Cat Power - Aretha, Sing One For Me
Jukebox (Matador, 2007)
George Jackson - Aretha, Sing One For Me
single (Hi, 1972)
George Jackson was a songwriter, not a singer. His vocals on “Aretha” are rough around the edges—even strained, just slightly—which makes his song’s plea to Aretha more poignant. Jackson and the other voices at Hi Records embody the emotions of mortal men and women; when Aretha sings it feels like something superhuman. Though this is the reason I’m drawn more to Hi than to Aretha Franklin, I identify with Jackson’s narrator. Sometimes one prays for a supernatural voice because one’s own is simply too earthly an instrument to express feelings of phenomenal love. Jackson’s song isn’t only about being in love, but about why we listen to records to begin with: In songs we seek amplification of emotions that we’re incapable of expressing on our own.
Hi excelled at crafting music that conveyed complex ideas in very simple terms. There are so many lessons you get just from listening to the recordings created at Hi between 1971 and 1977. The economy. The intimacy. The ingenious feats of musicality. Witness the way the piano, organ, guitar, and strings bob and weave on George Jackson’s “Aretha” without the arrangement ever becoming bigger than a nickel. After the weeks of recording in Memphis, and the countless nights touring with Hi’s in-house guitarist Teenie Hodges (that’s him on Jackson’s song), I thought Chan Marshall would have absorbed more. Judging from her performance here, “Aretha, Sing One For Me" means little more to her than words and chords, words and chords.
The precision of Jackson’s song is traded for mush. The instruments trip over each other in drunken simulation of half-digested sounds from old Dylan and Stones records. Marshall forgoes any attempt at rendering a considered vocal, and instead delivers carefree karaoke of a song that once told a story about love and sincerity. The drumming is insufferable. It’s hard to hear the work of Howard Grimes—soul music’s humblest and most integral drummer—translated by someone so clumsy and boneheaded that he can barely maintain the illusion that he is keeping good time. The performance is about as amusing as watching some sots play frisbee with the family china. “Loose and sloppy” isn’t a style, it’s just sad. “Bad” playing isn’t an attitude, it’s just embarrassing.
In a recent interview I did with the 93-year-old actor and raconteur Norman Lloyd, he traced the erosion of acting to James Dean, who validated mumbling in movies. Lloyd admitted Dean’s art was an important innovation, but that people have been using it as an excuse for careless craft ever since. I can’t help but feel that Exile On Main St. exerts a similar influence on rock musicians. Aspiring players use Exile as validation for sloppy style and a lack of discipline, even though that record embodies everything but.
Even if Cat Power's Stonesy take on "Aretha" resembled Exile's exhilaration rather than a tired Stripped rehearsal (the album is titled Jukebox; it should be Soundcheck), the performance wouldn't mean much. Rather than searching the inside of Jackson's song, Marshall decided to hold it at arm's length. Hi’s recordings are relayed clean and deliberate, as if spoken to us at close range. In Jackson’s recording—and in everything else that was recorded at Hi in its golden age—there is a complete refusal of reverb. Cat Power's cover, on the other hand, piles on echo as a distancing distraction, in an attempt to suggest a mystery and personality that just isn't there. That's the difference between these two songs, and their tellers. Hi brought us as close as possible to its sound because it had nothing to hide; Cat Power keeps us as far away because it has nothing to give.
