Inhalt: By the time Aretha Now arrived in the summer of 1968, Aretha Franklin was on one of pop music's great winning streaks. She'd already redefined soul music with the previous year's brilliant I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You; scored hit single after hit single with "Respect," "Natural Woman," "Chain of Fools" and a rave-up rendition of the Stones' "Satisfaction"; and released another all-time classic LP, Lady Soul, just a few months earlier, in January 1968. On paper, then, Aretha Now might look like a rush job or a place-holder. But this is Aretha. As usual in this era, her collaborators were top-notch. Producer Jerry Wexler, who'd helped transform Franklin into a pop megastar, was still behind the mixing desk. Depending on the song, the band featured Bobby Womack on guitar (those are his wailing blues bends on "A Change"), a few Muscle Shoals legends (keyboardist Spooner Oldham, guitarist Jimmy Johnson and groovemaster general Roger Hawkins on drums) and the Sweet Inspirations on backup vocals. It's an all-star production before Franklin even steps in front of the mic. But of course it's Franklin who makes this record unforgettable. The showstopper is "Think," the Number One R&B hit on which Franklin puts a full-of-himself man in his place, warning him, "Freedom stands for freedom … think about it!" If you were to isolate the vocals and take out the funky piano and blaring horns, you'd hear confidence, plain and simple – the sound of a woman who won't take no for an answer. It's awe-inspiring, and it's no wonder her performance of the song years later in The Blues Brothers became an iconic film moment. Then she does a 180. Less than a year after Dionne Warwick scored a Number Four pop hit with "I Say a Little Prayer," Aretha strips the song of its easy-listening affectations and summons the song's inherent emotion. She lets the Sweet Inspirations do a lot of the heavy lifting in the chorus, only because she sounds so weepy in the rest of it. She's divined the soul from the song. You want to