Sure, you could slap down a couple of tenners for next month's "Jewels In The Crown: Duets With The Queen Of Soul," where Aretha Franklin swaps melisma with the likes of Annie Lennox and George Michael (nearly all the tracks have been previously released; new material includes duets with Mariah Carey and Mary J. Blige, featuring the Harlem Boys Choir). Our opinion? Skip it.
You'll do better picking up Rhino's just-dropped "Rare and Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul," a two-disc set of gems and rarities unearthed from her early career at Atlantic Records. This type of obsessive audio archeology can sometimes turn off all but an artist's most hardcore fans, but there's some great material on here that, bafflingly, hasn't seen the light of day until now.
Check out the live-for-TV Ray Charles duet (on Duke Ellington's "Ain't But the One") or "The Fool on the Hill," gifted to la Franklin by Paul McCartney himself, who recorded the Beatles' version after Aretha's was shelved.
written on Tuesday Oct 23, 2007
respect.
