The spellbinding voice and tragic life of the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin
“Amazing Grace” is a newly-released documentary that few will see on the big screen but I was fortunate enough to catch at the cinema at the weekend.
“Amazing Grace” was the title of the best-selling album of the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin. It was recorded over two nights in January 1972 at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles and it was shot as a documentary by a crew led by Sydney Pollack.In fact, owing to technical and legal problems, it has taken almost half a century and the mortgaging of his own home for music industry executive Alan Elliott to bring it to a cinematic release. There is no narration, no interviews, no artifice (except some brief split screens), grainy 16 mm film, just Franklin’s spellbinding voice as she belts out a succession classic gospel songs.
Aretha Franklin – who died only last summer – had a tragic life, some of which is revealed in this short biography.