“Amazing Grace” gives the measure of the sublime of the soul diva before Hollywood seizes its legend in “Respect” in the fall.
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–“Amazing Grace” gives the measure of the sublime of the soul diva before Hollywood seizes its legend in “Respect” in the fall.
DR
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–Back in pictures on the queen of soul, in the spotlight in “Saving Grace”, which films a concert event of 1972 whose broadcast has long been blocked by the star herself.
DR
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–In January 1972, Aretha Franklin recorded an intimate live album in a Watts church in Los Angeles. Mythical and documentary record which is no less so: “Amazing Grace”.
PHOTOS DR
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In January 1972, Aretha Franklin has just conquered Europe, Montreux in particular the previous summer, where the soul diva subjugated the festival-goers with “A Brand New Me”. In a modest church in Watts, Los Angeles, the 29-year-old soul queen records 14 songs. Like a pagan high mass with its majestic choir, the priestess officiates at the top of her art.
Purest gospel
The purest gospel is part of a double album destined to become legendary, the best-selling vinyl in the history of the genre and an absolute triumph in Aretha’s career. A young director dispatched by Warner Bros, Sydney Pollack, films this event concert. Indeed, encouraged by the success of the musical documentary “Woodstock”, the studios, owner of the Atlantic label, that one of the singer, smell the good deal.
But the technical team mixes the brushes, does not synchronize images and sound recordings. The reels fail in the archives, forgotten until the early 1990s. A young producer, Alan Elliott, wants to exhume this treasure, to digitize it. New pitfall, Lady Soul refuses to broadcast these now mythical images and puts a categorical veto by legal means.
“She gave an electrifying performance that made you stand up!”
His motivations remain mysterious, greed, frustration with Warner Bros who does not live in it the fiber of a star, refusal to be vibrated with the insolence of his youth on the notes of “Never Grow Old” , who is dying of cancer?
His death in 2018 will finally free “Amazing Grace”, bewitching voodoo who kneels. In the church, Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts applaud. “She gave an electrifying performance that made you stand up!” The Rolling Stones leader recently told “Time”. What inspire the actress Jennifer Hudson, who plays Aretha Franklin in the Hollywood biopic “Respect”.
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