While everybody regards “Respect” as Aretha Franklin’s signature song, it didn’t start out that way.
The song was written and first recorded by Otis Redding in 1965. A solid tune, it hit the top 10 on the R&B charts and the Top 40 on the pop charts, but it was a typical anthem of male posturing – I’ll buy you anything you want if your respect me when I come home.
Just two years after Otis’ version, Aretha was looking to follow-up her first hit single. After over 10 years of trying, she had finally scored a top 10 success with “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” in early 1967. She heard “Respect” and thought, with a little work, it might be perfect for her.
So, she and her sister Carolyn began reworking some of the lyrics to bring the song around to a female point of view. The first line: “What you want, honey, you got it” became “What you want, baby, I got it!” Now it wasn’t about buying your sweetheart something material, but about the things a woman would give to her man IF he showed her some respect.” They also added the gimmick of spelling out the word: “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” which proved to be the thing most people remembered about the song.
During the recording session headed by master producer Jerry Wexler, Aretha also threw in the “sock it to me” and “TCB” ad libs that added to the song’s energy.
Behind the scenes, Ms. Franklin was in the midst of a troubled marriage that would eventually dissolve in 1969. Most rock historians think that added fuel to Aretha’s no-holds-barred performance.
The song, of course, became a monster hit, Aretha’s first #1 and firmly established her preeminence among female R&B singers. It also was adopted as an anthem in the feminist movement that was just getting underway as the 1960s drew to a close.
In music circles, Aretha has had nothing by r-e-s-p-e-c-t ever since.
