I selected this performance because Aretha Franklin personalizes Thomas A. Dorsey’s well-known hymn. While Dorsey wrote the song as an act of personal mourning, Aretha infuses it with a sense of both prayer and testimony. Her stretching of phrases, her insertion of melismatic runs, and her engagement with the congregation give the performance a sense of spontaneity and immediacy that is characteristic of gospel music’s improvisatory and personalizing tendencies. The choir’s call-and-response with Aretha and her own emotional delivery transform the hymn into a communal act of faith. I love the way her voice navigates the space between sorrow and hope, both echoing Dorsey’s original message and making it entirely her own. It exemplifies how gospel music allows the performer to inhabit the song rather than just sing it.
Take My Hand, Precious Lord” – performed by Aretha Franklin (1972, live at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church)
[YouTube link: “Aretha Franklin - Take My Hand, Precious Lord (Amazing Grace, 1972)”]
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