Aretha Franklin - "Reasons Why" (1979)

TRACK OF THE DAY




This blog has been going for a month now, and my turntable has been broken for all of that time - I've been relying on friends ripping vinyl for me, on CDs, and on old fileshares from pre-blog days. But today, I got the new Numark turntable set up, and things are going to change :)

As a starter, here's a great track from what is generally regarded as a lesser Aretha Franklin album , "La Diva" from 1979. True, producer Van McCoy doesn't seem to know who he's got in the room for most of the album, so Aretha is constantly fighting through the flaccid disco bombardment. True, on the cover she looks like she's been kidnapped and forced to audition for the Jodie Foster role in Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" ...

However, in the mass of critical opinion that's been banked up against this album. a lot of people have missed the fact that genius producer Skip Scarborough (Creative Source, EWF) managed to sneak into the studio (during lunchbreak?), push McCoy aside (OK. I'm being dramatic) and co-write and arrange what I personally think is one of her better 70s tracks, "Reasons Why". Besides Scarborough, the other writers are Wanda Hutchinson of the Emotions, and Emotions producer Wayne Vaughn (who together also wrote Earth Wind and Fire's "Let's Groove"). It's got a tight brass arrangement, it fits her vocal style, it's even got a Rhodes in there somewhere ...

Vinyl rip, a touch of remastering and limiting, and now (update) de-crackled.

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