''Songs of Faith'' is the first live album by American singer

Aretha Franklin Aretha Louise Franklin ( ; March 25, 1942 – August 16, 2018) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Honored as the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Queen of Soul", she was twice named by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine as the Roll ...

. It was released in 1965 by

Checker Records Checker Records is a defunct record label that was started in 1952 as a subsidiary of Chess Records in Chicago, Illinois. The label was founded by the Chess brothers, Leonard and Phil, who ran the label until they sold it to General Recorded T ...

. The album was recorded in 1956 by J-V-B Records at New Bethel Baptist Church in

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

, when Franklin was aged 14.

Background

Aretha Franklin's recording career began in 1956 with the help of local record label J-V-B Records. Recording equipment was installed in the New Bethel Baptist Church and nine tracks were recorded, featuring Franklin on vocals and piano. In 1956, J-V-B released Franklin's first single, "Never Grow Old", backed with "You Grow Closer". A second single, "Precious Lord (Part One)" backed with "Precious Lord (Part Two)" was issued in 1959. These four tracks, with the addition of "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood", were released on side one of the 1956 album, ''Spirituals'' (J-V-B 100), which was reissued in 1962 under the same title by Battle Records (Battle 6105). In 1965,

released ''Songs of Faith'', featuring the five tracks from the 1956 ''Spirituals'' album, with the addition of four previously unreleased recordings.

Reissues

MCA reissued the original 9 track album on

Compact Disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

in 1991 as ''Aretha Gospel''. After Aretha's passing in 2018, UMG/Geffen Records reissued it as ''Songs of Faith: Aretha Gospel.''

Track listing

References

{{Authority control Aretha Franklin live albums Gospel albums by American artists 1956 live albums