With her debut on Atlantic Records (see last show), Miss Franklin finally hit upon the formula that everyone knew she had in her.

Her ‘’debut’ album on Atlantic proved to be a masterpiece, so from here on in, life should be easy…only it didn’t quite play like that. Her second Atlantic album,  “Aretha Arrives”, while good, certainly did not live up to expectations. Four of the six songs on side one were genuinely weird - strange selections that did nothing to further her reputation. We see little reason to cover all of the missteps here, except maybe one to make our point. But the question arose - was it possible that Atlantic would turn out to be just as fallible as Columbia?

Well, not so fast. Side two certainly bettered the artistically questionable selections that constituted most of side one.  Like a large part of the Columbia catalogue, Aretha singing the wrong song is still Aretha singing, but side one suggested fallibility. luckily, it turned out that Atlantic was simply moving a bit too fast – perhaps four months was insufficient time for another full-blown masterpiece. Next week we cover her third album, which dissolved all doubts, but today we focus on that transition with songs from the second Atlantic album, “Aretha Arrives” (plus an outtake or two).

Featured tracks include:

Baby, Baby, Baby

Good Times

Respect – Otis Redding

Respect – Aretha

Satisfaction

It Was You

So Soon

Baby, I Love You

Going Down Slow

Never Let Me Go

I Wonder

Ain’t Nobody Gonna Turn Me Around