Aretha’s Skylark

I had Helen Forrest doing Skylark, now it’s Aretha Franklin’s turn.

It’s from Aretha’s early confused and repressed years at the Columbia label before she found her voice (so to speak) at Atlantic Records. Columbia packaged up some of these into a compilation titled Queen in Waiting.

While her first album (I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You) at Atlantic is one of my all time favourite records, I am ever so grateful for those Columbia recordings so that we can hear her doing standards like this.

Here’s another standard, Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,  from her 19620 second Columbia album, The Electrifying Aretha Franklin: