Ann Peebles and Aretha

From the desk of Peter Crowley:

(attached audio: “99 Pounds” by Ann Peebles)

On a rare morning off of work today, I had Ann Peebles’ “Straight from the Heart” album on the turntable while I washed dishes. It’s so good, I couldn’t help but compare and contrast her to Aretha Franklin.

Who’s better? Dumb question, I know, like, “Who would win between a tiger and a shark?” But asking it helps analyze each lady’s music was at its peak: Aretha’s being the late ’60s and Ann’s the early ’70s.

First of all, never let yourself forget that while their recordings appeared under these ladies’ names, and they certainly do a lot of the heavy lifting, these songs exist largely because of brilliant teams of studio musicians, songwriters, producers and managers who put it all together. I think about that especially after re-watching my favorite movie, “The Commitments,” earlier this week. Without the Jimmy Rabbittes, Willie Mitchells, Tommy Cogbills, Joey “The Lips” Fagans, Teenie Hodges and Tom Dowds, it doesn’t happen.

But no one could blow the roof off a song like Aretha. No one could, from her own lungs, make a song bigger. Calling on the power of God and her enormous will, she would lift the whole thing, expand it until the room she’s in can’t expand anymore. Then you get that sound where she’s pushing the limits of the box she’s in – beyond any recording studio. I bet that effect was somewhat intentional by the likes of recording engineers Dowd and Arif Mardin.

She’s also a fantastic piano player; that’s her on 10 out of the 11 tracks on her most famous album, “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You,” her first for Atlantic Records. And it’s not like she had no competition among the Muscle Shoals studio ringers she was thrown in with. Session legend Spooner Oldham is relegated to organ.

But where Aretha makes a song big and beautiful, Ann makes it lean and athletic – more Althea Gibson than Serena Williams. Also, although both ladies wrote some great songs for themselves - “I Can’t Stand the Rain” is by Ann, and “Since You’ve Been Gone (Sweet Sweet Baby)” is Aretha’s), it sounds like more of Ann’s were written for her, by Memphis aces like her eventual husband, Don Bryant. There’s more of a sense of her in them – scappy and screwed-up Ann - whereas Aretha’s are more everywoman’s. Ann’s are the songs of someone who was never destined to transcend the soul-music circuit and become a household name. Ann’s a girl who got to make records because she was discovered by trumpet player Gene “Bowlegs” Miller, not by John Hammond; she’s someone who recorded for small, Memphis-based Hi Records, not New York giants Columbia and Atlantic.

And goddamn, Ann’s songs tear you apart. They’re so honest about confessing bad feelings, like on “I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody’s Home Tonight.” “I’m just a little bad girl,” she sings on “I Take What I Want,” but while she’s certainly bad-ass, she’s also completely comfortable showing her vulnerable side. She sings about both sides of the adultery equation: the other woman and the wronged wife - although she’s the tough-as-hell wife who’s “Been There Before” (a song she wrote with Bryant), who’s vengeful enough to “Tear Your Playhouse Down” and advises others like her to “Don’t put him out tonight … Get your own thing right” (in “Somebody’s on Your Case”). This is a dog-eat-dog world, she knows, and victims have to stick up for themselves.

More than anything else on Ann’s records, though, you notice the deep, muscular Memphis ghetto groove. And she is right in the middle of it, audio-wise, shadow-boxing out from a clutch of musicians onstage, whereas Aretha always sounded like she was out front. And she was, in almost every sense. Aretha was only physically in Muscle Shoals, Alabama for one recording session, which produced “I Never Loved a Man” and “Do Right Woman”; for the rest of that first Atlantic album, Jerry Wexler flew the Muscle Shoals boys to her in New York.

Ann’s groove and her persona are never more perfectly aligned than on “99 Pounds,” written by her then-boyfriend, Bryant. In 2 minutes and 15 seconds, here’s her whole deal:

“25 pounds of pure cane sugar, in each and every kiss - you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about, if you never had lovin’ like this.

“I don’t mean to be braggin’. Good God, it’s a natural fact. Good things come in small packages. You will have to agree with that.

“99 pounds of natural-born goodness, y’all – 99 pounds of soul. I’m 99 pounds of natural-born goodness, y’all – 99 pounds of soul.

“25 pounds of tenderness, in each and every touch – 25 pounds of understanding my man, and I don’t want to worry too much.

“24 pounds of something, y’all, that I can’t even name, and it all adds up to 99 pounds, all put together in a fine young frame.”

(By the way, the Black Crowes did a screaming version of this song as an outtake from their second album, “The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion.” Chris Robinson is probably the only male rock star who could nail it; he’s not much more than 99 pounds soaking wet. They also nailed “Somebody’s on Your Case” as a “Three Snakes and One Charm” outtake.)

Personally, I’ll take Ann over Aretha. Ann never descended into the “diva” pit, never did “Who’s Zooming Who” and “Freeway of Love” in the ’80s. It’s been hard to listen to Aretha's stuff since the ’60s ended –but hear Ann sing Bob Dylan’s “Tonight I’ll be Staying Here with You” from Joe Henry’s 2005 “I Believe to My Soul” project, and she’s still absolutely, brilliantly real.

Maybe in the end, Aretha’s is the music of someone who made the most, at least for a few key years, of being “Young, Gifted and Black,” to quote one of her album titles. Ann’s is the voice of the black woman with much less self-esteem, but she never lets that hold her back because she knows she’s got pure cane sugar, tenderness, understanding of her man and something else she can’t even name.

Anyway, those are my idle thoughts today – something for you to think about, and hopefully a motivator to go out and listen to these soul ladies’ great, great records.