Aretha Franklin

"Aretha: With The Ray Bryant Combo" is the second studio album by American singer songwriter, Aretha Franklin, released on February 27, 1961 by Columbia Records. The album is Aretha's first release for Columbia, and is also known under its working title Right Now It's Aretha and sometimes simply as Aretha. Following in the footsteps of her close friend Sam Cooke, Aretha was "discovered" by famed Columbia Records producer John H. Hammond, who on the cover notes of the 1973 edition of "The Great Aretha Franklin: The First 12 Sides" mentions, that she was in fact recommended by the composer Curtis Reginald Lewis.

Aretha Franklin is one of the giants of soul music, and indeed of American pop as a whole. More than any other performer, she epitomized soul at its most gospel-charged. Her astonishing run of late-'60s hits with Atlantic Records "Respect," "I Never Loved a Man," "Chain of Fools," "Baby I Love You," "I Say a Little Prayer," "Think," "The House That Jack Built," and several others earned her the title "Lady Soul," which she has worn uncontested ever since. Yet as much of an international institution as she's become, much of her work outside of her recordings for Atlantic in the late '60s and early '70s is erratic and only fitfully inspired, making discretion a necessity when collecting her records.