Happy 45th – Aretha Franklin, This Girl’s in Love with You

If you want an easy frame of reference to both how long Aretha Franklin has been in the business and how prolific she was in the earlier part of her career, this should do it: today marks the 45th anniversary of the Queen of Soul’s 16th studio album…and her first album came out in 1956.

You may be thinking, “Well, that’s really not much more than an album a year, so that’s not all that impressive,” but not so fast: after that first album, Songs of Faith, she didn’t release another one until 1961’s Aretha, at which point she released at least one album a year, but there were some years that she released two (’62, ’64, ’68, and ’70, too, since Spirit in the Dark came out in August), and in 1967, she actually released three albums. The most ironic thing about that year, though, is that the last of the three albums was entitled Aretha Arrives.

Are you kidding? She’d already been there for 11 albums by that point!

But enough general history: let’s get specific about This Girl’s in Love with You. The title track, of course, was an adaptation of the classic Burt Bacharach and Hal David song, tweaked slightly in order to be more gender-appropriate, but the most notable accomplishment among the album’s 10 songs was the inclusion of The Beatles’ “Let It Be” before even The Beatles themselves had released it. (They didn’t issue it as a single until March.) The album was preceded by two singles – “Share Your Love With Me” and another Beatles cover, “Eleanor Rigby” – and another was issued after it had hit record store shelves: a double A-side of “Call Me” and “Son of a Preacher Man.” Other covers on the album included “The Dark End of the Street” and an outstanding version of The Band’s “The Weight.”

Produced by Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd, and Arif Mardin, This Girl’s in Love with You was a top-20 success, and looking back at the talent involved, it’s no wonder: in addition to those three legends twiddling the knobs in the studio, the band included none other than Duane Allman on guitar, King Curtis on sax, and a treasure trove of studio musicians, including keyboard player Barry Beckett, drummer Roger Hawkins, bassist Jerry Jemmott, and additional guitarists Eddie Hinton, Jerry Weaver, and Jimmy Johnson.

This Girl’s in Love with You may not be quite as much of a classic as some of the stuff Aretha was releasing in the late ‘60s, but it’s a classic nonetheless.