You Grow Closer

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Long out of print or unavailable except in dodgy releases, this important document of soul queen Aretha Franklin's earliest gospel recordings clearly shows where she got all her chops: in church. The recording quality isn't the best fidelity even in this official release, but the tunes show the young singer truly wrapped inside a devotional ecstasy. The infamous "Precious Lord" single is included in its entirety, as are several recordings made with her father, the great preacher Reverend C.L. Franklin. "You Grow Closer" is a fairly essential recording for fans of gospel soul everywhere. But for Aretha acolytes, the disc is a must; Franklin's pipes open up with full-bore intensity on "Precious Lord," in anticipation of greatness to come. It's difficult to believe she was just a teenager when she sang these hymns. --Mike McGonigal --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Tracks:

Precious Lord, Parts 1
Precious Lord, Parts 2
Never Grow Old
You Grow Closer
The Day Is Past And Gone
He Will Wash You Whiter Than Snow
While The Blood Runs Warm
Yield Not To Temptation
There Is A Fountain Filed With Blood
Your Mother Loves Her Children

Amazon.com

Long out of print or unavailable except in dodgy releases, this important document of soul queen Aretha Franklin's earliest gospel recordings clearly shows where she got all her chops: in church. The recording quality isn't the best fidelity even in this official release, but the tunes show the young singer truly wrapped inside a devotional ecstasy. The infamous "Precious Lord" single is included in its entirety, as are several recordings made with her father, the great preacher Reverend C.L. Franklin. "You Grow Closer" is a fairly essential recording for fans of gospel soul everywhere. But for Aretha acolytes, the disc is a must; Franklin's pipes open up with full-bore intensity on "Precious Lord," in anticipation of greatness to come. It's difficult to believe she was just a teenager when she sang these hymns. --Mike McGonigal

Customer Reviews:

God given talent!.......2007-01-08

Being an Aretha fan I have heard just about all of her recordings, but her at 16 is something rare to hear so I jumped to buy this cd. It literally took me about 45 minutes to get past the first two tracks of Precious Lord! I just kept playing it over and over! While sitting there in complete amazement I kept trying to grasp the fact that this was the voice of a 16 year old! She doesn't sing, Aretha "sangs!" This is how Gospel was meant to sound. Words can't explain this wonderful God given talent. All I will say is amazing, pure, raw, powerful...simply put "ARETHA".

Very Moving Gospel.......2006-08-14

When I read some of the bad reviews for this CD I was skeptical about purchasing it, but I went ahead on and bought it anyway. And, boy was I happy that I did. The songs on this CD are very moving and stirring gospel sounds. The kind that you rarely hear today. I have no problems with the sound or the quality of my CD. All of the songs sound great, and they play all the way through. Maybe I just happened to get one from a good batch. I have been looking for the Reverend C.L. Franklin's stirring rendention of Your Mother Loves Her Children, and I finally got a chance to listen to it again.
The young Aretha is wonderful on her infamous Precious Lord rendention. I love the whole CD.

Aretha soars but recording quality sinks.......2006-01-22

I wish that I had read some the review below before I had bought this CD. Aretha Franklin is my all-time favourite singer and to hear her at 16 years of age is an experience that astonishes. Unfortunately, the tracks on this CD are very poorly mastered and the editing stinks. Songs chop off at the end and no song finishes completely. Let me state again that Aretha, even at 16, is phenomenal. This CD though, is not.

Great Singing, Atrocious Sound.......2005-03-09

No one in his/her right mind would deny the power and charisma exuding from the Queen of Soul's renditions of classic Gospel standards here. Her preformance is magnificent. The problem lies in the quality of the recording. It sounds like something produced in the Edison era. MCI could have at least attempted to do some remastering here. No such luck. I strongly advise listening to samples before deciding to make the purchase. I'd further suggest that if you want to both feel and "hear" the power, spend your money on some of her other Gospel recordings. "One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism" is excellent in every respect. Her "Amazing Grace" is another "can't miss" pick. The same recording shortfalls beset "Aretha Gospel," and that CD actually includes some of the tracks heard here. Again, the songs are rendered marvellously, but the recording equipment they used in the churches was about what one would hear from a Sony pocket recorder bootleg.

BEK

A revelation, so to speak.......2001-08-04

Imagine you're a Negro living in Detroit in the Fifties. Life is not easy and your religion is a source of deep comfort. You go to church every Sunday where the well-respected reverend delivers his sermons about suffering and redemption. Afterwards he brings out his daughter, a shy pretty teenaged girl, to sing a few spirituals - the kind of songs that your grandmother, perhaps old enough to have been born a slave, used to hum to herself in the kitchen when she made Thanksgiving dinner. The reverend's daughter, not knowing she will someday become a musical legend, steps up to the microphone and communes with the Spirit as the organ and the choir murmur quietly in the background. Then she opens her mouth and a sound more thrilling than anything you have ever heard in your life fills the consecrated space around you to bursting. She sings, "Precious Lord... " - the last syllable extended, throbbing with emotion, majestic and beautiful, and the people around you shout and cry from sheer catharsis. God, the True Musician, has spoken to you through one of his most splendid instruments - Miss Aretha Franklin, the soon-to-be-crowned Queen of Soul.

Give me a little respect, indeed.

Music:

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