Chapter Twenty-Seven
The more Gerry and I traveled back and forth between coasts, the less happy I became about being away from our children so much. I thought we should look for opportunities closer to home. One of the most successful New York–based record companies was Atlantic Records. Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun had continued to be diligent in looking for songs for their R&B and soul artists whose strength lay more in performing than in writing. Ironically, their top artist, who wrote her own songs, would save our bacon by recording a song she didn’t write.
One afternoon Gerry and I were walking down Broadway to retrieve our car when a long black limousine with dark windows pulled up alongside us. The rear window rolled down and revealed Jerry Wexler. He got right to the point.
“I’m looking for a really big hit for Aretha.”
He didn’t need to say her last name. Miss Franklin had already enjoyed several top 10 hits. We moved closer to the car to hear what else he had to say.
“How about writing a song called ‘Natural Woman’?”
Gerry and I looked at each other. What a great title! We could do that. Wexler saw our look and nodded. Then he pressed the button to roll up his window, Gerry and I stepped back onto the sidewalk, and Wexler’s face disappeared into the darkness. We watched the limo ease back into the flow of traffic down Broadway, then Gerry and I began walking again.
“Oh my God, he wants us to write for Aretha!”
“I think we can do it.”
“Of course we can!”
“Yeah… I think I already got an idea.”
With me bubbling over and Gerry thinking out loud in his thick Brooklyn accent, we continued to reaffirm our ability to deliver the requested song all the way to the lot where our car was parked.
Having a specific assignment that we had every reason to believe would lead to a cover by a top-selling artist was highly motivating. As soon as we came out on the Jersey side of the tunnel, Gerry put on WNJR to inspire the right musical mood. Arriving home, we parked in the driveway, went into the house, and found Willa Mae presiding over the children’s after-dinner playtime. We spent some time with the girls, but we were chomping at the bit. We kissed them good night and headed up to the red room. I sat down at the piano, put my hands on the keys, and played a few chords. It was unbelievable how right they were, and we both knew it.
Four decades later Gerry remembered it this way in a phone call as we reminisced about writing this song:
“You sat down at the piano and out came some gospel chords in 6/8 tempo. Those chords were exactly where I thought the song should go. You made it really easy for me to come out with the lyrics. You made it effortless.”
I don’t know that I would have called it effortless. Our preparation and discussion on the way home had been an important part of the process. It put me in the right place to be a conduit for those chords. And then, once we had a verse and a chorus, effort was involved in thinking of a slightly different lyrical direction for the second verse that fit with the music already set up by the first verse. If Gerry thought my chords were exactly right, I was blown away by his lyrical imagery. A soul in the lost-and-found… a lover with a claim check… How did Gerry come up with these things??
The next day we recorded a piano-vocal demo and brought it to Jerry Wexler. He loved the song and said he’d get back to us after he played it for Ahmet and Aretha. As soon as we left, Wexler took our demo into the other room and played it for Ahmet, who also loved it. Then they had to play it for their engineer, Tom Dowd, the arranger, Arif Mardin, and then, of course, the song had to be approved by Aretha herself. Evidently she liked it enough to give it the final and most essential thumbs-up.
We didn’t know about any of these interim steps until after the song had been recorded. We remained in limbo for days. Most conversations between Gerry and me went like this:
“Ya think Ahmet’ll like it?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“What about Aretha?”
“I have no idea.”
“Ya think they’re gonna do it?”
“God, I hope so!”
We heard nothing—not a word—until Jerry Wexler invited us to come in and listen to the finished recording.
Oh. My. God.
Hearing Aretha’s performance of “Natural Woman” for the first time, I experienced a rare speechless moment. To this day I can’t convey how I felt in mere words. Anyone who had written a song in 1967 hoping it would be performed by a singer who could take it to the highest level of excellence, emotional connection, and public exposure would surely have wanted that singer to be Aretha Franklin.
Few people would consider it hyperbole to call Aretha’s voice one of the most expressive vocal instruments of the twentieth century. Hearing that instrument sing a song I had participated in creating touched me more than any recording of any song I had ever written. I knew that Gerry and I had delivered a song that took Jerry Wexler’s title to its most romantic, emotional conclusion, and I knew that the music I had written had captured the spirit of black gospel in a way that gave Aretha something familiar she could run with—and run with it she did! But Aretha was not alone in creating that incomparable recording. She was assisted by the soaring string crescendos that wrapped themselves around her glorious vocal performance and brilliantly complemented by a solid rhythm and blues basic track and the soulful background vocals of her sisters, Erma and Carolyn Franklin.
But a recording that moves people is never just about the artist and the songwriters. It’s about people like Jerry and Ahmet, who matched the songwriters with a great title and a gifted artist; Arif Mardin, whose magnificent orchestral arrangement deserves the place it will forever occupy in popular music history; Tom Dowd, whose engineering skills captured the magic of this memorable musical moment for posterity; and the musicians in the rhythm section, the orchestral players, and the vocal contributions of the background singers—among them the unforgettable “Ah-oo!” after the first line of the verse. And the promotion and marketing people helped this song reach more people than it might have without them.
But in the end it was Aretha’s performance that sent our song not only to the top of the charts but all the way to heaven.
It takes a lot more people to deliver a song than most people are aware of, but you, the listener, are the most important person in the process. You complete the circle. You inspire us to write, sing, arrange, record, and promote songs that move us because we hope they will move you, too. There might still be an “us” without you, but you make us matter, and you make us better.
In 1970 I would record “Natural Woman” with a simple arrangement along the lines of the original demo. My 1970 version is slower than Aretha’s and has a few chords from Arif’s arrangement that weren’t on my original demo.
Q: How do you follow Aretha Franklin?
A: You don’t. You can only precede her.