Aug. 18, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
44:24
4170 The Truth About Aretha Franklin | Queen of Soul
The world has recently been saddened by the death of the "Queen of Soul" Aretha Franklin at age 76. Stefan Molyneux discusses the influence that soul music has had on his life, the life story of Aretha Franklin and the lessons which can be learned from her history. Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donateSourceshttps://www.amazon.com/Aretha-Franklin-Queen-Mark-Bego/dp/1616085819/https://www.amazon.com/Respect-Aretha-Franklin-David-Ritz-ebook/dp/B00IRIR7IA/http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6067627/Queen-Arethas-troubled-soul-mother-age-13-married-pimp-19.html
So this is going to be a lengthy deep dive into Aretha Franklin's life.
What a goddess, divinely inspired, interstellar grace touched her throat and produced the most extraordinary vocal abilities, musical phrasing, musical genius and flexibility across a wide variety of Of genres, from soul to gospel to jazz to blues to pop to rock, you name it. She did covers that were interstellarly better than the originals.
Just listen to her cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water, listen to Eleanor Rigby, listen to her cover of Sly and the Family Stone's Everyday People.
Just gives you goosebumps to scat that she does in the middle.
And anyway, so the discography is fascinating and well worth looking into.
But I do want to talk about...
Her life. Because you don't so much get to sing the blues as you are a product of an emotional hellscape and then get to talk about it in song.
So we're going to talk a little bit about the history of Aretha Franklin as an individual and her impact on me, which is considerable, believe it or not.
But let's start with her childhood.
Always start at the beginning.
So She herself, well, wow, what a lineage.
So her father was a preacher, like a revivalist preacher.
He filled thousands and thousands of seats.
He was charging up to $4,000 back in the 50s and earlier for his speeches.
He then moved to radio, and he was called The Man with the Million Dollar Voice.
And I think I've heard reference that he was also a singer.
Aretha Franklin's mother, Was a gospel singer.
Mahalia Jackson, considered to be a great singer, said of Aretha Franklin's mother that she was one of the finest gospel singers in the country.
So let's just say her vocal capacities came from a rather illustrious aristocratic lineage of powerful voices.
But... Family life was a mess.
You know, every cliche that you might have in your mind about—this is prior to televangelism—but, you know, the televangelist, charismatic, smooth-talking alligator shoe wearing shiny suit— Inbuttoned around him, kind of a sleazy minister, this guy would embody to a T. He was a philanderer.
There were reports, and I'll put all the sources to this below, that Aretha Franklin's father turned his ministry into an orgy party.
And the sexual predation, particularly on young girls, was truly astonishing.
And we'll get into that a little bit more later.
But Aretha Franklin herself became pregnant For the first time, when she was 12 years old, she had had two children by different fathers by the time she was 15 years old.
Now, this kind of early trauma, this hypersexualization of the young, which often occurs when there is absent fatherhood and so on, early menses and a lack of protection against sexual predation occurring in the environment, gave her, I think, a number of Addictions and mental health issues and instabilities.
She battled alcoholism.
She was, and this, I didn't even know, it was quite surprising to me.
It's like hearing about Freddie Mercury, who liked his cigarettes as well.
But Aretha Franklin, for decades, was like a two-pack-a-day smoker.
She battled alcoholism.
She was addicted to cigarettes.
She was a food addict, as you could see her weight ballooning.
She got diabetes at times in her life and just...
Like Ella Fitzgerald. I mean, Ella Fitzgerald, if I remember rightly, ended up having her legs amputated for diabetes and so on.
She had a lot of health issues, of course.
And success, you know, as you always think, boy, success, talent, money, ability, cheering fans, and someone's going to solve all your problems.
Well, it really doesn't work that way.
So Aretha Franklin married her first husband.
Whose name was Ted White in the early 60s.
She was only 19. Now, according to the Daily Mail, and I quote here, he was a brutal Detroit street criminal and pimp.
He financed Franklin's early career with his prostitution profits.
He also, and this is a quote within the quote, didn't hesitate slapping Franklin around and didn't care who saw him do it, according to the singer's producer, Otis Taylor.
So, now, there were five kids in Aretha Franklin's Among her siblings.
She was one of five children. She was born in Memphis.
The family moved to Detroit when she was four years old.
And there's stories, very interesting stories, of her wanting to pick up the piano.
It was a very musical house.
Of course, her mother was a singer.
And the pantheon of incredible musical talent that was around in Detroit in the 50s and 60s.
We'll get into it in a few minutes just now.
You couldn't assemble a more talented group of singers and musicians and songwriters than someone if you tried.
But so there was music playing all the time.
So she started tootling around with the piano when she was sort of four or five.
And her father said, hey, we're going to get you lessons.
And Aretha Franklin is like, I don't want lessons because it's all this chopsticks and it's really annoying.
So she just kind of noodled around on the piano.
And by the time she was sort of five or six, she could just recreate songs on the piano just by hearing them once.
I mean, that kind of Mozart-like musical ability was truly astounding.
She actually would hide from the music teacher until the music teacher basically stopped coming by.
Now, her father...
I mean, son of a preacher man.
He was a close friend of Martin Luther King.
Her father, again, fulfilling every stereotype you could imagine.
Alligator skin shoes, sharp suits.
He drove a Cadillac and was obscenely promiscuous.
So at one point in 1940, he faced a huge scandal in that Aretha Franklin's father himself fathered a child.
With a 12-year-old girl.
That is horrifying.
It's one of the reasons, theorized, as to why they kept moving to avoid the possible legal actions, the prosecutions that could result from this kind of, well, what can I say, statutory child rape or whatever you would call it.
And, you know, this man of God, this man of the cloth, this man of the faith, his church became a front for orgies.
And this is again from the Daily Mail, which inside is described as a sex circus.
As biographer Ritz put it, one of her biographers, quote, high on wine and weed, the party people celebrated the love of the flesh.
And that is just astonishing.
Now, As a Baptist minister, you know, the standard, you know, raise them from the rafters, James Brown in the Blues Brothers kind of oratory.
He would give very passionate and emotional deliveries and get the crowd on their feet, and the mother, I'm sure, would burst into song as a renowned gospel singer.
And this went along and went along, but then what happened was, when Aretha Franklin was six, Her mother, boom, left the family home.
Now, her husband had been philandering for...
Well, I imagine for a long, long time.
So nobody knows exactly what caused Aretha Franklin's mother to leave.
Now, it has been reported that Aretha Franklin's mother abandoned her children, but that's not true.
The kids would visit when it was summer sometimes, and Aretha Franklin's mother, the famous gospel singer, ended up working, I think, as a nurse's aide just to try and make money and so on.
But she didn't last very long.
A couple of years after She moved to Buffalo, New York.
She died suddenly at the age of 34.
And I've read that it's a heart attack, also maybe a car accident and so on, but it's rough.
It's rough. And so the father is off touring and speaking and pouring himself away.
And so Aretha and her siblings were brought up by Women who are around their father's secretaries, girlfriends, and so on.
So you get the usual lack of protection, I assume, and lack of capacity to bond and so on.
So, yeah, her mom died.
The sexuality around the father's ministry was intense, and this probably had something to do with this hypersexuality at an early age.
Boy, you know, when you love someone's art, the less you find out about the person, often the better.
I'm a huge fan of the soul singer Sam Cooke.
And according to Daily Mail, the soul singer Sam Cooke strongly hinted that they had an affair, he and Aretha Franklin, when she was just 12 and he was 23.
So... So yeah, she ended up having four sons throughout the course of her life.
The first one was just two months after her 13th birthday.
Now, there's creepy innuendos and suspicions around this.
No proof, of course. She never spoke of who the father was, to my knowledge.
But the fact that she named...
Her sons after the men who fathered them, and she named her first son Clarence, and her father's name is Clarence.
Probably just a coincidence, but there were rumors that Aretha Franklin's father was the baby's father, and no proof of that.
But there are some suspicions, some innuendo, but of course nothing has been proven, of course, right?
And she then basically, I mean...
Abandoned is a volatile way of putting it.
She left her children and went to pursue a music career.
And how that's played out, well, you can look that up online, but, you know, it's pretty rough.
And she did have challenges with stability, mental stability, over the course of her life.
And this is according to her sister, Carolyn.
And I just wanted to point out, too, how the gods of music assembled this family.
It looks like the Jackson Five, like the Osmonds, I guess, but go from soul to white bread.
But... Her sisters were also, you know, one of her sisters wrote some hit songs.
Aretha Franklin actually wrote one of my favorite songs of hers called Think.
And they sang backup for her.
So a lot of musical talent combined in one family.
Now, so according to her sister Carolyn, it's a very, very interesting point here.
Because, you know, when you go through life and you try to do something, there's always this, you know, demon of insecurity that can pursue you.
And that's not a bad thing because you always want to improve.
You always want to challenge yourself.
But you kind of need to have a balance, right?
So you want to have...
Like, I'm very good at public speaking, but I'm always looking to get better.
I'm always looking. I look at what I do very critically and make a tuning.
You could see this, you know, when eventually we'll publish all my speeches from Australia and so on.
But... And I'm also coming up at the Eagle Forum in St.
Louis and in Missouri on the 14th or the 16th of September 2018.
So come and see me there. I'll be even better.
So you want to improve, but you don't want to be paralyzed by self-doubt.
Aretha Franklin's voice, you know, this smoky, effortless phraseology, the incredible range that she had, not just vertically in like four to five octaves, but horizontally in terms of the genre so she could master.
The genre busting was perhaps second only to the UK band Queen, but...
When you're given that kind of voice, and although she did struggle with stage fright at times during her life, nothing as bad as Barbra Streisand or whatever, but she eventually kind of got over it with giant costumes, big hairdos, and basically just thinking that she was sitting around with friends singing as she used to when she was a kid.
But according to Aretha Franklin's sister Carolyn, quote, she, Aretha, she was afraid she wasn't good enough as a singer, pretty enough as a woman, or devoted enough as a mother.
I don't know what to call it, but deep, deep insecurity.
Her style was to either drink away the anxiety, or when that stopped working, disappear for a while, find her bearings, and go right back on stage and wear the crown of the impervious diva.
Now that's Fascinating.
I mean, pretty enough as a woman.
Well, Amy Winehouse had the same issue, right?
Because Amy Winehouse had that kind of heroin chic going, I think, before she even became addicted to various nasty substances.
But... When you're in the public spotlight, particularly, I guess, if you're a female singer, but you can see the comments about my appearance from time to time as well, people will nag about your appearance, right?
And you think you can solve it by being prettier, but you can't, right?
Because all that happens is when you get prettier and prettier and prettier, you get to the top tier of physical beauty.
Well, then you make your living off being beautiful.
And if I get a pimple, who cares?
But if you get a pimple and you're a model, well, then you might be out $10,000 or $20,000 in a big photo shoot.
And if you get too many pimples, people won't book you anymore.
So the hysteria just goes up as the standards go up.
So it doesn't really matter.
So I would say, you know, as to her looks, I don't know.
I can't really judge them.
She seemed nice enough looking to me, at least before she ballooned up Big Hero 6 style.
But devoted enough as a mom, well, she did kind of leave her kids to go and pursue her musical career.
But the fact that Aretha Franklin was afraid she wasn't good enough as a singer, well, I mean, she has been called the best singer of all time, so there is that.
Well, you know, and the other thing, too, there's studio and then there's live, and that's one of the big gaps.
For singers, right? The studio versus live.
Particularly as they age, if they don't take care of their voices.
Now, Barbra Streisand has taken amazing care of her voice.
And even at her...
She's in her 70s now, I think.
She can still just do amazing things vocally.
But, you know, people like Freddie Mercury, people like...
Aretha Franklin and others who smoke, who don't take care of the voices, who don't get voice training.
I don't know if Aretha Franklin did.
Freddie Mercury certainly didn't. Well, they begin to wear out outside of the studio, don't have that same strength and stamina as in their youth.
And so maybe she was listening back to herself live and saying, oh, that's not as good as in the studio and so on, but...
So yeah, you can be Aretha Franklin and you can still think that you're not a good enough singer.
And that should give you some comfort when it comes to self-critique, that you can make yourself miserable with a dream of perfection, even though you've been given gifts beyond just about any other musician over the last hundred years.
And yeah, she did have breakdowns, it would seem.
Her brother Cecil Would put her repeatedly into a remote Connecticut clinic for, you know, nervous exhaustion, nervous exhaustion, what they say, right?
And then she'd get better and she'd go back into her career and then she'd end up being hospitalized again.
So there was inconstancy.
She had her phobias too.
So when she was younger, she took airplane flights.
As she got older, she became too phobic of airplanes to the point where she really couldn't tour the West Coast.
She certainly couldn't tour internationally after a while.
a while.
So that was a big, big problem.
She also would get stressed and not turn up to recording studios.
Sometimes she would not turn up for performances and so on.
And that was a big challenge because she would be sued for breach of contract, I'm sure, and things like that.
She had trouble paying her bills, you know, that sort of diva thing where bills, they're beneath me, right?
The department saw Saks Fifth Avenue ended up suing her for bills that were way overdue, more than $262,000 for furs and shoes.
Well, so at least it was for the essentials.
Over her life, more than 30 lawsuits were brought against her by people like florists and caterers and plumbers and things like that because she didn't pay their bills.
And... I'm going to go out on a limb here, and given that she performed for, you know, she was a big fan of Martin Luther King, she performed for Bill Clinton, she brought a tear to Barack Obama's eye, I think, in 2009.
And so I'm going to go on a limb here and say she's probably on the Democrat side of the political spectrum.
And the fact that she was a Democrat and wouldn't pay the bills of the working people who worked hard to provide her with, I guess, what she considered her essentials, not that shocking.
The champagne socialist and so on.
And, yeah, Sam Cooke was a smoker.
Freddie Mercury was a smoker.
Aretha Franklin was a smoker.
And that's just horrible.
I mean, it really is. Just, like, slowly spray-painting foggy oil over the Mona Lisa, you know.
This is going to sound kind of collectivist and annoying, but I think if you have a gift like that, like you're given that kind of voice, that kind of musical ability, almost for the sake of the common good of mankind and the happiness of those who, like myself, love music to the point where it's religious fervor...
Take care of the instrument that the fates and the gods have given you for the pleasure of mankind and the joy of mankind.
Take care of your instrument so that you can use it to bring happiness to the planet forever.
That's my particular thought about that.
So let's dive back to her dad a little bit, the Reverend Clarence LaVaughan Franklin, who was born January 22nd, 1915.
And, you know, The guy made it big, you know, a lot of charisma, a lot of energy, great voice, great passion.
He started in the cotton fields of rural Mississippi.
Like, I mean, I can't think of many more modest beginnings.
And yeah, he'd be heralded as the man with the million-dollar voice.
And in the 50s, $4,000 per sermon.
And in the 1960s, Time Magazine said, oh yeah, diamond stick pins, Cadillacs, the aforementioned alligator shoes and so on.
All of the pimping out that happens in certain cultures.
And he was in the middle of the Detroit ghetto.
He was like this flashy, charismatic guy.
And he had an inner city congregation all of his own.
And this crazy charisma and just wild speechifying stuff.
He would bring lots of people into his church, and then of course he would pass around this collection plate, and it would always come back kind of filled up.
And I guess like a waiter on steroids, the fact that you get all of this cash, inevitably he ended up, in the late 60s, Aretha Franklin's father being audited and fined for tax evasion.
And that, of course, is pretty rough as well.
So... Just a wild, wild upbringing that is astounding.
But boy, what a concentration of musical talents and abilities in that house.
It's almost like the meeting of Aretha's voice and musical ability with all of the people around her was...
It would be almost impossible not to produce something wonderful.
So according to Aretha herself, she said there was always music in her house.
The radio was going in one room, the record player in another, the piano banging away in the living room.
During my upbringing, people like Art Tatum, Arthur Priceock, Dinah Washington, Lionel Hampton, Sam Cooke, James Cleveland, and Clara Ward used to come to our house.
So I was accustomed to being around famous people.
Mahalia would come in, that's Mahalia Jackson, put a pot of greens on the stove, sit around and talk and eat, and maybe somebody would start toying with the piano and something would start up.
Man, oh man.
Just being around that kind of talent, that kind of concentrated musical genius, must fire up a body like there's no tomorrow.
Now, one telling sort of point about Aretha Franklin's life...
Was that her father would take her in particular in the summer.
So she, I think from the age of, well, from a very young age, was singing in the church.
And you can listen to, I think, some of the earliest recordings of Aretha Franklin are at the age of 14.
And she's singing gospel music.
And, I mean, if it doesn't make hairs rise on the back of your neck, you know, check your pulse.
I mean, the woman was, well, a girl at that point was a powerhouse.
But, of course, well, she'd already had a child and...
You know, was on her way to heaven another, so the fact that she had a bit of a world-weary, passionate, powerful, deep, and mournful tone to her voice is not entirely shocking, I suppose.
But one telling fact is that when her father would go on these tours to speak around the country, he would bring his daughter with him, and in particular, he would bring Aretha, who was known as a young goddess of song.
So when her father would go from city to city, he would take an airplane.
But young Aretha and her siblings, well, they had to go by bus.
And it wasn't like he wasn't making enough money that he couldn't have afforded airfare for his kids.
But that's just amazing.
And, oh man, so there was more, right?
So Otis Williams, I'm sure you know of him.
So he'd heard rumors, oh, that little Franklin girl, wow, she's got the voice of a goddess and so on.
So in 1964, this guy became famous as one of the Temptations.
Papa was a Rolling Stone.
What a great song that is.
And now, in the neighborhood of Aretha Franklin, there was a skinny little girl named...
Diane Ross. Now, she became Diana Ross later, and she joined with two school friends, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, and of course, they became the Supremes, and just amazing.
Now, friends of the Franklins, of Aretha Franklins, again, this is just, I'm sorry, this is like star after star of Motown musical genius.
So, There was a Friends of the Franklins named the Robinsons and they had a little boy whose name was William.
Now William really liked to sing and was interested in becoming a pop singer.
Now everyone of course called William by his nickname Smokey.
Smokey Robinson. An amazing, amazing singer.
So, just one tiny area of Detroit.
You just had this. And this often happens.
I don't know why. I don't know how.
But there's... Maybe it's just the alignment of the planets.
Maybe it's the random scatterbag of stuff.
But it is just...
It's astounding that the concentration of talent that occurs in this area and how much they feed off each other and how much they help each other and how much they are challenging each other and competing with each other.
It is just amazing as well.
So, beautiful stuff.
Now, interestingly enough, back at this time, and this changed later...
But it was actually quite easy to get a record out way back in the day.
So let's just look in the 50s.
So in the 50s, 1956, you could take 500 bucks.
Now that's not a small amount of money, but it's not thousands.
You could take 500 bucks and you could record...
You could, you know, press it onto vinyl, and you could take it around to your local radio stations and nag at them to get it played.
And that is really quite something.
So not only was there a huge amount of musical talent concentrated in this area, and there were producers, of course, coming and starting up there as well, Not only was there, you know, when talent dies young, there's a lot of people around that talent who then want a new talent so that they can keep their producer careers going, their mixing careers going, and their management careers going, and so on.
So when people like Billie Holiday died, and when she died in the 50s, she was just a wreck, like a complete wreck of drugs and abuse and so on.
And so people are looking for new talent.
And, yeah.
And Sam Cooke was around as well.
I mentioned too, like, he would appear at Reverend Franklin's church, then he'd saunter over to socialize with Aretha Franklin and her sisters, now Sam.
Cooke was a very handsome and extraordinarily charming man.
And of course, Aretha, young Aretha, developed a huge crush on him.
She kept a Sam Cooke scrapbook.
She hung onto his cigarette packages because he had touched them and so on.
And just astonishing stuff.
Now, Dinah Washington, another great singer, who died pretty tragically young.
And this is a quote from Aretha Franklin.
My dad loved giving parties.
The great jazz, soul, and gospel artists of the day performed in our living room.
On this occasion, Dinah, Dinah Washington, was there.
I was too young to go downstairs, so I'd sit at the top of the staircase and sneak a peek.
And, yeah, rough life too, man.
These incandescent stars, these talents, they burn bright, but they don't often burn very long.
In July 1963, Donna Washington, while she had gotten married for the seventh, can't it, seventh time, and they lived together in Detroit, and she took a combination of sleeping pills and liquor and died.
And people say it's accidental, not an attempted suicide.
I guess, who knows?
And these tragedies, and we'll get to more of them, that surrounded Aretha's life as well.
Ah, Sam Cooke.
Oh man, rough.
So December 1964.
And Sam Cooke was shot and killed at a pretty seedy Los Angeles motel and the circumstances were bad all around.
So he picked up this young girl at a party and in the hotel room, Sam Cooke took off his clothes, had gone to the bathroom, and then he came out of the And he found out that the girl had vanished and had taken most of his clothes.
So he threw on his sports jacket and his shoes and that was about it and began pounding on the doors up and down the street.
The motel looking for this girl and then he went through the door of the hotel manager and he's screaming and he's half naked and the woman who managed the motel shot Sam Cooke three times and then beat him to death with a club.
Just, that was terrible.
Terrible stuff. And Sam Cooke It was interesting because Sam Cooke was frustrated by Bob Dylan, which is interesting.
So Bob Dylan had written, you know, Blowing in the Wind and other...
And Sam Cooke was like, well, where's our depth?
Where's our power? Where's our...
Folk depth. And so Sam Cooke wrote what I consider one of the most magnificent songs of the era, sung in a way that just is...
I can't listen to it too many times.
The great song, Change Is Gonna Come.
Just go look it up, go listen to it.
It's amazing. And yeah, he sang that, and that was his sort of answer to Bob Dylan, and I think just an amazing song.
And then he gets killed.
He gets shot. And he's not acting in a very safe manner.
Let's just put it that way. August 1971.
There was this one of her friends, King Curtis, had played sax on her recordings since the 60s.
And he went on tour with her a lot of times.
And what happened was he was a landlord.
He owned a building in New York City, was outside on the sidewalk chatting away with the tenants when some junkie reportedly started to argue with the guy and then just stabbed him to death.
Ugh, wretched stuff.
And Clarence Franklin, Aretha Franklin's father, was then shot in his home by robbers.
And he went into a coma for five years.
And he never woke up, and then he died.
His mother died, father was shot.
I mean, people dropping like flies all around her.
It's... It's a rough existence, man.
I'm telling you. This fame and talent and so on.
There are so many chaotic, disorganized, dysfunctional people in the arts.
Nice place to visit.
I went to theater school.
Nice place to visit. I'm not sure you'd exactly want to live there.
Yeah. The reason why I'm very passionate about all of this is not just because music is my religion, but because black culture just had an enormous effect on me.
And I hate to do anything as monolithic and non-nuance to saying black culture and so on, but through music, through art, black culture has had a massive impact on me.
And it started...
I was a huge Ray Bradbury fan when I was younger.
And... He had this story, which was an amazing story, about blacks and whites playing baseball.
I think it was called The Great Black and White Game, or something like that.
And in it, the whites are, you know, kind of tense and upset, and the blacks are relaxed and physical.
And I really thought that was very interesting, you know, growing up in England, There is a view in British society, which I have some sympathy for, but it was not for me in the long run, where, you know, what matters is your brain, what matters is your mind, what matters are your ideas and your eloquence, and your body is just this inconvenient thing.
Robot that is supposed to move your brain from valuable thing to valuable thing, and the mind-body dichotomy is very, very strong in white, traditional British culture, whereas I think that the mind-body unity is much more important.
One of the great things I got out of theater school was a lot of body work, a lot of being in your body work, and you can see when I do speeches that I try to be, not try to be, but I feel naturally kind of fluid and graceful, and all of that came out of a lot of body work and trying to break down this Western mind-body dichotomy, and black culture had something to do with that.
I remember when I was, I guess, maybe 16 or 17 years old, there was A soul singer who came to Toronto.
He was not well known, but I was following all of this stuff very closely.
Ever since someone gave me my first Sam Cooke album.
And I was like, God, I've got to learn more about this.
Where this came from. How this is produced.
And there was this great soul singer.
His name was Otis Clay.
And I remember this as vividly as yesterday.
That is more than three decades ago.
It was 35 years ago almost.
And Otis Clay...
Was a singer who barely even needed a microphone.
That's how powerful his voice was, how committed he was to his performance.
And he was playing at some fairly seedy...
I can't remember if it's the Elma Combo.
Some fairly seedy club downtown.
And I went, and I kind of...
I wasn't of age, but I got in.
And... Thank you, high forehead.
But I got in and was just mesmerized looking at this guy sing.
Now, it was not a lot of lights.
It wasn't super hot up there.
But this guy was so committed...
To his singing, and he did do some Sam Cooke numbers that were fantastic, that he was like in this three-piece suit, and he, over the course of an hour and a half or two hours, he sweated all the way through his suit.
He was that committed to his singing, to his performance.
And I remember at one point, yeah, they turned the mics off, he stepped back, and he just sang, and you could hear a pin drop.
And that man commanded the room with soul, with grace, with dignity, with power, with commitment, with passion.
And I was like... Damn!
Gotta get me some of that.
And I have been very influenced in my public life by preachers, particularly black preachers.
That commitment, that energy, that enthusiasm, that playing with the audience, that call back and forth.
I try to work that into my public speaking.
And I think I do a pretty good job.
I probably know Clarence Franklin.
But I really have tried to...
Emulate and learn from that commitment to the audience and that commitment to a physical and eye contact and passionate connection between the material and the audience.
And I got a lot of that out of watching preachers, in particular black preachers, watching musicians, soul musicians, blues musicians, really committing to all of this stuff.
Now, so I really got into the blues.
I really got into not so much jazz, but the blues in particular, some soul stuff.
But I tell you, so, what is it, I'm 19 years old, I'm 18 or 19 years old, and I'm working up north.
Now, I grew up without a dad.
The one somewhat infusion of masculinity that I got was at the age of six, I was sent to boarding school.
This was paid for by my father.
My parents had split up when I was a baby.
But he only paid for two years, and then I was dumped back into the regular old school where the usual gunocracy and females, females, females in charge.
But at least in the boarding school that I went to, It was like an all-male environment, right?
So the girls were on the other side of the fence.
Occasionally we'd see them, but it was an all-male environment.
And frankly, it gave me some exposure to masculine authority that I was kind of nervous around, but eventually recognized the value of and so on.
And I think that was one thing that helped in terms of avoiding some of the soy boy canyons and chasms that tend to swallow up a lot of boys of single motherhood.
I mean, I've read that Being the son of a single mother actually negatively affects your testosterone levels, which is, you know, if you're the son of a single mother, please go get your T-levels checked.
That's all I'm saying. But, so I was working up north and I picked up just a handful of, well, this is back long before MP3s, so the back I just, tapes.
You had tape players in cars.
I mean, you could get A-tracks, but tapes.
And because I love music so much, I would do work up north and I'd want to listen to music while I was doing kind of boring stuff, like sifting gold and stuff.
And I just grabbed a handful of, you know, blues and soul cassettes.
And so I'm driving and I had a kind of clammy, bossy, slightly bitchy woman.
And so we're...
We're driving along, and hearing a couple of pretty good blues songs, you know, you gotta let that boy boogie woogie.
It's in him, and it's gotta come out.
I love that. And Juke, and just really, really great, great stuff.
Dinah Washington, was it her?
Baby, What You Want Me To Do, just amazing stuff.
Now, I apologize for this rendition, I'm no Mighty Waters, but I heard something like this.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, everything, everything, everything gonna be alright this morning.
Amen.
Now when I was a young boy at the age of five, my mama said I was gonna be the greatest thing alive.
Now I'm a man way past twenty-one.
I gotta tell you, baby, I have lots of fun.
Ain't that a man?
I spell him.
Hey, child.
And that means mannish boy.
Now, in the background, there were guys going, you know, just, you know, whooping it up and being thrilled at being a man and enjoying the meaty weight of masculinity.
Now, It was, you know, I have sex with lots of women and it was very kind of cliched, promiscuous kind of masculinity.
But nonetheless, there was a celebration of masculinity in that song.
And I drove this woman nuts because I was just, I want to hear that again.
I want to hear that again. I felt this absolute delight, this lifting of the gynocracy, this firming of the masculine spine, this weighting of the balls, this, you know, I'm a man.
And I just like, wow, what a celebration.
There's a reason why. Soul Boys don't like the blues.
But the blues are powerful that way.
The blues are really powerful that way.
And getting that kind of affirmation was something else and a half.
And that was just astounding.
And I was never really the same after that as far as...
Deference goes. Thank you, Muddy Waters.
Thank you, Blues.
Thank you, Soul, for helping me reconnect with masculinity after a long time with women being in charge.
At home, at school, you name it, right?
I'm a man! Thank you so much.
That was fantastic stuff.
I still remember where we were driving.
I remember the trees. I remember like Celebration of masculinity.
Now, what's fascinating about that song as well is that at the end of it, he says, don't hurt me, don't hurt me, don't hurt me, child.
And it's almost like there's that vulnerability of masculinity.
I thought, what a brave and interesting choice, whether conscious or not, I don't know.
A brave and interesting choice, which is, I'm a man, and then don't hurt me, don't hurt me, don't hurt me, child.
There's a vulnerability to that.
And I liked that You know, I don't like this sort of, you know, cliche kind of, I'm a man, I'm armored, I feel nothing.
You know, like the fact that there's vulnerability to masculinity is captured in that song, as it is in a bunch of other songs that come out of that genre as well.
Anyway, I won't get into all of my musical ramblings, but this is what I think is really fascinating and instructive and illustrative about Aretha Franklin passing away as she did so recently.
So I did a show here on this channel for now.
It's called The Truth About Maya Angelou.
And I did another one about Michael Jackson many years ago and so on.
And you hear this from a lot of black women and some black men.
But black women, Oprah, right?
So I'll put again, put the links to this below, and I quote, The media mogul, this is Oprah Winfrey, recounted her own experiences with abuse, which included being raped at the age of nine during an appearance at Ball State University, Indiana, part of a lecture series, fellow chat show host David Letterman sponsors at its alma mater.
Quote, anybody who has been verbally abused or physically abused will spend a great deal of their life rebuilding their esteem.
And she said this in front of 3,000 students.
She recounted being physically beaten as a child, saying it was a cultural experience many African-American children went through.
She also said she was raped and molested.
You look at the poet Maya Angelou, victim of childhood sexual abuse.
You look at Tina Turner, abused by her husband, as some claim Aretha Franklin was, by Ted White.
Tina Turner's son shot himself recently, and when I did One of the things that I've been very happy about, it's a lot that I'm happy about with this show, but one of the things I'm happiest about was when I did The Truth About Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman a couple of years ago.
It went well north of a million views here on YouTube.
There was an equivalent number of podcast downloads.
You can get the podcast if you want at fdrpodcasts.com.
And in it, I pushed back very much against some of the data.
Let me rephrase that.
I talked about spanking and physical abuse within the black community and had a clip there of Obama talking about an ass whooping and everyone cheering and so on.
Well, this has to stop in the black community.
I mean, I talk about child abuse as a whole, my relentless and bottomless opposition to hitting children, to screaming at children, to calling them names.
I call it peaceful parenting, and you can see lots of shows that I've done on this, that you must reason with your children, that they are gentle and sensitive and curious and smart and love to be engaged with, and there's no need for all of this violence and aggression and so on.
And so looking at what happened to Aretha Franklin, looking at what happened to Maya Angelou and to Oprah, and at least according to some of the Jackson girls and so on, I mean, it's horrendous.
Black children are more likely to be abused.
They're more likely to be hit. They're more likely to be sexually abused.
And what an opportunity with the death of somebody who experienced some of this kind of stuff as a child.
What an opportunity.
To bring this up and talk about it and discuss it.
And what a missed opportunity.
What a missed opportunity for that great possibility.
Because, look, I'm sensitive to issues of racism.
I understand all of that.
But let's look at the bare facts.
Because I'm an empiricist, I just want to look at the bare facts to begin with.
Let's look at the bare facts, my friends.
Who hurt? Aretha Franklin.
Black people. Who hurt Oprah Winfrey?
Black people. Who hurt Maya Angelou?
Black people. Who hurt the Jackson kids?
Black people. I'm not sure that often quite distant and hard to define white racism is the major issue faced by children who are beaten and raped by people within their own family or family friends or whatever, right? Now, I know that you say, well, you know, it was white slavery that produced all the dysfunction and so on.
I don't like taking away agency from an entire group of people.
Frankly, I think that's completely racist.
To say, well, you see, the blacks, they can't make any choice.
They can only react to slavery 150 years ago or Jim Crow or segregation.
No, I can't.
I can't take away. I mean, it's a horrible thing to do.
To take away personal moral agency and self-responsibility from an entire group of people.
Now, I will talk about this, and I have talked about this for years, that black families, all families, but in particular, in this instance, black families, y'all need to stop hitting your kids.
You need to stop yelling and screaming at your kids.
You need to keep your families together.
You need to not raise boys without fathers.
You need to not raise girls without fathers.
Fathers are essential to the survival and flourishing of any community, and in this case, because...
73-74% I think it is of black kids are growing up out of wedlock homes.
Yeah, this is important.
Now, the Democrats aren't going to confront you on this because they don't want to upset you and they want your votes.
The Republicans aren't going to confront you on this because they don't want to be called racist.
But I'll confront you on this because I really care about the black community.
I want you to do better.
I want things to be better as a whole in the world.
And this is an area of significant dysfunction and it needs to be dealt with.
So I'm going to tell you the truth because I want everyone to have a better life in this world.
And this is one of the greatest things, if not the greatest thing, That can be done to improve the world.
So Aretha Franklin, goddess of song, goddess of music, may she rest in peace, but may we learn from what happened and treat our children better.
Maybe they won't be superstars, but they'll be much better people.
Thank you everyone so much for listening and for watching.
If you find these shows of worth, of value, please, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
