Ride Like the Wind Ecclesiates 1 feat Christopher Cross

Spoken Words from King Solomon

Ecclesiates 1 1-18

Introduction: Utter Futility

1

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

2Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

3What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

4One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

5The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

6The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

7All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

8All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

9The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

10Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

11There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance ofthings that are to come with those that shall come after.

12I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.

13And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.

14I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

15That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

16I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

17And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

18For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Eccles. 1:2 vanity of vanities! All is vanity. This important thematic word occurs frequently throughout the book. As the book progresses, its meaning becomes clear (see Introduction: Key Themes).

Eccles. 1:3 What does man gain? This repeated question (3:9; 5:15; compare 2:11) comes out of the Preacher’s realization that “all is vanity.” If life frequently makes no sense and pleasures and achievements are fleeting, is there any significance to human existence?

Eccles. 1:4–2:26 First Catalog of “Vanities.” The Preacher gives specific examples to prove his belief that all is “vanity.”

Eccles. 1:11 There is no remembrance of former things, nor . . . of later things. The writer-Preacher believes that few people have any significant impact on the course of world history (see esv footnote).

Eccles. 1:13 unhappy business. For some reason unknown to the Preacher, God ordains that mankind should endure painful experiences in this present fallen world. The phrase under heaven is interchangeable with “under the sun” (v. 14, etc.).

Eccles. 1:14 The Preacher examined everything under the sun. However, he is unable to understand it all. He concludes that everything is vanity and a striving after wind.

Eccles. 1:15 Crooked here means “unknowable.” There will always be aspects of life in a fallen world that remain mysterious.

Eccles. 1:16 surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me. If anyone possessed the wisdom to grasp the meaning of life, it was the Preacher.

Eccles. 1:17 As part of his quest to know wisdom, the Preacher also seeks to understand madness and folly. Apparently he believes that he can better understand wisdom if he also understands its opposite.

Eccles. 1:18 Wisdom is a mixed blessing. In the process of gaining wisdom one also gains a clearer view into the tragedies of life.

BOTTOM LINE =========

Ecclesiates 2 24-26 Enjoy Work and its Benefits

2:24 There is nothing better for people than to eat and drink,

and to find enjoyment in their work.

I also perceived that this ability to find enjoyment comes from God.

2:25 For no one can eat and drink

or experience joy apart from him.

2:26 For to the one who pleases him,God gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy,

but to the sinner, he gives the task of amassing wealth –

only to give it to the one who pleases God.

This task of the wicked is Vanity – like chasing the wind!

Now if King Solomon had enough wealth, knowledge, humility to admit this why can't you? For this is the day that the LORD has made and I shall be glad and rejoice in it! This is the cure for all that stressing you out. Read the entire book it's soothing coming from a guy who had 900 + women, servants, slaves, he said we all end up at the same place.

Desirada

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are the vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, for their will always be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. Take kindly in the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You are needed in this world. Do not concern yourself with other worlds, for they do not exist. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding in an ordered manner.

Therefore, be at peace with nature and the mysterious process of evolution, whatever you conceive it to be; and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, strive to maintian your own inner peace while you do those things bring you happiness and contribute to the survival of humanity.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world

@LOVLEEANNWISE 2010 all rights reserved

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH, (explicit) *featuring Summertime SydneyBechet on sax

Lets Be Honest..You can't handle the truth!

Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup): You fuckin' people. You have no idea how to defend a nation. All you did was weaken a country today, Kaffee. That's all you did. You put people's lives in danger. Sweet dreams, son.  

Taken from Hollywood

A FEW GOOD MEN famous quote; Jack Nicholson portrayed (Col. Jessup): Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have more responsibility here than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. I know deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you don't want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it. I prefer you said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand to post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!

Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup): You want answers?

Tom Cruise (Kaffee): I think I'm entitled.

Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup): You want answers?

Tom Cruise (Kaffee): I want the truth!
Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup): You can't handle the truth!

I Believe in our Nation!  What ever happened to "Patriotism"

This is taken from 2 Peter 3
3:16 speaking of these things in all his letters. Some things in these letters are hard to understand, things the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they also do to the rest of the scriptures. 3:17 Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard that you do not get led astray by the error of these unprincipled men and fall from your firm grasp on the truth. 3:18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the honor both now and on that eternal day.

~~~~~~

Pray for America 

**************

I'm expressing my frustration with people, the media, or America's way of dealing with disaster or tragedy. In these times it appears whenever we feel guilty or lack responsibility to do something about a tragedy is when it's time to blame someone or something for the cause of the trouble, as people we all seek a "Father Figures" to lead us at church or in politics, yet among all the nations in the world we have become the most gluttonous above all else FREE loving folks by nature. The Media is pointing fingers at President Obama and screaming loudly he ain't doing enough is because once again when people like to imagine ordinary human beings as "Super humans" in our minds. So President Obama is expected to transform into Superman but has his S on crooked; I suppose now is the time to recognize, or some of us fail to realize that He is our leader but still humbly just a man at the end of the day.


Politics and the Law is his profession not Finances as in wall street bailouts, Ecology and Fossils Fuels, as in wars and rumors of wars. We elected him to get us out of a mess he didn't create that trail blazes back too many administrations ago to lay blame on any one President.


I say get mad! Really get mad about everything then just go get in the car and take a nice ride; look around the road while cruising just imagine yourself walking down the road, riding a bike or taking the bus to wherever it is your going, using an alternative to gasoline. How many of us are willing to give up our nice cars, SUV's or just have one car and use an alternative to gasoline.

But our country needs is an alternative to how much we consume trade deficit exists because of our habits and wants desires, demands... {I've experienced firsthand a real awakening in my life being is I wasn't prepared for my economy to change so drastically so fast my thoughts were I had a fantastic life living large only to see GOD made it possible HE had provided me so much; truly I was responsible cause and effects for the conditions of my doing and that makes me responsible for my own plight to recovery financial and/or otherwise, to be mindful of how I treat others and how my own actions affect those around me}. I support Barack Obama and his Leadership nobody is solely to blame for what is upon us for this mess we facing now. It's cause & effect a failure to take more care and responsibility as individuals toward making this world a better place to live in for all; we fail to give the true thanks and glory to GOD first; going to church is one thing but real ministry is outside of the church any great scholar of faith will admit that try saving a soul of a person who has no knowledge of GOD and his ways, constantly abusing this earth like when it hits the fan the abuser always vowing to do better yet only to do worse by repeating the same things.

This is the worse "man made disaster" recorded in history nobody knows the true outcome all we can do is our share to become part of the solution find something to SACRIFICE.. Ask yourself ? what are you willing to collectively do to move ahead as a nation. We show so much promise yet the bible prophesy has shown us just this and once again Hollywood usually is years ahead in portraying us as foolish, naive, and greedy Americans who aren't willing to accept our fate. We define having Freedom as living "Lascivious", anything goes, we consume alot of everything all around the world. Energy is depleted, withdrawn never ever redepositing the love back into this earth that we draw from only wanting more and more for convenience sake, it's deep.

I'm not a guru on any specific topic I write from inspiration or reaction to the current events surrounding my life, but I got enough knowledge to see that we are all headed in the wrong direction. It's time to step up and do something besides lay back and place blame. Our country has to get better as a people no matter what spectrum of the quilt you come from. The President in my opinion is doing a good job based on the hand he was dealt coming into office, yet we are like spoiled children waiting for Santa Clause to bring our presents at Christmas he is just a great leader and politician and gets things done. Period.

Let's support his efforts please.

THE TRUTH WILL SET U FREE
THE TRUTH IS THE LIGHT
WORD IS BOND
TRUTH

and then"  JESUS SAID I AM THE TRUTH, THE WAY AND THE LIFE FOR NO MAN SHALL SEE THE THE FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH ME."

Be Honest it is what it is, can you handle that.....

@Lovleeannwise 2010 all rights reserved  

RELIGION IS TAUGHT....

SPIRITUALITY IS FELT

 featuring Marvin Gaye Wholy Holy

Only in America!

To live in this Nation where we have so many kind of Faith's I ponder

How many different cultures are walking by faith and not by sight.

Reacting to Buildings and Burning Holy Books &
Crosses

Religion is taught and behavior is learned manipulated to gain a person loyalty and trust.  Walking by faith is like closing your eyes or being blind folded and trusting you can make it around a room and once you've made although nobody else is around to share the victory you feel a combustable amount of joy, well that's how I trust GOD. 

I didn't realize that for years he was moving me into position to develop a relationship with Him which means trusting my prayer life and being viligent for an answer.  Being patient when the desires of my heart don't manifest because I live under GOD's watchful eye and He promised to never forsake me.
This is described as being spiritual with GOD trusting in a Power much greater than myself and believing that Power does exist and Loves me.  And you too!

I could be a Baptist, AME, Pentecostal their All kinds Christians, muslims attend a Mosque, Jewish celebrate sabbath at a Temple; Mormon, Jehovah's Witnessess; Seven Day Adventist;  maybe some even attend Catholic Cathedral.

Some can be so hate filled but attend faithfully every Sunday, Saturday..

but given that-

All of these organized religions preach and teach their methods and interpretations of GOD's Plan, but if I'm not committed to what is being taught then what is my purpose for joining this organization? Just to be a part of a fellowship but do I fellowship alone with GOD. Do you believe you can go directly to GOD without any barriers or rituals?

However You Name Him.

Don't attend with intentions to meet a spouse or does GOD reside in my house a living temple.

I worship everyday not just on Sunday or Wednesday night

because

Spirtuality is felt from cultivating a friendship with Him, according to His Word once Jesus died on our behalf we became friends. I feel nothing but love, He walks with me and talks with me and tells me I am His own.....

You might laugh and say that's crazy L.

But

I beg you to try this out, once you knock, He'll invite you in then ask for what you want, seek and you shall find the answer to any trouble you're faced with or any thoughts that may cause you to worry.

Suggestion:  Be Patient Rome wasn't built in a day!

Remember if what you prayed for finally does manifest appreciate that moment of joy for that's 

Spirituality felt.

How am I applying these teachings into my life do I read the Bible, Koran to get a Word that relates to my life and how to develop a strong relationship with GOD enough that no man has to offer up prayers on my behalf or pray over my tithes and offerings as a pre-requiste to emploring GOD's favor?  I don't think so he isn't concerned with any material offerings, cause and effect provides for the material gain we seek.  How bad do you want to work to be blessed or to be a blessing to others.

For GOD is only interested in those who wish to serve not be served!

Be careful how you pray and what you pray for Life is full of trickery a Fools' Paradise.

GOD will sustain you but religion is just a lesson a blue print is what's taught.

It's hard to believe in what you cannot see, ask a blind man how does he see once you loose your sight.

All other senses become more profound.

Imagine your life now being blind close your eyes

and open them.

Hold on to that thought because that's how it feels to find true Spiritual freedom.

Attend Church to Praise Worship, fellowship but open up the notes you take down, study the Bible on Saturday's.

Mouth will say anything but behavior don't lie!

Learn to lean not to your own understanding know that which comes from the Spirit is inside only by trusting in GOD that's not taught by Mankind. 

 Lovleeannwise 2010 all rights reserved  20100914 6:59 pm

SOUL MUSIC FEATURING ARETHA FRANKLIN'S TIME COVER 1968

Aretha Franklin's Time Magazine - Circa 1968

Friday, Jun 28, 1968
LADY SOUL SINGING IT LIKE IT IS

HAS it got soul? Man, that's the question of the hour. If it has soul, then it's tough, beautiful, out of sight. It passes the test of with-itness. It has the authenticity of collard greens boiling on the stove, the sassy style of the boogaloo in a hip discotheque, the solidarity signified by "Soul Brother" scrawled on a ghetto storefront.

But what is soul? "It's like electricity —we don't really know what it is," says Singer Ray Charles. "But it's a force that can light a room." The force radiates from a sense of selfhood, a sense of knowing where you've been and what it means. Soul is a way of life —but it is always the hard way. Its essence is ingrained in those who suffer and endure to laugh about it later. Soul is happening everywhere, in esthetics and anthropology, history and dietetics, haberdashery and politics—although Hubert Humphrey's recent declaration to college students that he was a "soul brother" was all wrong. Soul is letting others say you're a soul brother. Soul is not needing others to say it.

Where soul is really at today is pop music. It emanates from the rumble of gospel chords and the plaintive cry of the blues. It is compounded of raw emotion, pulsing rhythm and spare, earthy lyrics—all suffused with the sensual, somewhat melancholy vibrations of the Negro idiom. Always the Negro idiom. LeRoi Jones, the militant Negro playwright, says: "Soul music is music coming out of the black spirit." For decades, it only reverberated around the edges of white pop music, injecting its native accent here and there; now it has penetrated to the core, and its tone and beat are triumphant.

No Moon in June. Soul music is sincerity, a homely distillation of everybody's daily portion of pain and joy. "It pulls the cover off," explains Jim Stewart, a former banker and country fiddler who heads Memphis' soul-oriented Stax Records. "It's not the moon in June. It's life. Sometimes it's violence and sex. That's the way it is in this world. Sometimes there's animal in it; but let's face it, we've got a lot of animal in us." The difference between Tin Pan Alley and Soul is not hard to define. A conventional tunesmith might write: "You're still near, my darling, though we're apart/ I'll hold you always in my heart." The soul singer might put it: "Baby, since you split the scene the rent's come due/ Without you or your money it's hard, yeah, hard to be true."

In all its power, lyricism and ecstatic anguish, soul is a chunky, 5-ft. 5-in. girl of 26 named Aretha Franklin singing from the stage of a packed Philharmonic Hall in Manhattan. She leans her head back, forehead gleaming with perspiration, features twisted by her intensity, and her voice—plangent and supple—pierces the hall:

Oh baby, what you done to me . . .

You make me feel, you make me

feel, you make me feel like a

natural woman.

"Tell it like it is," her listeners exhort, on their feet, clapping and cheering. She goes into a "holiness shout"-a writhing dance derived from gospel services, all the while singing over the tumult. This is why her admirers call her Lady Soul.

Bearing Witness. Aretha's vocal technique is simple enough: a direct, natural style of delivery that ranges over a full four octaves, and the breath control to spin out long phrases that curl sinuously around the beat and dangle tantalizingly from blue notes. But what really accounts for her impact goes beyond technique: it is her fierce, gritty conviction. She flexes her rich, cutting voice like a whip; she lashes her listeners —in her words—"to the bone, for deepness." "Aretha's music makes you sweaty, gives you a chill, makes you want to stomp your feet," says Bobby Taylor, leader of a soul group called Bobby and the Vancouvers. More simply, a 19-year-old Chicago fan named Lorraine Williams explains: "If Aretha says it, then it's important."

She does not seem to be performing so much as bearing witness to a reality so simple and compelling that she could not possibly fake it. In her selection of songs, whether written by others or by herself, she unfailingly opts for those that frame her own view of life. "If a song's about something I've experienced or that could've happened to me, it's good," she says. "But if it's alien to me, I couldn't lend anything to it. Because that's what soul is about—just living and having to get along."

For Aretha, as for soul singers generally, "just living and having to get along" mostly involves love—seeking it, celebrating its fulfillment, and especially bemoaning its loss. Aretha pleads in Since You've Been Gone:

I'm cryin'! Take me back, consider me please;

If you walk in that door 1 can get up off my knees.

And in the earthy candor of the soul sound, love is inescapably, bluntly physical. In Respect, she wails:

I'm out to give you all of my money,

And all I'm askin' in return, Honey,

Is to give me my propers when you get home . . .

Yeah, baby, whip it to me when you get home.*

"That's what most of the soul songs are all about," says Negro Comedian Godfrey Cambridge. "Take Aretha's Dr. Feelgood:

Don't send me no doctor fillin me up with all of those pills;

Got me a man named Dr. Feelgood and, oh yeah,

That man takes care of all of my pains and my ills.

A woman works all day cooking and cleaning a house for white folks, then comes home and has to cook and clean for her man. Sex is the only thing she's got to look forward to, to set her up to face the next day."

Rats in the Basement. No amount of empathy from outside can give a singer the realism and believability that constitute soul. He has to have "been down the line," as Negroes say, and "paid his dues" in life. Aretha, in spite of her youth, has paid heavily. "I might be just 26, but I'm an old woman in disguise—26 goin' on 65," she says only half jokingly. "Trying to grow up is hurting, you know. You make mistakes. You try to learn from them, and when you don't it hurts even more. And I've been hurt—hurt bad."

Aretha grew up on the fringe of Detroit's Negro East Side in the same neighborhood with several singers-to-be —Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson and all of the Four Tops. The Franklin house was a big tree-shaded one with a tidy lawn, even though it did have cockroaches in the kitchen and rats in the basement. Yet the gamy life of the ghetto was only half a block away. Recalls Aretha's brother Cecil, 28: "The people that you saw who had any measure of success were the pimp and the hustler, the numbers man and the dope man. Aretha knew what they were all about without having to meet them personally." Her mother deserted the family when Aretha was six and died four years later, two shocks that deeply scarred the shy, withdrawn girl. "After her mama died," says Gospel Singer Mahalia Jackson, "the whole family wanted for love."

Aretha's father, the Rev. C. L. Franklin, was—and is—pastor of Detroit's 4,500-member New Bethel Baptist Church, where the preaching is so fiery that two white-uniformed nurses stand by to aid overwrought parishioners. Franklin commands up to $4,000 per appearance as a barnstorming evangelist, has recorded 70 steadily selling LPs of his sermons. He may not be a member of the Baptist Ministers Conference, but his Cadillac, diamond stickpins and $60 alligator shoes testify to an eminently successful pastorate. Just how successful is not altogether clear, although when he was convicted last year for failing to file federal tax returns, the Government had shown that his income between 1959 and 1962 was more than $76,000. Franklin paid a $25,000 fine. Now 51, he is a strapping, stentorious charmer who has never let his spiritual calling inhibit his fun-loving ways.

Through her father, Aretha became immersed in gospel music at home as well as in church. Such stars as Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward and James Cleveland often came by the house for jam sessions, whooping and clapping, singing and playing all through the night while Aretha watched intently from a corner. Once, at a funeral for an aunt of Aretha's, Clara Ward was singing the gospel tune Peace in the Valley; in her fervor, she tore off her hat and flung it on the ground. "That," says Aretha, "was when I wanted to become a singer." Aretha had the spirit, all right; after her first solo in church at the age of twelve, excited parishioners crowded around her father, saying, "Oh, that child can sure enough sing."

Cutting Loose. Two years later, she was a featured performer with her father's gospel caravan, an evangelist show that crisscrossed the country by car (except for Franklin, who preferred to travel by plane). Though it ripened her vocal and professional skills, the experience of touring was in other ways a harsh initiation for Aretha. Says Cecil dryly: "Driving eight or ten hours trying to make a gig, and being hungry and passing restaurants all along the road, and having to go off the highway into some little city to find a place to eat because you're black—that had its effect." And the post-performance parties among older troupers in hotel rooms, where the liquor and sex were both plentiful—they had their effect too.

At 18, inspired by the example of former Gospel Singer Sam Cooke, Aretha decided to try the pop field. She started by auditioning for a New York manager named Jo King. "Aretha did everything wrong," recalls Mrs. King, "but it came out right. She had something—a concept of her own about music that needed no gimmickry. She was a completely honest musician." Groomed by Mrs. King, signed to a Columbia Records contract, Aretha began plying a sometimes seamy circuit of jazz and rhythm & blues clubs—with disheartening results. "I was afraid," she says. "I sang to the floor a lot." In the recording studio, she cut side after side with stereotyped pop arrangements —which sold indifferently. Deep down, she knew what was wrong with her repertory of standards, jazz tunes and novelties: "It wasn't really me."

Then 18 months ago she switched to Atlantic Records, which for two decades has specialized in bedrock rhythm & blues. Savvy Producer Jerry Wexler backed her with a funky Memphis rhythm section (which she ably joined on piano), and cut her loose to swing into the soul groove. Her first disk, I Never Loved a Man, sold a million copies. "It had looked for the longest time like I would never have a gold record," she says. "I wanted one so bad."

It was only the beginning. Aretha embarked on a remarkable year. She collected four more gold single records, sold a total of 1,200,000 albums, won two Grammy awards for record performances, and was cited by Billboard magazine as the top female vocalist of 1967. She toured Europe and was hailed in England as the new Bessie Smith—the first (1894-1937) of the great blues belters. Ray Charles called her "one of the greatest I've heard any time." Janis Joplin, 25, probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement, ranked her as "the best chick singer since Billie Holiday." Her troubles were over.

Wrestling Demons. Professionally, that is. Personally, she remains cloaked in a brooding sadness, all the more achingly impenetrable because she rarely talks about it—except when she sings. "I'm gonna make a gospel record," she told Mahalia Jackson not long ago, "and tell Jesus I cannot bear these burdens alone."

What one of these burdens might be came out last year when Aretha's husband, Ted White, roughed her up in public at Atlanta's Regency Hyatt House Hotel. It was not the first such incident. White, 37, a former dabbler in Detroit real estate and a street-corner wheeler-dealer, has come a long way since he married Aretha and took over the management of her career. Sighs Mahalia Jackson: "I don't think she's happy. Somebody else is making her sing the blues." But Aretha says nothing, and others can only speculate on the significance of her singing lyrics like these:

I don't know why I let you do these things to me;

My friends keep telling me that you ain't no good,

But oh, they don't know that I'd leave you if I could . . .

I ain't never loved a man the way that I love you.

Now that Aretha can afford to be in Detroit for up to two weeks out of a month, she retreats regularly to her twelve-room, $60,000 colonial house to be with her three sons (aged nine, eight and five) and wrestles with her private demons. She sleeps till afternoon, then mopes in front of the television set, chain-smoking Kools and snacking compulsively. She does bestir herself to cook—a pastime she enjoys and is good at—and occasionally likes to get away for some fishing. But most of her socializing is confined to the small circle of girlhood friends with whom, until a couple of years ago, she spent Wednesday nights skating at the Arcadia Roller Rink.

The only other breaks in her routine are visits to her father, her brother Cecil —now assistant pastor of the New Bethel Church—or sister Carolyn, 23, who leads Aretha's accompanying vocal trio and writes songs for her. Another sister, Erma, 29, is a pop singer living in New York City. Sometimes, with her family, she opens up enough to put on her W. C. Fields voice or do her imitation of Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula ("Goodt eeeeevnink, Mr. Renfieldt; I've been expectink you!"). But Cecil says: "For the last few years Aretha is simply not Aretha. You see flashes of her, and then she's back in her shell." Since, as a friend puts it, "Aretha comes alive only when she's singing," her only real solace is at the piano, working out a new song, going over a familiar gospel tune, or loosing her feelings in a mournful blues:

Oh listen to the blues, to the blues and what they're sayin' . . .

Oh they tell me, they tell me that life's just an empty scene,

Older than the oldest broken hearts, newer than the newest broken dreams.

Hollers & Blues. Negroes have been sifting their sorrows in songs like this for centuries. It started, says Mahalia Jackson, who is now 56, with "the groans and moans of the people in the cotton fields. Before it got the name of soul, men were sellin' watermelons and vegetables on a wagon drawn by a mule, hollerin' 'watermellllon!' with a cry in their voices. And the men on the railroad track layin' crossties—every time they hit the hammer it was with a sad feelin', but with a beat. And the Baptist preacher—he the one who had the soul—he give out the meter, a long and short meter, and the old mothers of the church would reply. This musical thing has been here since America been here. This is trial-and-tribulation music."

Out of the matrix of these Negro work songs, field hollers and spirituals of the 19th century sprang the first crude country blues. It was spread by bardic singers with guitars or harmonicas—beggars, itinerant farm laborers, members of jug bands and medicine or minstrel shows. Then, with the Negro migrations to Northern cities in the early decades of the 20th century, the blues gathered a more elaborate accompaniment around itself (sometimes a jazz group) and moved into theaters, dance halls and recording studios. This was the era of Bessie Smith's classic records. By the 1930s, a new style was forged around tenements, speakeasies and rent parties—a harsher, more nervous brand of blues that reflected the stress and tempo of urban living. This style mingled with the blaring jazz and blues that swept out of the Southwest during the swing era (Andy Kirk, Count Basic), and so the stage was set for the emergence, after World War II, of rhythm & blues.

Proxy Performances. Even more slashing and frenetic than urban blues, R & B introduced amplified guitars, honking saxophones and gyrating singers in lamé costumes. Popularized and commercialized as it was, it still retained the fundamental quality of the blues. Such was the force of R & B, in fact, that white singers of the 1950s quickly saw the potential for lifting it out of the limited Negro market and filtering it into the far more lucrative pop field. Much, if not most of what the white public knew as rock 'n' roll during this period consisted of proxy performances of Negro R & B music by people like Elvis Presley and Bill Haley. The success of the white performers produced a caustic resentment among the Negro musicians, many of whom still bridle at the irony of it all —they produced the music, but the white men cashed in on it. In those days, the only way for Negroes to really make it in the white world was to do precisely and painfully what the Nat King Coles and Lena Homes did: forsake their own music and sing white pop.

All this began to change with such English rock 'n' roll groups as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Animals, who made a point of crediting their sources—not only R & B figures such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, but also country and urban bluesmen such as John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker and B. B. King. "Until the Beatles exposed the origins," says Waters, "the white kids didn't know anything about the music. But now they've learned that it was in their backyard all the time."

Jubilation Shouts. Meanwhile, the rhythm-&-blues strain was picking up new momentum, while post-Beatle rock charged off on its own creative path. The man who gave R & B its fresh thrust was a blind, Georgia-born bard named Ray Charles, one of the most hauntingly effective and versatile Negro singers in the history of pop music.

Negroes had always rigorously main tained a distinction between gospel and blues—the sacred and profane—despite the affinity of their sounds. But Charles boldly brought them together, blending foot-stamping orgiastic jubilation shouts with the abrasive, existentialist irony of "devil songs." He even carried over the original gospel tunes and changed the words to fit the emotion. "Lord" became "you," or "baby," and it didn't matter if the bulk of the prayerful text remained the same. Thus Clara Ward's rousing old gospel song, This Little Light of Mine, became Charles's This Little Girl of Mine. (A wonderful indemnification!) Oldtimers who had once been forced to choose between the two genres were offended. "I know that's wrong," said Bluesman and former Preacher Big Bill Broonzy. "He should be singing in a church."

But Charles's innovation brought waves of gospel talent into the blues field, and at the same time offered blues performers a chance to employ the climactic cadences and mythic ritual of black evangelism. Some of his more ardent followers adopted stage mannerisms in which they appeared to be seized by God; they tore off their clothes, called for witnesses, collapsed and rose up again. The bespangled James Brown's whirling, convulsive performances have even been analyzed as enactments of the Crucifixion.

Most important, once Charles broke the barrier between gospel and blues, the way was open for a whole cluster of ingredients to converge around an R & B core and form the potent, musical mix now known as soul—among them, in Critic Albert Goldman's words, "a racial ragbag of Delta blues, hillbilly strumming, gutbucket jazz, boogie-woogie piano, pop lyricism and storefront shouting."

Chitlin Circuit. It was not long before the soul sound began to move directly into the white market of pop music, and its purveyors started outstripping their white imitators. Charles was the first to reach a mass white public, starting as far back as 1955 with his hit record, I Got a Woman. In more recent years, a string of others have come along behind him. Lou Rawls, for example, is a former gospel trouper who spices his blues songs with reminiscences of his boyhood in Chicago's South Side slums. He used to work only in the Negro nightclub "chitlin circuit." As for radio, Rawls says, "I never got played on the top 40 stations because they said I was too, uh—well, not too 'limited,' but too . . ." Black? "Yeah." Now Rawls's albums sell upwards of 200,000 copies from coast to coast and are played throughout the radio band. He has filled Manhattan's Carnegie Hall three times in concert appearances.

Before this started happening, soul music was recorded mostly by small, independent companies and shipped straight to the South's black belt and the North's big-city ghettos. Now the upsurge of nationwide soul-oriented firms is so strong that it has jostled the balance of power in the pop record industry. Manhattan-based Atlantic, with such singers as Aretha, Wilson Pickett and Sam & Dave, can now sell more records in a week (1,300,000) than it did in six months in 1950; now it ranks with the top singles producers in the business. Detroit's Motown Records, formed eight years ago by Berry Gordy Jr. with a $700 loan, last year grossed a soulful $30 million. Gordy's slick, carefully controlled "Motown sound" (noted for its rhythmic accent on all four beats of the bar instead of the usual R & B emphasis on alternating beats) has launched, among others, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, and Martha and the Vandellas.

Badge of Identity. By all the commercial yardsticks used in the trade, soul has arrived—and it has arrived in the hit parade as well as the "race market," in the suburbs as well as the ghettos, in the Midwestern campuses as well as Harlem's Apollo Theater.

By yardsticks used outside the trade, soul's arrival is even more significant. Since its tortuous evolution is so intertwined with Negro history and so expressive of Negro culture, Negroes naturally tend to value it as a sort of badge of black identity. "The abiding moods expressed in our most vital popular art form are not simply a matter of entertainment," says Negro Novelist Ralph Ellison. "They also tell us who and where we are."

Militant young Negroes put a more defiant slant on it. Explains Charles Keil, a white ethnomusicologist and the author of Urban Blues: "For a Negro to say 'B. B. King is my main man' is to say 'I take pride in who I am.' With this self-acceptance, a measure of unity is gained, and a demand is made upon white America: 'Accept us on our own terms.' " Yet when soul solidarity is founded on a fellowship of suffering, it may involve not a demand for white acceptance but an outright exclusion of whites, as Godfrey Cambridge makes clear. "Soul is getting kicked in the ass until you don't know what it's for," he says. "It's being broke and down and out, and people telling you you're no good. It's the language of the subculture; but you can't learn it, because no one can give you black lessons."

Used in this way, the soul concept becomes a mystique, a glorification of Negritude in all its manifestations. The soul brother makes a point of emphasizing Negro inflections such as "yo" for "your," of abandoning slang words and phrases as soon as they reach universal currency, of eating foods such as chitlins, pig's feet and black-eyed peas, in mastering a loose, cocky way of walking down the street—in doing all the things that are closed off or alien to Whitey.

Blue-Eyed Soul. Does this mean that white musicians by definition don't have soul? A very few Negroes will concede that such white singers as Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee have it, and Aretha also nominates Frenchman Charles Aznavour. A few more will accept such blues-oriented whites as the Righteous Brothers, Paul Butterfield, and England's Stevie Winwood—largely because their sound is almost indistinguishable from Negro performers'. But for the most part, Negroes leave it up to whites to defend the idea of "blue-eyed soul," whether by the criterion of talent, experience or temperament. Janis Joplin argues it this way: "There's no patent on it. It's just feeling things. A housewife in Nebraska has soul, but she represses it, makes it conform to a lot of rules like marriage, or sugarcoats it."

If the earnest racial jockeying can be suspended, the question of who has soul actually becomes intriguing, if rather fanciful fun. The very elusiveness of the soul concept invites a freewheeling, parlor-game approach. Not long ago, in an eleven-page feature on the soul mystique, Esquire half seriously argued that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the haves and the havenots—soul-wise. Others have taken up the sport, which prompts the engaging notion that important personalities of history and legend can be classed in these terms (see box).

As for those to whom soul is anything but a parlor game, one thing is certain: the closer a Negro gets to a "white" sound nowadays, the less soulful he is considered to be, and the more he is regarded as having betrayed his heritage. Dionne Warwick singing Alfie? Impure! Diana Ross and the Supremes recording an album of Rodgers and Hart songs? Unacceptable! Yet many "deviations" may be solid professionalism, a matter of adapting to changing audiences. As Lou Rawls says, "Show business is so vast—why should I limit myself to any one aspect if I have the capabilities to do more?"

On the other hand, some soul singers are so deeply imbued with the enduring streams of blues and gospel, so consumed by those primal currents of racial experience and emotion, that they could never be anything but soulful. Aretha Franklin is one of them. No matter what she sings, Aretha will never go white, and that certainty is as gratifying to her white fans as to her Negro ones.

Going Home. The depth of Aretha's fidelity to her own heritage can be heard on an occasional Sunday night when she is in Detroit. Just as she did a dozen years ago, she goes to her father's services to sing a solo. She was there one recent evening, standing somewhat apart at first, a little dressy in mink-trimmed pink, preoccupied and somber. A drenching rain was falling outside, but 1,000 parishioners had shown up: Aretha was back.

She decided to sing the gospel song Precious Lord. The words, as the congregation knew them, were straightforward and simple:

Precious Lord, take my hand,

Lead me on, let me stand.

I get tired,

I get weak and worn.

Hear my cry,

Hear my call,

Hold my hand,

Lest I fall.

Take my hand,

Precious Lord,

Lead me on.

As the first mellow chords rippled from the organ and piano, Aretha stepped out of the robed choir that was massed on tiers behind the altar. Moving in front of a lectern, she closed her eyes and sang: "Precious Lord, take my hand ..." The congregation nodded or swayed gently in their seats. "Sing it!" they cried, clapping hands. "Amen, amen!" Her melodic lines curved out in steadily rising arcs as she let her spirit dictate variations on the lyrics, finally straining upward in pure soul:

Please! Please! Please! Hear my call, 'Cause I'm gonna need you to hold on to my hand,

And I'm gonna need my friends right now 'cause I might fall. . .

"All right!" answered the congregation. She was with them now. Her voice spiraled down to a breathy whisper, then broke into intense, halting phrases as she almost talked to the end:

You know what's happening . . . and it's bad times right now;

Just lead us, just lead us, lead us on—We've got to get home.

Afterward, spent and exalted, Lady Soul said something that nobody in the church that night needed to be told: "My heart is still there in gospel music. It never left."


* "Sock it to me," one of Aretha's variations on "whip it," is another in the long list of sexual terms from blues or jazz that have passed into respectable everyday language. Having come to prominence through such recordings as Aretha's and Mitch Ryder's, "Sock it to me" is now used in a neutral sense as a catch-phrase on TV's Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and is a common sight on bumper stickers and even political placards. Jazz (originally a copulative verb) and rock 'n' roll (from a blues lyric, "My baby rocks me with a steady roll") are other examples.

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