Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] Fabbri, Anna Maria



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Franklin, Aretha


(b Memphis, 25 March 1942). American soul singer, pianist and songwriter. She was the daughter of one of the most prominent Baptist preachers in the USA, Cecil L. Franklin. Moving first to Buffalo and then in 1948 to Detroit, the family was regularly visited by a number of important African-American gospel performers, including Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, Clara Ward and the Ward Sisters (including Marion Williams) and James Cleveland, from whom Franklin learnt to sing and play the piano. Her father recorded over 60 albums of his impassioned sermons for JVB and Chess and at the age of 14 Franklin recorded her first album, a collection of gospel songs, for Chess. Four years later she moved to New York where she recorded seven albums for Columbia on which she sang jazz, blues, popular standards and the occasional contemporary soul tune. Although she achieved moderate success with this material, including three top ten hits in the rhythm and blues chart – Today I Sing the Blues (1960), Won't Be Long and Operation Heartbreak (both 1961) – her Columbia recordings were mostly overproduced and her vocal performances constricted.

In 1967 Franklin signed with the important soul label Atlantic, who initially offered to record her at Stax records in Memphis. However, Jim Stewart, the owner of Stax, was unwilling to provide the $25,000 offered to Franklin for the original signing, and Atlantic's Jerry Wexler took her to record in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In contrast with Columbia's policies, Wexler encouraged Franklin to bring in her own material and to play the piano on her sessions. The results were the most powerful recordings by a female soul singer in the genre's history. Her vocal skills allowed her to change timbre, range and dynamic level dramatically from one note to another while her gospel phrasing and improvisational tendencies were routinely deployed to cathartic effect. Franklin wrote or co-wrote such enduring material as Since You've Been Gone (Sweet Sweet Baby), Think (both Atl., 1968), Call Me, Spirit in the Dark (both Atl., 1970), Rock Steady (Atl., 1971), and Day Dreaming (Atl., 1972) and arranged and recorded definitive rhythm and blues versions of Ronald Shannon's I never loved a man (the way I love you), Redding's Respect, Carole King's (You make me feel like) a natural woman, Don Covay's Chain of Fools (all Atl., 1967), Bacharach and David's I say a little prayer (Atl., 1968), Robbie Robertson's The Weight, Lennon and McCartney's Eleanor Rigby (both Atl., 1969), Elton John's Border Song (Holy Moses) (Atl., 1970), Paul Simon's Bridge over Troubled Water and Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector's Spanish Harlem (both Atl., 1971).

Franklin's version of Respect was viewed by many African-Americans as a social/political clarion call. In the late 1960s and early 70s her strength as a performer, many of her lyrics and the fact that she wrote and played on her sessions and concerts caused many to view Franklin as an important symbol of the emergent women's movement.

The quality of her recordings for Atlantic declined after 1973 but her career was rejuvenated when she moved to Arista Records in 1980 and was paired with more contemporary producers, such as Luther Vandross (Jump to It, 1982; Get It Right, 1983) and Narada Michael Walden (Freeway of Love and Who's Zoomin' Who, both 1985). In the late 1980s and early 90s she recorded a series of duets with pop artists, such as the Eurythmics, George Michael, Elton John, Whitney Houston and Michael McDonald. It is impossible to overestimate Franklin's importance. In 1987 she became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 1990 she won the Grammy's Living Legends Award.


BIBLIOGRAPHY


G. Hirshey: Nowhere to Run: the Story of Soul Music (New York, 1984)

P. Guralnick: Sweet Soul Music (New York, 1986)

M. Bego: Aretha Franklin: the Queen of Soul (New York, 1989)

J. Wexler and others: disc notes, Queen of Soul: the Atlantic Recordings, Rhino R2 71063 (1992)

J. Wexler and D. Ritz: The Rhythm and the Blues: a Life in American Music (New York, 1993)

ROB BOWMAN


Franklin, Benjamin


(b Boston, 17 Jan 1706; d Philadelphia, 17 April 1790). American statesman, scientist and amateur musician. He was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer, at the age of 12. He left the apprenticeship and worked in New York and Philadelphia, spent two years in London as a printer, then returned to Philadelphia where he established his own print shop. Before withdrawing from this trade to follow a diplomatic career, he printed for the Ephrata Community in Pennsylvania three hymnbooks, Göttliche Liebes und Lobes Gethöne (1730), Vorspiel der Neuen Welt (1732) and Jacobs Kampff und Ritter-Platz (1736), as well as a number of reprints of Isaac Watts's Psalms and Hymns containing no music.

Franklin played the harp, the guitar and the glass dulcimer, and invented an improved form of the musical glasses which he called the armonica. (for illustration see Musical glasses, fig.2.) On a visit to England in 1761, he heard Edmund Delaval, a Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, play on the glasses. Franklin was so impressed with the instrument that he decided to improve it. He took the bowls of the glasses and fitted them concentrically (the largest on the left) on a horizontal rod, which was actuated by a crank attached to a pedal. Careful gradation of size ensured a more consistently accurate scale than was possible with water tuning, while the close proximity of the rims (which would be well moistened before use) enabled the player to produce chords and runs with far greater ease than had been possible when each glass stood separate on its base. The invention achieved a certain popularity in America, but exercised far more influence in Europe.

Franklin also wrote a short treatise on music aesthetics. A letter (dated 2 June 1765) to his friend Lord Kames of Edinburgh sets forth Franklin's ideas about the nature of melody and harmony. Another letter from about the same time addressed to his brother Peter Franklin expresses his preference for clarity and simplicity in vocal music over newly composed Italian opera, and cites examples of ‘defects and improprieties’ in an aria from Handel's Judas Maccabaeus.

A string quartet in manuscript bearing his name as the composer is in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. This quartet is the second of two composed for three violins and cello, all employing scordatura and performed on open strings only. Arguments supporting (Grenander) and doubting (Marrocco) Franklin's authorship have been presented.


BIBLIOGRAPHY


J. Sparks, ed.: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, vi (Boston, 1840), 245

O.G.T. Sonneck: ‘Benjamin Franklin's Musical Side’, Suum cuique: Essays in Music (New York, 1916)

W.J. Campbell: The Collection of Franklin Imprints in the Museum of the Curtis Publishing Company, with a Short-Title Check List of all the Books, Pamphlets, Broadsides, &c., Known to have been Printed by Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia, 1918)

L. de La Laurencie: ‘Benjamin Franklin and the Claveciniste Brillon de Jouy’, MQ, ix (1923), 245–59

W. Lichtenwanger: ‘Benjamin Franklin on Music’, Church Music and Musical Life in Pennsylvania in the Eighteenth Century, iii (Philadelphia, 1947/R), 449–72

W.T. Marrocco: ‘The String Quartet Attributed to Benjamin Franklin’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cxvi (1972), 477–85

M.E. Grenander: ‘Reflections on the String Quartet(s) Attributed to Franklin’, American Quarterly, xxvii (1975), 73–87

J.A. Taricani: ‘Music in Colonial Philadelphia: some New Documents’, MQ, lxv (1979), 185–99

G. Myers: ‘Benjamin Franklin and other Early American Music Critics’, NATS Bulletin, xxxviii/1 (1981), 12–15

H. Unverricht: Haydn and Franklin: the Quartet with Open Strings and Scordatura (diss., Johannes Gutenberg U., 1981)

V. Meyer: ‘The Glass Harmonica, Originally Designed by Benjamin Franklin, Currently being Built by Gerhard Finkenbeiner’, Experimental Musical Instruments, ii/4 (1986), 6–9

B. Gustafson: ‘The Music of Madamme Brillon: a Unified Manuscript Collection from Benjamin Franklin's Circle’, Notes, xliii (1987), 522–43

C.S. Smith: ‘A Tune for Benjamin Franklin's Drinking Song Fair Venus Calls’, Inter-American Music Review, x (1989), 147–56

E. Stander: ‘Notes of the Musical Glasses’, Experimental Musical Instruments, vi/2 (1990), 1, 5–8

W. THOMAS MARROCCO/R




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