Aretha Franklin: Rare & Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen

If you're a hardcore fan who wants to hear Aretha tackle some classics from other artists' catalogs, this double disc set is perfect for you -- and for even casual fans, it offers a close, personal look at the process of Aretha being Aretha, including an alternate-universe version of her deep album cuts.

Call her Sister Aretha. Like Brother Ray Charles before her, Aretha Franklin was an interpretive stylist in her peak years, but it's a facet of her musical personality lost on many of her fans, who merely groove on her self-penned classics ("Think," "Rock Steady") or the songs given her by her peers ("Chain Of Fools," "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"). But as "Respect," "Spanish Harlem," and "I Say A Little Prayer" prove, she could make any song her own. (In fact, Otis Redding himself good-naturedly joked that Aretha "stole" "Respect" from him.)

Except for a slightly funkier alternate mix of "Rock Steady," none of those songs are present on this newly-unearthed collection of rarities from the Queen of Soul. Indeed, to get the alternate takes of her biggest hits you'll have to pick up one of Rhino's remastered versions of her classic albums like Lady Soul and Young, Gifted, and Black.

But subtract the intimate demos that lead off the set, the two b-sides, and a previously unreleased duet with Ray himself on "Ain't But The One," taken from a 1973 TV special, and you're left with Lady Soul tackling the Great American Songbook, or at least her version of it: if you ever wanted to hear Aretha wrap her golden voice around Leonard Cohen ("Suzanne"), Motown ("You Keep Me Hangin' On" and "You're All I Need To Get By"), or even "My Way," for God's sake, this two-disc set can hook you up. Atlantic's quality control was so good that most of these tracks don't seem better than what made it to LP back in Aretha's prime -- only Joe South's "So Soon" sounds like a lost hit -- but producer Jerry Wexler, who handpicked these outtakes, realizes these are still snapshots of the Queen in her prime, and therefore invaluable. The Aretha here is a little quieter, moodier, jazzier, and more thoughtful than the one on the radio... but still a legend.