. And the rest of the sessions are canceled. So Wexler flies back home to New York and he loses touch with a Wreatha Franklin for two weeks over it. She just ghost tim. He called her houses in New York, he called her house in Detroit, he called her church. Nothing, He has like DJ's calling her. I mean, you've gotta feel for this guy. He just signed this artist, and now her manager slash husband has come to blows with you know, studio owner. He's really freaked out. And he later said in David Ritz's A Wreath of Biography, in all my years in the record business, I'd never experienced the better recording session. I knew he had a smash, and now it looked like it was all in vain. The singer's husband, slash manager, gave in the k said he wanted out of the record deal. He had physically fought with the studio owner, and he and Aretha had run out of muscle shoals after the very first day. I was crushed. So yeah, I mean, just absolutely snatching defeat from the jaws of triumph. My favorite bit about this is when that she finally calls him, because you don't call Aretho, Aretha calls you. Neither of them mentioned this. They're just it's they just it's a gentleman's agreement and a gentle ladies agreement between the two of them. They're like, we will not speak of what happened. Um England, way to do it, I guess yeah, it's kind of waspy um. And so Wexler has this, He's like, I still want to use those guys. I want to use the Swampers, but he felt bad about basically being like, Hey, I want to use the band, but I don't want to use the studio anymore because this tension between White and Hall. So what he does is he calls the muscle shoals man all of them behind, recalls back and says, I want you guys to come up and play a session for King Curtis, who would eventually play on Respect, and he doesn't mention that he wants them only on the Aretha sessions. So they come up to New York and they actually wind up cutting the King Curtis record, um, because that's what these guys could do this, Yeah, exactly, but it was not without some treachery on the part of Mr Jerry Wexler. But speaking of King Curtis and murderers that are related to this song, yeah, it's really strange how two key players on Respect, both the Otis Redding and the Wreatha version, were murdered. Already mentioned the Stax drummer Al Jackson Jr. Who played on the Otis version. Uh King Curtis, who is you know, one of the greatest sax players of all time? He played on Oh God, he played with the coasters doing Yak and a yak. He played on a ton of these. Uh what else did he play on him? I mean King Curtis, man, he's the that's like the it's like him and Bobby Key's like the sound of like mid century rock and soul saxophone comes down to like those dudes. So anyway, Ki Curtis, anyway, he was murdered. I didn't mean it like that, but yeah, Kiing Curtis stabbed outside of his Manhattan apartment on August thirteenth one during an argument with a pair of drug dealers. He was attempting to carry an air conditioner into his apartment and these guys refused to move from the entrance of his building. A fighting sued, and Curtis was stabbed. Um Aretha not only attended his funeral, but saying the closing spiritual never grow old. M hm, So New York City, baby, right. Um. They recorded Respect on Valentine's Day nineteen sixty seven, and what did they do to the song Jordan? They did a whole revamp of the song because otis Redding's original. When you listen to it, it's really pretty straight there's no bridge, there's no RSBCT refrain or you know, take care of TCB or sock it to me backing vocals. It's really pretty straight ahead. It's like it's just like a march. There's really barely even a chorus. So Aretha gave it a much more complicated arrangement with the stop and start sort of stuttering syncopated rhythm and of course the lyrics that she changed up, and a lot of that was done on the spot in the studio. Yeah, Franklin sisters. She mentioned earlier in that l quote that her sister Caroline was also recording artist who co wrote a bunch of songs with Aretha. But another Franklin sister, Irma, who is best known for cutting the original Piece of My Heart, which is our second Janice Choplin reference being um, she cut the original version of Piece of My Heart. Um. They are their co leads. It's call and response. There as equal part of this song as Aretha was and the re re re repart. Wexler said, that's what they called Aretha. That was the family nickname for her. I heard that this was I mean, I know they called it that in their family, But I had heard that the re re re re repart of the song was not meant to be a reference to her. Um. It just was a nice coincidence. So I heard that that was a myth. But I love it so much that I'll let it slide and I'll choose to believe it. Yeah, far be it for me to contradict Jerry Wexler. Um. Anyway. Carolyn is also credited variously with introducing the idea of the socket to Me thing and the spelling of the title. And Tom Dowd, who is the greatest of all time of American rock and soul engineer. Just google Tom down Engineer and find literally everything that he's recorded. Um, And he said, I nearly fell off my chair when I heard that. There's a really incredible article written by Carl Wilson, the music writer or Not the Beach Boys vocalist in Slate just after a Wreatha died in and he's talking about the genesis of her respect cover and he makes this really interesting lyrical connection between her background and the church and her connection to the Detroit streets, and he says, I just want to read this part. Her most distinctive rewrite the addition of the R, S P E C T find out what it means to me. Bridge has a touch of the preacher's pedagogy, the moment when the celebrant might focus in on a scriptural passage and muse, think of this word respect, What does the Lord mean? Money uses it? What does it mean, for example, within your own home? But to keep proceedings from getting too heady. A wreatha immediately cuts in with language from the street take care TCB meaning take care of business, and socca to me soaka to soaka to soaka to me meaning well that's up to you. I just thought that was a really interesting I had never thought of that it being a blend of her of her church upbringing, because we maybe should have mentioned this earlier. Her father was a an incredibly fa probably one of the most famous preachers in the country, the Reverend C. L. Lewis. That's not that's that's it. That's the guy who wrote the line of the Reverend C. L. Franklin. Yeah, it's the whole column response thing. If I were to wax philosophical about it. I would say the lines between audience and performer are blurred. With a col In response, but you have an interesting theory about Socca to me, Yeah, it's not totally an exaggeration to say that Socca to me got Richard Nixon elected. Expand on that. So, soccer tivity was used as a catchphrase in the The Irreverend comedy show Rowan and Martin's Laughing in the late sixties. It just was like a kind of non secretar catch phrase, and Richard Nixon was persuaded to appear on this show, which had a huge youth following, and it kind of went a long way and kind of selling him to the youth audiences. But because at this stage, I mean, nowadays you have You're on the Campaign Show, you go on every TV show that I'll have you today. But back in the sixties, the only TV shows you went on were like televised debates and that was it. So Nixon went on this comedy show for kids and he just films this like really quick segment where he just turns to the camera and goes socc it to me, and it just was this really like kind of I mean it sounds goofy now, but kind of a groundbreaking moment in presidential politics where you know, you you cater to the youth and you cater to this kind of media and a lot of people think that that really in a long way and selling him to the young voters. And he he didn't win the election by that much, so that probably played a not insignificant role in getting him elected. And it's just interesting because TV killed his election chances in nineteen sixty during his lack lust. He's all he's all flopped sweaty on the debate. Yeah, but it revived his chances in which is interesting. TV. It giveth and it taketh away. Uh. But I mean, I guess it's probably unfair to hang Watergate on Aretha Franklin's cover of an artist read end song. So so let's get back to Greener Pastors show. We let's talk about the solo. So, as you mentioned before, the reading version lacks a bridge, and it was apparently King Curtis's suggestion to borrow Steel the chords from Sam and Dave's version of When Something Is Wrong with My Baby for the middle section that he was going to solo on and classic bit of um Lazy New disguised as innovation because all the Swampers had just cut a version of that song with Curtis on this trip, the album that I was talking about earlier. So they were like, yeah, we got that one in our fingers. Let's just throw that in the middle of respect and this is what's so great about this uh, and we're gonna get a little you know, Rick Beatto YouTube music theory. Here they stuck the bridge progression, the chord progression into respect in its original key F sharp that does not mesh with the key that they were taking respect in, which is the key of C. The intervals of an F sharp to C is a tri tone. It's the devil's interval. If you split the western temperate scale the octave in half, going by semi tones exactly halfway, is this fifth the diminished fifth at the tri tone. Famously, there's this whole canard about how it was so dissonant that medieval music scholars thought it summoned the devil, and they called it in diabolics musica or something like that, which means the devil in music. That's not strictly true. It wasn't banned because they thought it was going to summon the devil. It was just very dissonant. They didn't like it in the corrals and the part writing conventions of the time, but super dissonant. You'll recognize it right away from Hendrick's Purple Haze opens with that, which is a bold move. It's in a bunch of Sabbath songs, so it's a dissonant move, is what I'm saying. But the verse for respect starts on G seven, the five chord of C, so that is just a half step away from F sharp, and that is a very common modulation. And they basically totally lucked into this um to pull this out of the music theory weeds and I can see everyone's eyes and ears glazing over. I will give you a non musical metaphor. They tried to finish a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from a different puzzle and they succeeded. I'm more impressed with your analogy than I am with your description of the music theory. That was very good. I'd read that there was a different sax player on the sessions, a guy by the name of Charlie Chalmers, and he was supposed to take the solo and then King Curtis just barged in on the take, and this other guy, Charlie Chalmers explained, Uh, he was talking to the Cleveland's The Plain Dealer in two thousand and eleven when the horse solo came up, which I was ready to play because I've been playing it on all the other takes. Curtis jumped in there and took that solo. Man. But he was so good, even though he pushed me out of the way. It was the right thing to do. Yes, it was, and um yeah, Ken Curtis became a Wreatha's sort of de facto musical director for a time. I think too. I love the idea. I choose to believe that King Curtis physically kicked the door in with his saxophone in hand and just started like muscled away from the mic and just started playing. Um. But what did otis think? Let's go to a recurring segment of too much information that we like to call what did otis think? Jimmy Johnson told a l dot com in that Reading was Reading was actually there for the session. I was not able to confirm this, but Johnson, Jimmy Johnson said he was standing close to me and Dan Penn, who's the other guy who wrote Dark End of the Street. And after she got done Aretha got done doing the vocal, what Redding said was Dan Penn, and I heard him say it was well, she took my song for me? And did she ever? And Dobkin says that Wexler actually played the tune for him weeks later, had like either an ascetate or the studio tape and got the same reaction. Yeah. And when he did this performance at the Monterey Pop Festival around the same time Areta's version was about the hit number one, he introduced respect by saying, this is another one of mine, a song we'd like to do for everybody. This girl she just took my song, but I'm still gonna do it anyway. So yeah, he definitely. I think he was good natured about it. I mean he meant he meant it in a nice way. My favorite little bit in the aftermath of this song was that it inspired kind of an arms race in the soul diva community. Before Aretha Franklin's fame exploded thanks to her covering Otis Redding's respect, Edda James was the much more popular singer, and we mentioned her earlier doing her incredible version of Tell Mama at Fame Studios. She's she's amazing. And after the success of Respect, Eda tried to re energize her own career, which is kind of flagging at this point, about releasing her own cover of an Otis Redding song. And she did a version of Otis Redding Security, but it didn't have the same effect that Respected. In fact, I don't think it. It barely charted, although in a very touching display of diva unity. I think that Aretha Franklin actually played piano on Edda James version of Security. How nice of her talk about the talk about an Olive branch Um. I was just reading about Charlie Chalmers, which I don't know why I didn't research him earlier, because first of all, hell of a name. Seven of his recordings are in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Let's stay together, Respect, Chain of Fools, Natural Woman, son of a Preacher, Man Mustang Sally Land of a Thousand Dances. He has something called an Album of the Century Award? Does his wife take it for him? So? Yeah, do you know what One of chalmers records for Chess was called Sacks and the single girl. That's good, that's real good, It's good, all right. TCB. Finally, the real meat of this episode. T c B, as you mentioned earlier, stands for taking care of business. I when we pitched this episode, I was obsessed with finding out how and where TCB comes from. Elvis and Aretha probably the most associated with it. Elvis, you would know more about this than I would, because you're an Elvis guy. I know. Elvis at some point told all of his cronies in Memphis that they were going to be called the TCB mafia, and he gave him all necklaces and rings and put TCB on his jet. Yeah, that was that. But that was in the late sixties, and Respected was recorded in nineteen seven. So I started looking this up, and someone pegged it on jazz musicians in the nineteen fifties. But one of the first places that I can find it written down and used as an acronym is in James Baldwin's Blues for Mr Charlie from in which it is literally spelled out in the line of dialogue says, let's tc B. That means taken care of business. So that's interesting to me that James Baldwin maybe is one of the first people on record to use TCB A world away from Elvis. Yes, I could imagine him taking it from the jazz scene. Yeah, or Aretha. You know, hey, man, TCB, I really like that. Oh No, I mean the Baldwin and I can imagine Baldwin taking it from the jazz scene. That was my James Baldwin impression. Even kept up on that. Let's go down Amphis and get some of them peanut butter and bacon, jealous sandwiches, James Baldwin. As you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more too much information. After these messages, many people have interpreted respect as a song of sexual liberation in which Franklin demands exactly from a man what so many of her male predecessors did from the unnamed women they addressed in their song Jesus Christ, that was some music journalist horse. Why did I write that? Why did you let me keep that in there? But anyway, she doesn't see it that way? Did you write that? I'm sorry if I just called your writing horse? No I didn't. Okay, so is my horses? So sure, TCB has been positive as sexual slang, but so is the word propers in the song. Some people have misheard that as profits, but Aretha Franklin told The New York Times in two thousand two, I do say proper. I got it from the Detroit Street. It was common street slang in the nineteen sixties. Whoever is saying it has a sexual connotation couldn't be further from the truth. My propers means mutual respect, and that is where we get the slang term props. So two white guys explain that to you on a podcast. I don't remember there being that line in the song. Uh, you're not going to get in Aretha Franklin impression out of me. I'm not going to sing that, but it is. Uh. She says, I got to give me my propers. My favorite bit about this isn't There's a great clip of her talking with Ed Bradley on sixty Minutes and nine from and Uh. Ed Bradley says he asked her about this sexual feeling he hears in the phrase give me my propers, at which point she just murders him with her eyes and says, m h, that's what it does for you. So that's a great clip that's out there. Google it, it's very money. Aretha's producer Jerry Wexler shares a different interpretation in his autobiography Rhythm and Blues, A Life in American Music. He says the fervor and Aretha's voice demanded that respect and more respect also involved sexual tension of the highest order. What else would Soaka to me mean? I'm not going there. But there is also a song on this record, I Never Loved a Man called Doctor Feel Good, which is much more explicit than this. So I'm fairly certain that if she had wanted respect to be about sex, Aretha had already got that box checked on the track list to that record. Aretha's brother Cecil believed that respect was actually meant as a not so thinly veiled message to Aretha's abusive husband, Ted, and he said he might have respected her talent, but he didn't respect her as a human being. He was a violent cat whose violence only got worse. I felt like Aretha was singing respect to Ted, but it hardly made any difference. He kept slapping it around and didn't care who saw him do it. And Aretha herself always shied away from any personal readings into really any of her songs, but especially respect, and Jerry Wexwery later commented if she didn't live it, she couldn't give it. But Aretha would never play the part of the scorned woman. Her middle name was respect. But you know, I mean, it really is funny to juxtapose Otis Redding's version of respect, which basically explored traditional fifties values. You know, a man works all day, comes home once respect in dinner from his wife basically for you know, busting his hump all day, that kind of you know, Dad from the Wonder Years type of mentality. I don't know why that's the the example I give of toxic husband's but obviously Aretha's version, which is sung from a woman's perspective and bolstered with this chorus of women in the background. This whole notion was flipped on his head. But you know, I mean, just one story of way too many from this era that Aretha came up in. She made it a point earlier in her career to be paid up front in cash. I mean, you know, thousands of dollars before performances, and she would always take her handbag with her on stage and you know, maybe put it on top of the piano or something, but always have it within I shot, just as a security measure because she saw so many people like Ray Charles and BB King get ripped off and she wasn't going to have that, and you know, you weren't going to disrespect her. And this was kind of her trademark. If you watch some of her later performances, like even towards the end of her life, she always had the clutch with her on stage. And that was the reason why I was just like a habit that she had from these early days when she felt the need to just bring her money literally on stage, which I thought was a very poignant, uh conentary on on the time that she came up in I mean other people did that too. I think Helen Wolfe did that too. Did he bring a suitcase on stage? The one I always remembers Chuck Berry. Chuck Berry um famously would just drive himself to all of his own gigs with like his guitar and amplifier, and he demanded a backing band that knew all of his songs in the set and demanded to be paid in cash. Uh, you were talking about something the tagline fresh show. You were saying about something, so yes, of course the song would be embraced not only by feminists and the burgeoning women's liberation movement, but also the civil rights movement, in which Aretha played a major part. Martin Luther King was like a family friend, was very close to her father the residence C. L. Franklin, not C. S. Lewis, as I mistakenly said, a moment ago, uh. And she toured with Martin Luther King along with like Harry Belafonte and Jesse Jackson in the early sixties. And I think she's saying in Luther King's funeral too. So she was quite literally on the front lines of the civil rights movement. And it's interesting that Aretha's version of Respect was released on April nine, seven, which was the day after Muhammad Ali was stripped of his championship title for refusing to be drafted to fight in Vietnam. So the timing for this song to be embraced as a sort of anthem was just perfect. I mean, it's just it was really crystallized this moment in history, and as Aretha herself wrote in her memoir, it reflected the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother of the fireman, the teacher. Everyone wanted to be respected. Yeah, and this song comes out at this moment and becomes justifiably iconic. Spends two weeks on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart in the summer of nineteen sixty seven, eight weeks on the Billboard Black Singles Chart, which is has not aged well. Uh went to number ten in the UK. The record that this comes from, I Never Loved a Man spent several weeks at number two on the main the non racist Billboard chart UH and fourteen weeks at number one in the magazine's Top R and B album's chart. It was certified gold by the r I Double A nineteen sixty seven went on to sell nearly two million copies, earned two Grammys for Best Rhythm and Blues were courting Best Rhythm and Blues Solo Female Vocal Performance. All of these are meaningless categories. Um, and you know the one that's always at the ass end of the Wikipedia entry. In two thousand two was added to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress. Oh and even further on the ass end, uh. You know Rolling Stone has that list of five greatest songs they put out every few years and revamp and revise, and Respect had beat out. Was it like a rolling stone? Right? I think so? Yeah? Yeah, topped it number one. But the greatest honor as a result of this song came shortly after its release. At the start of her show at Chicago's Regal Theater in April nineteen sixty seven, Aretha was crowned the Queen of Soul, literally crowned the Queen of Soul by DJ Purvis, the Blues Man span what end name that's that's a name. Aretha took the ceremony very seriously. She later commented on the beauty of the bejeweled crown placed on her head, where mayan metaphorically speaking, of course, for the next fifty years. But yes, uh, we've talked about the cultural impact of respect in the women's liberation movement, civil rights movement. Let's talk about the Blues Brothers film. Huh, hell yeah. The cultural history of respect has extended, of course, to the cinema. It's been included movies like Bridget Jones Diary, Forrest Gump, Back to School, Desperately Seeking, Susan Mstic Pizza featuring our beloved Julia Roberts, just to name a few. But Aretha was cast in her first movie, Blues Brothers in Night, directed by John Landis. She plays the singing diner waitress named Ms. Murphy. I mean, she steals the show. She's it's like one of the best parts of the movie to Fried Chickens, Yeah and a coke. Director John Landis had wrote the part especially for her, when she sings Think to her husband to dissuade him from leaving the diner and joining the Blues Brothers as a guitarist. And you know, Areatha co wrote the song Think. So you think she'd want to get some royalties from it by haven't placed on the soundtrack album, But instead she really wanted to sing respect because I mean, my guess was at this point her career was it wasn't on the skids, but it was definitely at a low EBB, so she probably wanted to make the most of her big moment by singing her trademark song. Unfortunately, this didn't work for John Landis, who told The Hollywood Reporter, we'd written Think into the script with a dialogue leading into the song and the song actually furthering the plot. Of the film, so we didn't want to change it. So Aretha was a good sport. Her only request was to change the piano part of the pre recorded track, but recording a new version herself, and she just sat down at the piano with a microphone and she started playing and singing. John Landis said her piano playing actually made a difference. It was much more soulful. Yeah, of course it was immediate. But it all worked out because she reprised her cameo in the sequel Blues Brothers two thousand, when she finally got to sing respect on film partnoy So. Franklin biographer David Ritz has called I never loved a man and respect the beginning of Aretha as a co producer. The template for however many albums she did with Atlantic is there. She goes in, she sits down at the piano, the charts come together because she's the engine driving the locomotive. She's really a co producer. And I think it was an inequity of the times that it just wasn't done that way, Yeah, Ritz, I mean, obviously. In the wake of Franklin's death in eighteen, he was interviewed a great number of times about her legacy and influence. And he said of her version of respect, she deconstructed and reconstructed the song. She gave it another groove the original didn't have. It took on a universality the original never had. I think it's a credit to her genius as she was able to do so much with it. Her version is so deep and so filled with angst, determination, tenacity, and all these contradictory emotions. That's how it became anthemic. Yeah, we're just gonna, well, should we? You know what I do kind of want to start doing this. Um. One of the books that we've been heavily sighting is called I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You Aretha Franklin, Respect and the Making of a Soul Music Masterpiece. That is from two thousand six written by Matt Dobkin Um that David Ritts bios. Respect. It's called Respect the Life of Aretha Franklin UM, and that is from and what was the other one, Aretha Franklin The Queen of Soul by Mark Bage. Oh yes, So those are all great places if you want to learn more about Aretha. And I'm just going to get into an inelegant segue into some of my favorite quotes about this song. Um Phil Garland, who is a journalist and Columbia professor, called Respect the new Black national anthem. Two years after it came out, she told Dobkin we were waiting for that song, and no less an authority than Atlantic Records icon ahmet Ertegun told Dobkin Respect was the greatest rhythm and blues music ever made. That was it. I mean, you went to Copenhagen and you went dancing in the club and you danced to respect. You went to Singapore the next day and you danced to respect. You went to Johannesburg and you would dance to respect. And then you went to Buffalo, New York and you danced to respect. Which no, no, not every not all of us did. Uh ahmen, But yeah. One of my favorite quotes about Respect is from Jerry Wexler. He's talking to Rolling Stone in two thousand four, and he said, Respect of the biggest impact, truly global, and it's influence with overtones for the civil rights movement and gender equality. It was an appeal for dignity combined with blatant lubricity. What I don't I don't know that. I don't think it is one. That's why does he mean like stankun suppose? So, yess he does the property or stay of being lubricious. Okay, yeah, the measure of the reduction in friction or where by a lubricant. Wow, we just I'm sorry, just completely butchered this elegant kicker you had. Um. There are songs that are called to action, there are love songs, there are sex songs. But it's hard to think of another song where all of those elements are combined, which I think is a good point. But I think we should probably give the final word to Miss Aretha Franklin. When asked why she thought the song was so successful, she explained very simply, everyone wants to be respected. Mike drop as she's want to do. Throw that mink coat on the ground, throw the mic on top of the mink coat, walk off. Actually no, take the mink coat and then walk off with your with your college filled with grand in cash. Yes anyway, I'm Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan run Tug. Thanks for listening. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on iHeart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.