National Public Radio (NPR), News & Notes with Ed Gordon, March 9, 2005, Wednesday

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National Public Radio (NPR)

SHOW: News & Notes with Ed Gordon 9:00 AM EST NPR

March 9, 2005 Wednesday


HEADLINE: Nick Salvatore discusses the life and career of C.L. Franklin and his new book "Singing In A Strange Land"

ANCHORS: ED GORDON

BODY:
ED GORDON, host:
C.L. Franklin may be best known as Aretha Franklin's father, but from his pulpit at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Reverend Franklin became one of the most important African-American preachers of the civil rights movement. His cadence and preaching style are still imitated today in black churches across the country. Franklin's life has been chronicled in a new book called "Singing In A Strange Land: C.L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America." Author Nick Salvatore reflects on Franklin as a revolutionary preacher.
Mr. NICK SALVATORE (Author, "Singing In A Strange Land"): C.L. Franklin was part of a tradition that whooped or chanted a major part of the sermon. But what's most significant, I think, about C.L. Franklin as the exemplary practitioner of this particular approach to preaching was that not only did he build his sermons around an idea, but he also never lost his message even as he moved into the whoop. C.L. Franklin had a wonderful musical talent and so his sermons were really sacred performances and were masterpieces.
(Soundbite of sermon)
Reverend C.L. FRANKLIN: But to the Negro, when he embarked upon these shores, America to him was a valley...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...a valley of slave huts...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...a valley of slavery and oppression...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...a valley of sorrow...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...so that often we had to sing.
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: One of these days...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...I'm going to eat at the feastin' table.
Mr. SALVATORE: Some 75 of his sermons were recorded live and distributed ultimately by Chess Records. They were best-sellers in the black community in the '50s, '60s and '70s and are still available to this day.
GORDON: The interesting point about this man's life is they say timing is everything. I don't know that nationally people understood, or understand today, I should say, the power...
Mr. SALVATORE: Right.
GORDON: ...that this man had within religious circles.
Mr. SALVATORE: I think part of that is the effect of segregation that isolated much in the white imagination from what was going on in black America. He was well-known, both in the black community at large and specifically also within the black religious community. He was less well known, of course, in the white community.
GORDON: He is also someone who was very instrumental and perhaps not given enough credit in the civil rights movement. He was a contemporary of King's father...
Mr. SALVATORE: That's correct.
GORDON: ...and a mentor of King's.
Mr. SALVATORE: Very true. His overt political career began, really, in 1955. It was both the murder of and then the acquittal of the two men who, in fact, murdered Emmett Till that began to galvanize him in a different way. And he began to be involved in protests in Detroit concerning that. He created a political action committee along with Deacon Harry Kincaid and others, which brought in speakers--Martin Luther King Jr. and Sr., Congressman Adam Clayton Powell--did voter registration, actively attempted to raise the consciousness of people in Detroit, both in his congregation and, since his services on Sunday evening were broadcast live over Detroit radio, throughout the city as well.
GORDON: We talk about Aretha Franklin and she, of course, a phenomenon within herself. But much of what she gained by virtue of stature, stage presence, musicianship was learned at New Bethel Baptist Church.
Mr. SALVATORE: Very much so. She did her first solo at New Bethel at age 10. By age 14 she was recording live her first four gospel sides at New Bethel and they were distributed on Chess Records. And you listen to those early recordings of hers done in 1956; it is amazing the power and the command that she has, even though she has yet to come into her mature power. She's still only 14.
(Soundbite of song)
ARETHA FRANKLIN: (Singing) And ye shall go on.
Mr. SALVATORE: Franklin always placed an enormous emphasis on music and on the choir and on developing the music as part of that sacred performance. And she certainly learned it there, but she also learned it at home. Great gospel singers such as Clara Ward, Mahalia Jackson, Alex Bradford and others, they were guests at the home, and she watched people perform in her living room, impromptu performances, as well as clearly at New Bethel. And then in 1956 she joins the gospel tour with her father.
GORDON: We should note, though, that this man was a complex individual...
Mr. SALVATORE: Yes.
GORDON: ...who really lived his life, perhaps more than some would like, in both worlds...
Mr. SALVATORE: That's right.
GORDON: ...if you will, the secular and the religious world.
Mr. SALVATORE: Yeah. He had a reputation in Detroit--for example, in the '50s and '60s, he was known as the Black Prince. He was known as the jitterbug preacher. He was a dynamic and charismatic individual. The same force from within that led him to be so effective and powerful in touching people from the pulpit also led him to what some felt clearly was to fall off the edge and lose the balance in navigating that sacred and secular. He was a womanizer. His wife died in 1952. He never remarried. And he felt there was nothing wrong with his going to the Flame Show Bar or other nightclubs when people whose music he liked and who were friends of his were playing. And then he brought them also into the church. B.B. King, for example, not only flew to Detroit in 1958 so that Franklin could marry him, but B.B. King said that Detroit was the only place where, no matter how late he closed a club on Saturday night, he would always be front and center at 10:45 for services at New Bethel Baptist, `because C.L. Franklin was my main preacher.'
GORDON: The story does not end happily, though. In 1979, C.L. Franklin is shot in his home during a burglary attempt and lay in a coma for years until his ultimate death. And this took not only a toll on the church but on his family, as one might imagine...
Mr. SALVATORE: Right.
GORDON: ...and, in particular, his daughter Aretha.
Mr. SALVATORE: First the church part of it--I mean, he was in a coma. He had a lifetime contract with the church that they had given him in 1951. And as the coma continued, the issue was: Who was going to direct the church? And a split ultimately occurred. I think on the family, they were clearly grieving well before his death about the condition of their father. The family was there constantly. And so every time there would be an involuntary movement, hopes would rise and the family really had a little more than five years of dealing with a father who was not responsive ultimately and yet with whom they couldn't help but hope that maybe a miracle would occur. But, of course, it didn't, and on July 27th of 1984, he died.
GORDON: Finally, let me ask you about the title of the book, "Singing In A Strange Land."
Mr. SALVATORE: The title comes from a sermon he gave called Without A Song, which was built around the 137th Psalm, `How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?'
(Soundbite of sermon)
Rev. FRANKLIN: But even under adverse circumstances...
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: ...you ought to sing sometimes.
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: And not only sing, sing some of Zion's song.
Congregation: (In unison) Yeah.
Rev. FRANKLIN: I believe you know what I'm talking about.
Congregation: (In unison) Oh, yeah.
Mr. SALVATORE: If there's one central legacy of C.L. Franklin's life, it's his effort to encourage people in his congregation, people across the country who heard him on radio or heard him on his records, to find and develop their voices, both individually and then also to find, through that individual voice--to develop a collective voice to address some of the issues and questions that lay before African-American people. So the singing is the affirmation, in spite of the pain of living in a strange land, strange in the sense of segregation, strange in the sense of the hostility. And the singing is a way to both affirm that that is not the definition of who we are and to work to find solutions to go beyond and change those circumstances.
GORDON: Nick Salvatore is the author of "Singing In A Strange Land: C.L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America."
And that does it for today's show. Thanks for joining us. To listen to this program, visit npr.org. NEWS & NOTES was created by NPR News and the African-American Public Radio Consortium. We close today with Reverend C.L. Franklin's little girl, Aretha, with the classic gospel composition "Mary, Don't You Weep."
(Soundbite of "Mary, Don't You Weep")
Ms. FRANKLIN: (Singing) Listen, Mary...
Choir: (Singing) Mary, don't you weep.
Ms. FRANKLIN: (Singing) I tell you, sister, don't mourn.
Choir: (Singing) Don't, don't, don't you mourn.
Ms. FRANKLIN: (Singing) Pharaoh's army...
GORDON: I'm Ed Gordon. This is NEWS & NOTES.