Saturday 2 January 2016

Touched by Aretha Franklin ...


I don't suppose President Obama was the only one to feel touched by Aretha Franklin's majestic interpretation of Carol King' s " You make me feel like a natural woman" at the Kennedy Centre Honours 2015.  Most people' s facial expressions, Carole King's among those, denoted the awe at the interpretation of such an iconic song, that seems to have marked  more than my generation. 


Carole King's Tapestry was actually the first album I bought solely on the money I earned at the time of its release by giving private lessons of Portuguese to a German lady, as I attended University. My musical choices then were based almost exclusively on the lyrics and despite Joan Baez and Bob Dylan being my favourite troubadours at the time, James Tailor and Carole King had unexpectedly begun to make their way into that circle.












It would take quite a while before I grasped the real meaning of feeling like a "natural woman", though it would be short lived. The fact that I don't think anyone has ever been able to get deeply enough into my "womanhood", the words resonate as being what I'd want to feel like, even if it meant just once ...









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