She is still among us.
Our magnificent waterfront amphitheater, hailed as one of the top 100 concert venues in the world, bears her name. A major motion picture and TV miniseries have been based on her life. Her voice is the soulful soundtrack of a generation, seemingly heard everywhere across the music radio dial and on SiriusXM. And in the latest headline, three of her four sons went to court to contest her estate, only to be told some papers found stuffed in her sofa are considered a valid will in Michigan.
Yes, Aretha Franklin remains a very present entity in our daily lives, making it almost impossible to believe the Queen of Soul has been gone five years this week. Dozens of books have been written over the decades chronicling her life and career. But nowhere are you likely to find a more loving, heartfelt, personal tribute to Franklin than in the book My Friend the Queen From Her Court Jester Ralphe Armstrong, compiled by her longtime concert sideman and Detroit-born bassist extraordinaire.
Armstrong readily admits that “court jester” is a nickname he bestowed on himself. “If I had a joke I would tell her, and she would go around and tell it to everybody,” he remembers. “We used to watch comedy DVDs together and just laugh and have a good time. I would go by her house and we would play together for hours. We were friends.
“Everybody else was just scared to death of her. I remember one time I came into the studio and Aretha was already there. She said, ‘Oh, Lord, here he comes! Ralphe, don’t you start no stuff now. Don’t you say nothin’!’ I said, ‘Aretha, you look as good as a bacon and egg sandwich today!’
“All I ever heard from her was, ‘Shut up, fool!’ We had a lot of fun, a lot of love and fun. That’s what the book is about, love.”
Armstrong subtitled the book “A Dedication to the Franklin Family,” as he credits Aretha’s sister Carolyn with “discovering” him at the Harper Recreation Center at the age of 12. He says it took nearly a year to finish the book (“Writin’s not easy? You ain’t lying!”) but he was determined to complete it. “What inspired me was that I wanted people to truly know what kind of human being she was, how kind and beautiful she was inside,” he says.
“I don’t think people really know a lot about her, because folks used to have stories about her doing this or saying that, and a lot of it was lies. She was the most spiritual human being I have ever met. People need to know that she was always there for you if you were her friend.”
Of course, if you were Aretha Franklin, it wasn’t always easy to pick your friends out of the throng. “She didn’t like phony people to put on airs,” Armstrong recalls. “All that, ‘Oh, Miss Franklin, Your Majesty, Queen of Soul,’ she didn’t want to hear all that B.S. She just wanted you to be yourself.
“In fact, I remember she once asked me, ‘Do you know why you are my friend? Because you’re for real. And another thing: you’re crazy!’”
Equal parts photo album, memoir, and chronology, My Friend the Queen (available on Amazon and wherever books are sold) commemorates significant events and people in Franklin’s life, including her lavish birthday and holiday soirées, myriad studio and concert performances, and her homegoing celebration in 2018. And in almost every instance, the photographs and memories are Armstrong’s. “Most of them are my personal photos,” he says. “About 90% of them came out of my iPhone.”
Most revealing are his tales of life on the road for years as Franklin’s bassist. “I felt great playing with her because it was sort of like being in the army,” Armstrong says. “You had to play right, and if you didn’t she would tell you. The next night you’d be playing with your tongue and feet, anything to try and please her.”
Armstrong says that in time he came to appreciate the unique demands of Franklin as a superstar and businessperson. “You have to understand, she did everything for herself as a single woman,” he notes.
“She had an agent, but after her brother Cecil died [the Rev. Cecil Franklin, who served as her manager], she pretty much took over managing herself. If she forgot and didn’t pay you, it was never personal. Aretha’s word was her bond,” he says. “If she said, ‘Ralphe, I’m gonna pay you when we get back to Detroit, give me about a week,’ the next thing I know I would get a call, ‘Ralphe, your money is here.’ She would call you. Unlike some, I never had to chase her down for one penny.”
Assisting Armstrong with the writing and editing of My Friend the Queen was his friend of 30 years, Denise Rachal — an accountant by profession. “Writing was my forte back in high school, but I decided I liked counting money instead,” she says with a laugh. “It wasn’t too difficult because Ralphe gave me all the information. All I had to do was tweak it and make sure I was putting it in his words.”
Like his friend the Queen, Armstrong, who won the annual Aretha Franklin Award from her veteran producer Narada Michael Walden in 2018, could live anywhere in the world but chooses to remain in his hometown of Detroit. “I got a whole ‘nother crop of musicians coming up,” he beams. “They’re geniuses, and they really want to learn. They’re like sponges. Beautiful young people.”
He’ll probably bring a few copies of the book with him to historic Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, where he’s been performing with his Ralphe Armstrong Trio from 8-11 p.m. every Friday and Saturday night for the past two years. “I’ve got Gerard Gibbs on keyboard and Gayelynn McKinney on drums,” he says. “She’s the only drummer Aretha never fired.”
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