Steady Holiday Under The Influence (2016) Lossless

This anthology has a distinct purpose-to demonstrate that while at Columbia Records, Aretha Franklin did some exceptionally fine, even memorable, ballad singing. Aretha's early pop career has been consistently denigrated. The conventional line has it that while at Columbia, she was drowned in a sea of strings, her sensibility withered by a steady diet of Tin Pan Alley material more suitable for Nancy Wilson or Diahann Carroll. Lord knows there were many bloated, catastrophic recordings during those years. And even some of her most sensitive ballad readings were hindered by arrangements and orchestrations that were far from sympathetic-either too lush and overblown, or prosaicly simple. For these reasons, this album is more an anthology of great moments than of fully realized productions. But these tentative excursions by a former gospel singer into a strange new world possess a rare delicacy and fervor.