Balarama Music

Originals Week: Feminist Movement’s Landmark Song

May 31

Doug1960s aretha franklin, originals week, otis redding No Comments

So I thought I’d start a type of theme for this week to kind of spruce things up and make it interesting again. So I present:

Originals Week!

Ok, that doesn’t explain much so let me try to decipher it for you. You ever hear a cover of a song that is pretty good, maybe even better than the original, but it becomes so good that people forget that someone else did it…or don’t even know. A good example would be of Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary.” A lot of people know that Creedence Clearwater Revival did it first, but hers has become far more well-known and recognizable so that a lot of people don’t even know that CCR did it first or did it at all. Shinedown’s version of “Simple Man” is another example of this especially since in the world of ignorant radio today, kids are going to grow up knowing nothing about the far superior original with its killer guitar.

But Originals Week will be showing you the original versions of most songs. The good thing about me being a music geek in this sense is that all seven songs I pick for the week are going to be songs that you didn’t even know about. They will be original versions of songs that you know so well and have never even thought of being a cover. It’s always interesting when people look at my iTunes, see a song, say something like “I love the original Guns N Roses version,” and then find out that Bob Dylan predates them by a decade or so. I will say that for a lot of these songs, I actually do think the cover and more famous version is better, but it’s always interesting to see the original and it gives you an even bigger respect for the artist responsible for the cover for being able to do it in a new and imaginative way. Let’s kick it off with something that’s going to shock everyone.

The year is 1967. A twenty-five year-old African-American woman just got to number nine on the Billboard Top 100, despite people telling her she’ll never even conquer the Black Singles Chart. But this young woman knew she could do better. This woman knew that she could score a hit with a song that would ultimately become her calling card. A song that would become considered as a landmark in the feminist movement. A song that would ultimately be regarded as one of the best songs of all time. So in April 1967, Aretha Franklin unleashed “Respect” onto the world and for the next forty years, woman were raised on it and everyone wondered what the hell TCB meant.

The only problem? That this song was originally done by Otis Redding, a man. Yep, the original version of the women’s anthem “Respect” was written and recorded by a man. Not only that though, it was released less than two years earlier than Aretha Franklin’s and was considered not only a Black Singles Chart success, but a huge crossover hit and his second most successful song up until that point. My how women have short attention spans…

So next time you get into an argument with a feminist and she quotes a line from Respect, just make mention that a man ultimately had to write the song for the feminst movement. Sadly though, Aretha’s is miles better.

Title: Respect
Artist: Otis Redding
Album: Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul
Year: 1965

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