The moment I wake up - before I put on my makeup

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

13/10/68 : Aretha Now - Aretha Franklin

This album has been mentioned previously as a potential omission from Aretha's contribution to Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums Ever and I've generally liked her stuff, so I have high expectations for this.

And the first thing I can tell you about this album is that it's too short - ten tracks coming in at 29:30 just isn't enough!  It starts wonderfully with "Think" and "I Say A Little Prayer" and, whilst I didn't know many of the other tracks, there isn't really a dip in quality - it's just a fantastic sixties soul sound.  Definitely one to catch up with if you're not aware of it - and gaze in wonder at her hairstyle on the cover whilst you do so.

This is the first album we've seen this year that you'd fully count as female lead, but 1968 hasn't been quite the oestrogen free zone you might expect given that Julie Andrews has a starring role on this and Judith Durham has a major part to play on this.  However, I thought it would be interesting to repeat the exercise from 1973 where, in the whole chart throughout the entire year, we saw 8 women named and another 4 having major roles on albums - and the current running totals for 1968 are 5 (Cilla Black, Shirley Bassey, Dusty Springfield, Mrs Mills and Aretha) and 6 (Julie, Judith, The Supremes and Christine Perfect, who became McVie during this year).  Which is relatively decent, particularly when you consider we're only dealing with the top 40 in this year whereas we had a top 50 in 1973 - I suspect the lack of turnover in the charts means those numbers aren't going to fly up throughout the year, but we'll see.

This week we're at #6 in the charts on her sixth week of an eleven week run and this was as high as she got - she was robbed, I tell you!  The top five were The Hollies (of course), Simon & Garfunkel, The Seekers, Tom Jones and Bee Gees and the only new entry in the charts was a Frank Sinatra's best-of at #31 (amusingly, his first best-of was released in '56 and his last one in '17).  

Wikipedia doesn't have a lot on the album - she churned so many out in this period (she released at least two albums a year between '67 and '70 - this was her other album from '68) that it's hard to find anything particularly new to say about them.  There are some fine names involved with the album including Steve Cropper, Isaac Hayes, King Curtis, Jimmy Johnson and Bobby Womack, along with a load of other people who are probably just as legendary but I don't know them.  It did well commercially, getting to #3 in the US and selling a million copies.

"Customers also listened to" Marvin Gaye, Percy Sledge, Otic Redding and Stevie Wonder - have you heard of any of those guys?  I reckon they might have produced a track or two of note over the years - as has Aretha and this collection is as good as any other I've listened to if you want experience her in all her glory.

06/10/68 - An intriguing listen
20/10/68 - And there was me thinking Tom sounded dated