''Soft and Beautiful'' is the fifteenth studio album by the American singer

Aretha Franklin Aretha Louise Franklin ( ; March 25, 1942 – August 16, 2018) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Referred to as the "Queen of Soul", she has twice been placed ninth in ''Rolling Stone''s "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". With ...

, released in the spring of 1969, by

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

Background

The album was recorded when Franklin was 22 years old between July 9 and 16, 1964,Take a Look - Aretha Franklin Complete on Columbia liner notes It was her last album on Columbia before she moved to

Atlantic Records Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most ...

and until 1969, unreleased, although an alternative version of "A Mother's Love" appeared on Franklin's 1966 Columbia LP ''Soul Sister''.Bego, Mark ''Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul.'' Da Capo Press. . p. 76. It reached Number 29 on ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

s R&B chart.

Mark Bego Mark Joseph Bego (born 23 September 1952, in Pontiac, Michigan) is an author known for his biographies focusing on the rock & roll and show business genres. Bego has written a total of 59 books, two of which have gone on to become New York Times ...

, in ''Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul'', called it "the most consistently paced album of her later Columbia years". Originally released by Columbia Records, the album was reissued on CD with her 1962 album ''

The Tender, The Moving, The Swinging Aretha Franklin ''The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin'' is the third studio album by American singer Aretha Franklin, released in 1962 by Columbia Records. It was her first album to achieve any commercial success, reaching number 69 on the ''Bi ...

''.

Track listing

Side One #"Only the Lonely" (

Sammy Cahn Samuel Cohen (June 18, 1913 – January 15, 1993), known professionally as Sammy Cahn, was an American lyricist, songwriter, and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premi ...

Jimmy Van Heusen James Van Heusen (born Edward Chester Babcock; January 26, 1913 – February 6, 1990) was an American composer. He wrote songs for films, television and theater, and won an Emmy and four Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Life and car ...

) #"I Wish I Didn't Love You So" (

Frank Loesser Frank Henry Loesser (; June 29, 1910 – July 28, 1969) was an American songwriter who wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musicals '' Guys and Dolls'' and '' How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying'', among others. He won a To ...

) #"

(Ah, the Apple Trees) When the World Was Young "(Ah, the Apple Trees) When the World Was Young" is a popular song composed by , with lyrics by . The English lyrics were written by Johnny Mercer. The original French title was "Le Chevalier de Paris". Apart from a reference to apples, the English ...

" (

Johnny Mercer John Herndon Mercer (November 18, 1909 – June 25, 1976) was an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, as well as a record label executive who co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Glenn E. Wallich ...

, M. Philippe-Gérard) #"

Shangri-La Shangri-La is a fictional place in Asia's Kunlun Mountains (昆仑山), Uses the spelling 'Kuen-Lun'. described in the 1933 novel '' Lost Horizon'' by English author James Hilton. Hilton portrays Shangri-La as a mystical, harmonious valley, ge ...

" (

Carl Sigman Carl Sigman (September 24, 1909 – September 26, 2000) was an American songwriter. Early life Born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York to a Jewish-American family, Sigman graduated from law school and passed his bar exams to practice in t ...

Robert Maxwell Ian Robert Maxwell (born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch; 10 June 1923 – 5 November 1991) was a Czechoslovak-born British media proprietor, member of parliament (MP), suspected spy, and fraudster. Early in his life, Maxwell escaped from ...

Matty Malneck Matthew Michael "Matty" Malneck (December 9, 1903 – February 25, 1981) was an American jazz violinist, songwriter, and arranger. Career Born in 1903, Malneck's career as a violinist began when he was age 16. He was a member of the Paul Whit ...

) #"A Mother's Love" (Cliff Owens) Side Two #" My Coloring Book" (

John Kander John Harold Kander (born March 18, 1927) is an American composer, known largely for his work in the musical theater. As part of the songwriting team Kander and Ebb (with lyricist Fred Ebb), Kander wrote the scores for 15 musicals, including '' ...

Fred Ebb Fred Ebb (April 8, 1928 – September 11, 2004) was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita R ...

) #" Jim" (Nelson Shawn, Caesar Petrillo, Edward Rose) #" Friendly Persuasion (Thee I Love)" (

Paul Francis Webster Paul Francis Webster (December 20, 1907 – March 18, 1984) was an American lyricist who won three Academy Awards for Best Original Song, and was nominated sixteen times for the award. Life and career Webster was born in New York City, United S ...

Dimitri Tiomkin Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin (, ; May 10, 1894 – November 11, 1979) was a Russian-born American film composer and conductor. Classically trained in St. Petersburg, Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution, he moved to Berlin and then New York City ...

) #" But Beautiful" ( Johnny Burke,

) #"

People A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of proper ...

" from '' Funny Girl'' (

Jule Styne Jule Styne (; born Julius Kerwin Stein; December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was an English-American songwriter and composer best known for a series of Broadway musicals, including several famous frequently-revived shows that also became ...

Bob Merrill Henry Robert Merrill Levan (May 17, 1921 – February 17, 1998) was an American songwriter, theatrical composer, lyricist, and screenwriter. He was one of the most successful songwriters of the 1950s on the US and UK single charts. He wrote ...

)

Personnel

- vocals

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Soft and Beautiful Aretha Franklin albums 1969 albums Columbia Records albums