Not long ago I heard a quote that I really loved, and I am going to paraphrase it badly but it went something like "Music is what emotion sounds like." I thought of that the other day after Aretha Franklin died, because I felt like I had lost a family member.
"Soul" music was an early influence of mine. Don't laugh. Yes, I grew up as a white middle-class kid in the suburbs, but I was aware of the wide world of music from an early age, despite my parents' love of Broadway musicals and Frank Sinatra. We had black maids who introduced me to soul music (via the radio) and what a blessing.
Music was like magic to me, everyday accessible magic. I heard it all. My mother played Bach, Beethoven, Chopin. My dad loved Herb Alpert and Willie Nelson. Even as a small child I heard rock and roll music blasting from car radios and transistor radios. My parents would turn on the radio and we would have impromptu "dance parties" when I was small.
My mother played the piano and sang, and sang in the church choir when I was small. My father sang around the house. My grandmother played the piano and sang. My uncles sang. I went to church and was expected to sing. My parents sang me to sleep at night.
My mother used to put a stack of LP's on the turntable and I would sit and listen for hours.
My adolescent and teenage years were tough. I was short and chubby, and I realized very quickly that I was never going to be a cheerleader or one of the popular kids. I wasn't going to be an athlete. I was smart and I made good grades, but I wasn't really a whiz kid.
Even though I exited the fog of childhood during the 1970's, not a high point in musical history, music was a refuge. I loved the radio. Long before I ever had a boombox or Walkman, I listened to the car radio. I listened to Kasey Kasem's Top 40 countdown every Saturday. I also filched my brother's records and listened to them. Like me, he had eclectic taste. We liked The Beatles, Supertramp, Bachman Turner Overdrive, and Diana Ross and the Supremes -- just to name a few.
At a time when teenage hormones and angst were tearing me up, just like my peers, I learned to listen to music, sing along, and let it transport me to somewhere else, somewhere where I was beautiful, and happy, and nobody called me fat or ugly. Music was then, and still is now, a haven.
I'm not exactly sure when I discovered Aretha, but it was probably when The Blues Brothers introduced her to a new generation of fans, in 1981. I'm sure I had heard her music now and then before that, but that version of "Think" is incredible. I had already had some romantic disappointment in my life by then and I could relate.
I bought tapes, and then CDs of her music, and I would listen in the car on the long drives back and forth to Augusta to see my parents. I would play a song like "Dr. Feelgood" over and over until I could match her note for note, in my amateur way of course.
For lighter times, I would groove along to "Until You Come Back to Me."
Over the years I was always delighted to find Aretha popping up in movies or even, memorably, in a Murphy Brown episode where Murphy sang (hysterically badly) "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman." I think that song was also in the movie The Big Chill.
When Aretha's song "Chain of Fools" popped up in the wonderful movie Michael , it made me want to jump out of my seat and dance in the movie theater. (I didn't. You can watch the scene here, though.)
Even the regrettable movie My Best Friend's Wedding (not a favorite of mine) contained "I Say A Little Prayer," classic Aretha, one of my favorite songs of all time. Of course, I much prefer Aretha's version to anyone else's.
I dated a lot when I was in my late 20's and into my 30's. No relationship lasted very long. A few times I was left feeling horribly depressed and defeated. I would pour a glass of wine, pull out the Aretha albums, and play "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)." Aretha expressed the despair, the self-loathing ("you got your hooks in me") and the emotions I couldn't express otherwise.
When I was singing with Aretha I felt less alone. I felt like less of a loser. I felt like I had an older sister who totally understood me, and comforted me. Her music wasn't black or white or old or young. She sang about topics that are universal, and timeless. Heartbreak is heartbreak, no matter who you are or when you're going through it.
The day she died I went to pick up my son from a friend's house. I flipped on the radio and they were running a story about Aretha on NPR. I heard her voice and just broke down crying. When Michael got in the car he said "MOM! What's the matter?!" and I said "Aretha died. She's gone." I pointed to the radio. He just frowned and looked at me like are you nuts?! "Mom, you didn't know her. Why are you so upset?"
I couldn't explain it. I tried. I said "I feel like I do because she was there during so many important moments of my life."
How to explain to a 22 year old what it feels like to have a friend die, a friend you've never met in person, but who was there with you when you were lonely, and in despair, and who made it okay? How to explain to someone so young how it feels to be running out of time to get married and have a baby? How to explain to any male the bond of sisterhood that I felt with Aretha? Words fail me.
Music, though, like love, doesn't fail.
The eternal legacy of Aretha is that she had a voice that could express a multitude of emotions -- anger, heartbreak, defiance, and joy -- sometimes all in one song. Her voice captured raw pain that was almost embarrassing, at times, but she did it without the unmusical caterwauling of a Janis Joplin, for example. She expressed things in her music that we all feel. She sang us out of darkness and showed us light. She was never cheap or corny either. Aretha was always a lady. Always a consummate musician. Always a class act. Always holding a hand out in the darkness, as though saying Sister, I'll get your through it.
I'm very sad that she is gone, but oh what a light she shone on the world.
There will never be another one like her.
