2/20/23
Newsletter #253
The Crack of Dawn
I have no facts to back this up, but I think Detroit (actually, Grosse Pointe) is the only place in America with two streets that cross each other that both end in X. Charlevoix and Cadieux.
Less than a quarter of a mile from where I now sit, in the next town over, Pontiac – coincidentally, where they used to make Pontiac automobiles – is where the late Jones brothers grew up and lived. Who, you may be asking, were the Jones brothers? Hank, Elvin and Thad Jones were three of the greatest jazz performers of all time. Seriously, if you were anybody in jazz throughout the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, you played with one of the Jones brothers. Elvin Jones was John Coltrane’s drummer for years. Hank Jones played piano for everybody, from Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, to Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Cannonball Adderley, and Wes Montgomery, to name but a few. His actual moment of personal renown came when he played the piano accompaniment to Marilyn Monroe as she sang "Happy Birthday Mr. President" to John F. Kennedy on May 19, 1962. Brother Thad played trumpet in Count Basie’s orchestra, and recorded with Thelonius Monk. If you listen to jazz, once you know of Hank, Elvin and Thad Jones, you’ll never stop hearing their names because they are sidemen on literally hundreds of great jazz records.
Aretha Franklin lived a mile from me in the other direction. Although Aretha was from Detroit, and her father was a well-known minister at a big church in Detroit, Aretha did not record for Motown. Perhaps because her father was so well-connected in Detroit he knew better than to have her sign with a fledgling little company like Motown – this was 1960 and Motown had just started – and at the age of eighteen, Aretha signed with Columbia Records. She then put out seven albums in a row without a hit song, and in 1966 Columbia dumped her.
Over at Atlantic Records, Turkish brothers Ahmet and Neshui Ertegun, along with their partner, New York Jew, Jerry Wexler, signed Aretha. I covered this in a previous newsletter God knows when, but Atlantic assigned their best engineer/producer, Tom Dowd, to Aretha’s records. Tom Dowd is a personal hero of mine. There is a terrific documentary about him called Tom Dowd and the Language of Music (2004). Tom Dowd had previously worked on the Manhattan Project developing the A-bomb when he was twenty-one years old. After the war he returned to NYC, took a physics class at Columbia University and realized it would be years before they started teaching the physics he already knew. So, naturally, he went into the music business.
And as fate would have it, in 1953 Ahmet and Neshui Ertegun, sons of the Turkish ambassador to the U.S., and Jerry Wexler, editor of Billboard Magazine, and the man who coined the term, “Rhythm & Blues” (thus replacing the category formerly called, “Race Records”), started Atlantic Records, and who should come wandering in the door looking for a job? Tom Dowd.
Tom Dowd then almost singlehandedly expanded recording techniques from two- or four-tracks to twelve-tracks, which is a quantum leap in recording. Having the ability to manipulate and mix twelve tracks completely changed recording. Tom Dowd personally rebuilt the recording machinery for Stax Records (whom Atlantic released), then did the same thing for George Martin at Abbey Road Studios (after hearing Sgt. Pepper and thinking, “Oh, man, could this guy really have used twelve tracks” – they only had six). And Tom Dowd was a guy that was always smiling, always upbeat, and always had a pocket-protector with twenty pens. He didn’t tell people how to fix mixing boards, he crawled underneath with a pliers and did it himself.
In the movie you get to watch him set up a recording session. Before the musicians arrive he walks around the studio and keeps moving each microphone one inch. This goes on and on. The first shot of the movie is a close-up of Eric Clapton saying, “I hate all producers, but I love Tommy Dowd.” Tom Dowd produced the songs, Layla and Free Bird, for God’s sake. Tom Dowd discovered both the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and that was after he retired to Florida.
Anyway, it was 1967 and Tom Dowd and Jerry Wexler had Aretha Franklin in the studio for the first time. Aretha wanted to make a swingin’ gospel record. That was fine with Tom and Jerry (har har), and there are some wonderful gospel arrangements, like People Get Ready. But their secret weapon was material. They called the best songwriting team at the Brill Building in NY, the soon-to-be-divorced husband and wife team of Carol King and Gerry Goffin, and got their brand new, unrecorded song, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman. The album, Lady Soul, has another great hit, Chain of Fools. Finally, on Aretha’s eighth album, seven years after she started recording, she had her first hit songs. Because she was finally with the right people.
Off we go into the wild blue yonder of another day.