Amazing Grace Film
Amazing Grace
The Mystery of Aretha Franklin
Seeing the Sydney Polack’s documentary Amazing Grace I wonder why Aretha Franklin’s recording of the gospel from 1972 stayed hidden away for 50 years?
The amazing Aretha Franklin, the soul singer died recently in her old age from cancer, which is great, unlike her niece Whitney Houston who died (and Whitney’s daughter) almost mysteriously and ever so violently in her bathtub. It smells like another U.S. multi-million-selling records mystery. But let’s get back to amazing Aretha and an unseen documentary about her most selling and most successful gospel album from 1972, recorded, au yes by the great Sydney Pollack. Was that Aretha’s desire due to Aretha’s frustration and drug torments of her sister’s daughter Whitney Houston? Or was that all related to drug barons of the US music industry? “In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect.” wrote Barack Obama, channeling civil rights activism to a right direction.
Aretha was, I am a sure, amazing woman and amazing musician, with a truly amazing voice. The whole world loved Aretha Franklin! She was our own personal soul queen, an angel for women rights for equality in the men’s world, and not just for the black women but for all women out there, a back vocal of us all, with whatever age or background we are. Yes, there are so many mysteries surrounding the great Aretha Franklin, as there are so many unrevealed mysteries surrounding Whitney Houston’s (and her daughter’s) death. The women of the world are not happy with revealed theories surrounding their existence today. But let’s get back to the Oscar winner Sydney Pollack’s documentary about 1972 gospel record of Aretha Franklin. Due to a technical mistake, the meaning of sync the sound and pictures, the film was kept in the dark. Another fishy presumption or what? “Aretha Franklin was denied the chance to be a movie star, and that was her whole problem with the release of the movie. She wasn’t against it, she just had very big expectations and she also wanted to get a lot more money than anyone ever paid for a documentary. She was old school, she wanted cash and she gave us a high mountain to climb in terms of getting her on board,” says Joe Boyd, a producer, and a music executive. Yea right Joe! I do not believe a word you saying and I am sure many of us do not believe.
Amazing Grace as an album was sold out with more than two million copies on release and the documentary supposed to be a “time capsule from 1972”. And it is, but yet it does not reveal many things surrounding what was really happening to Aretha Franklin (or even so to Whitney Houston and her daughter). The truth needs to be heard. It is, however, apparent that the U.S. music industry keeps many secrets. There were others who died in their bathtubs, filled with drugs and all, such as let’s say, Jimmy Hendrix. Hmm!!!! Amazing Grace, the documentary also offers a dark shadow of our Aretha in the church, the Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, which brings me to think of his Sympathy for the Devil, a Rolling Stones recording session with scenes of militant Black activism in the U.S. That Mick Jagger. It all adds up into one big secret and mystery that I feel that needs to be revealed to the world. Franklin’s mighty voice waking up many spirits and rattle the bones just equally now. Just to remember, “Respect”,” I Say A Little Prayer”, and (You Make Me Feel Like) “A Natural Woman” are the most recognized, divine, and powerful songs for women’s rights ever. In the documentary, the most wonderful of all was Franklin’s performance of the slavery-era ‘gospel’ “Mary Don’t You Weep”, where the film gets historical value, bringing up black America and yes, she was a fierce civil rights activist, deeply conscious about it. And yes, Sydney Pollack’s documentary Amazing Grace gets to be released at the right moment, right now when America is changing and is challenging many problems, not caused only by the coronavirus of course but other political changes, where the human rights are in danger.