The amazing grace of Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin recorded her best album, the live Gospel performance Amazing Grace, over two nights in January 1972 at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles. The Queen of Soul had crossed over, and perhaps too far, with the Live at the Fillmore West album, a play for the white rock audience that included covers of ersatz Soul and Gospel hits like ‘Love The One You’re With’ and ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. Amazing Grace was Franklin’s musical and spiritual homecoming to the Baptist church. One of her mentors, the Reverend James Cleveland, presided over a full gospel choir, and the rhythm section with which Franklin had recorded the Young, Gifted and Black album in 1971. Her father, the Reverend C.L.
