RIP Aretha..

How did you come upon Aretha

Aretha is really one of the fascinating stories, because at that time [1960] I was sort of living in the past, you know. I was saying, gee there’s never been another singer like Billie Holiday or Bessie Smith, whom I had recorded in the early days.

But I’ve always been a freak for gospel music. So one day a songwriter named Curtis Lewis came in with a demo of about five of his tunes. The third tune was a thing called “Today I Sing the Blues,” and it was just this girl on piano. And I screamed! I said for Chrissakes who is this? He said: “She’s a 17 year old girl from Detroit.” And I said can she do anything else, and he said she was a gospel singer who sang with her father’s choir with Sam Cooke.

So I said, uh-oh, if RCA ever finds out about her, I’m in great trouble. It took me a while to find out where she worked, because I knew it was in Detroit, and I hadn’t heard the greatest things about the old man, the Reverend C. L., but I had his records on Chess, so I knew that he was a good artist in his own right.

Finally a woman by the name of Jo King, wonderful person, became Aretha’s manager. And she got Aretha to make a full demo, and this time I was even more knocked out. [Goddard] Lieberson was still President of Columbia and I said “Goddard, we’ve got somebody really major.” Mitch [Miller] was also impressed and Bill Gallagher, who was sales manager, didn’t care much one way or the other. But Jo King was a good businesswoman and Aretha got herself a good contract.