Aretha Franklin – Firekeepers Casino, Battle Creek, MI
Friday, January 11, 2013
My wife is a longtime fan of Motown music. As a benefit of that, we’ve had the pleasure of seeing acts like James Brown and Smokey Robinson. Both were great in their own right, and always entertaining. However, one legend that was had managed to miss was Aretha Franklin. Well, thanks to the new concert venue at Firekeepers Casino in Battle Creek, Michigan, we were finally able to check this one off the list.
There is no question that Aretha is a living legend, and has one of the greatest voices in modern music. Steeped in gospel music tradition, she is admired and copied by many contemporaries. Now at 70 and with recent health issues, there was concern about how Aretha would hold up (and even whether she would show up). Well, thanks to recent improvements in her health and some improved personal attitude, Aretha was ready to prove why she holds the title “Queen of Soul”.
Bringing a full orchestra with conductor, bass, drums, guitar (her son on guitar), piano, organ, percussionist, 8 piece horns , and 4 backing vocalists, Aretha had the complete band to recreate whatever she desired. Opening with the Jackie Wilson song “Higher and Higher” gave Aretha a chance to improv vocal lines, while also giving the sound guy a chance to dial-in the mix. Initially, her vocals were a bit weak in the mix, and she even asked about it after a couple songs. Moving on to “Natural Woman”, she had the whole crowd of approximately 2000 singing along (I even saw the men singing along – which was kind of weird). She followed with the Burt Bacharach tune “I Say A Little Prayer”, and she had the crowd excited with the song “Think” (famously recreated in the movie “Blues Brothers”). I don’t recall what the next few songs were, before she left the stage to an instrumental from the orchestra. After the instrumental, Aretha returned and told a couple jokes before taking a seat at the grand piano. She shared some songs from her gospel years, and also paid tribute to Whitney Houston by singing a bit of “I Will Always Love You”. Since this was the quiet portion of the evening, it also was a point where we got to hear her voice much better and it sounded great. After this gospel section, she brought the energy back up with a couple more songs I wasn’t familiar with. As she thanked us all for a great evening, we knew she had to come back for an encore. And of course she came back to finish the show with a version of “Respect”. I have to note that there was an error on her part during this song, where she went to the chorus early and it kind of threw the band off. They kept it together, and she got it right when the chorus came around again (at the right time). Not that there was any question about the vocals being live, but this sort of thing does prove when there are no backing tracks or vocal support (the current crop of soul singers could take a lesson and just accept that mistakes will happen in live music!).
After almost 90 minutes of show (at least 15 minutes more than I expected), Aretha ended the concert leaving the crowd mostly pleased. I heard many who were impressed and thought she did a great job. I was impressed, as I wasn’t quite sure how well it would go. Aretha Franklin is one of the best gospel influenced soul music singers around, and it was well worth the trip. Oh, and my wife said she was very happy with the show.