Free: Download 70,000+ High-Resolution Images of Chinese Art from Taipei’s National Palace Museum

Dur­ing Chi­na’s Ming and Qing dynas­ties, which togeth­er spanned the years 1386 to 1912, few in the Mid­dle King­dom, let alone else­where, could hope for even a glimpse of the finest Chi­nese art­works of their time. But recent­ly one muse­um has made a trove of art and arti­facts from those dynas­ties and oth­ers dig­i­tal­ly acces­si­ble to the world, and a muse­um out­side main­land Chi­na at that. “Accord­ing to pop­u­lar news web­site The Paper,” writes the BBC’s Ker­ry Allen, “Taipei’s Nation­al Palace Muse­um has placed 70,000 high-qual­i­ty elec­tron­ic images in a free-to-down­load archive so that online users can enjoy its exhi­bi­tions” — and with­out the has­sles of “glass bar­ri­er and light­ing restric­tions.”

First estab­lished as the Palace Muse­um in 1925, after the expul­sion of Chi­na’s last emper­or Puyi, the Nation­al Palace Muse­um began its col­lec­tion with valu­ables belong­ing to the for­mer Impe­r­i­al fam­i­ly. Now, writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Claire Voon, it boasts “one of the largest troves of ancient Chi­nese impe­r­i­al arti­facts, from paint­ings to rare books to all sorts of objects made of jade, bronze, ceram­ic, and more.”

The dig­i­ti­za­tion and upload­ing project, called Nation­al Palace Muse­um Open Data, offers an Eng­lish ver­sion site, “although that is cur­rent­ly a rather lim­it­ed and incom­plete resource. The Chi­nese ver­sion fea­tures two por­tals to more effi­cient­ly comb through the museum’s relics. One is specif­i­cal­ly for paint­ing and cal­lig­ra­phy works; the oth­er, for every­thing else.”

Still, the Nation­al Palace Muse­um has been improv­ing its Eng­lish por­tal, which allows search­es not just by cat­e­go­ry of object but by dynasty, a list that now reach­es far beyond the Ming and Qing, all the way back to the Shang Dynasty of 1600 BC to 1046 BC. But even as the Eng­lish ver­sion catch­es up to the Chi­nese one — as of this writ­ing, it con­tains more than 4700 items — it will sure­ly take some time before Nation­al Palace Muse­um Open Data catch­es up with the com­plete hold­ings of the Nation­al Palace Muse­um, with its per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of about 700,000 Chi­nese impe­r­i­al arti­facts and art­works span­ning eight mil­len­nia. As with Chi­nese his­to­ry itself, a for­mi­da­ble sub­ject of study if ever there was one, it has to be tak­en one piece at a time.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Pre-Flight Safe­ty Demon­stra­tion Gets Per­formed as a Mod­ern Dance: A Cre­ative Video from a Tai­wanese Air­line

China’s New Lumi­nous White Library: A Strik­ing Visu­al Intro­duc­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

French Illustrator Revives the Byzantine Empire with Magnificently Detailed Drawings of Its Monuments & Buildings: Hagia Sophia, Great Palace & More

The Byzan­tine Empire fell in the mid-15th cen­tu­ry, but some­thing of its spir­it still lives on. A great deal of it lives on in the work of the French illus­tra­tor Antoine Hel­bert. “This pas­sion was kin­dled by a birth­day gift from his moth­er,” writes a blog­ger named Herve Ris­son in a post about it. “This gift was a book about Byzan­tium. Hel­bert was 7 years old.” Like many an inter­est instilled ear­ly and deeply enough in child­hood, Hel­bert’s fas­ci­na­tion turned into an obses­sion — or any­way, what looks like it must be an obses­sion, since it has moti­vat­ed him to cre­ate such mag­nif­i­cent­ly detailed recre­ations of Byzan­tium in its hey­day.

“Attract­ed by the archi­tec­ture,” Ris­son writes of Hel­bert, “he has also a strong pas­sion for the his­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire, much maligned and despised, in com­par­i­son with the his­to­ry of the ‘real’ Roman Empire.”

That’s not to say that the Byzan­tine Empire, also known as the East­ern Roman Empire, has received no atten­tion, but undoubt­ed­ly it has received less than the West­ern Roman Empire it sur­vived in the fifth cen­tu­ry. Still, few his­tor­i­cal empires of any kind receive such an exquis­ite degree of atten­tion from any sin­gle liv­ing artist.

You can see some of Hel­bert’s work on his site, which is divid­ed into two sec­tions: one for scenes of Byzan­tium, and one for the archi­tec­ture of Byzan­tium. The lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, images from which you see here, includes such world-famous land­marks as Hagia Sophia, Boukoleon Palace, and the Great Palace of Con­stan­tino­ple — the city now known as Istan­bul, Turkey. The intact Hagia Sophia con­tin­ues to attract tourists in huge num­bers, but those who vis­it the Great Palace, or what remains of it, have to use their imag­i­na­tion to get a sense of what it must have looked like in the Byzan­tine Empire’s hey­day.

Hel­bert, who only made his first vis­it to Istan­bul at the age of 35, has put in that amount of imag­i­na­tive work and much more besides. “Since then,” writes Ris­son, Hel­bert “has tak­en great care to res­ur­rect the city of the emper­ors, with great atten­tion to details and to the sources avail­able. What he can’t find, he invents, but always with a great care for the his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy.” Indeed, many of Hel­bert’s illus­tra­tions don’t, at first glance, look like illus­tra­tions at all, but more like what you’d come up with if you trav­eled back to the Con­stan­tino­ple of fif­teen or so cen­turies ago with a cam­era. “The project has no lucra­tive goal,” Ris­son notes. “It’s a pas­sion. A byzan­tine pas­sion!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Map­ping the Sounds of Greek Byzan­tine Church­es: How Researchers Are Cre­at­ing “Muse­ums of Lost Sound”

The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium Pod­cast Picks Up Where The His­to­ry of Rome Left Off

How Ara­bic Trans­la­tors Helped Pre­serve Greek Phi­los­o­phy … and the Clas­si­cal Tra­di­tion

Hear the Hagia Sophia’s Awe-Inspir­ing Acoustics Get Recre­at­ed with Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tions, and Let Your­self Get Trans­port­ed Back to the Mid­dle Ages

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How Aretha Franklin Turned Otis Redding’s “Respect” Into a Civil Rights and Feminist Anthem

“R‑E-S-P-E-C‑T…” You know the rest.

When R&B leg­end Otis Red­ding, who wrote and first record­ed “Respect,” heard Aretha Franklin’s ver­sion of the song, he report­ed­ly said, “well, I guess it’s that girl’s song now.”

Aretha didn’t just cov­er Redding’s song, she “flipped the script,” notes The Wash­ing­ton Post video above, turn­ing his call for enti­tle­ment into a demand for empow­er­ment and cre­at­ing a fem­i­nist and civ­il rights anthem. She changed the lyrics to suit her, spelled it out in the cho­rus, and added the “sock it to me” refrain with her sis­ters Car­olyn and Erma—both suc­cess­ful soul singers in their own right—backing her up.

Franklin’s 1967 record­ing was “a dec­la­ra­tion of inde­pen­dence that was unapolo­getic, uncom­pro­mis­ing and unflinch­ing… a demand for some­thing that could no longer be denied…. The coun­try had nev­er heard any­thing like it.”

After Aretha reshaped it, the song “took on a uni­ver­sal­i­ty the orig­i­nal nev­er had,” says Franklin’s biog­ra­ph­er David Ritz. “It is a cred­it to her genius she was able to do so much with it. She should have been list­ed as a co-pro­duc­er of the song.”

Indeed, she might have been cred­it­ed as a co-writer of her ver­sion, but in a trag­ic irony, her biggest hit, in which she pro­claimed finan­cial inde­pen­dence and per­son­al pow­er, net­ted her exact­ly zero in roy­al­ties.

“For the rough­ly sev­en mil­lion times the song has been played on Amer­i­can radio sta­tions,” notes Ben Sis­ario at The New York Times, “she was paid noth­ing” due to “an aspect of copy­right law that has long irked the record busi­ness,” in which radio sta­tions pay the writ­ers and pub­lish­ers of songs and not the per­form­ers. This inequity has made Aretha’s “Respect” an anthem for musi­cians fight­ing for their rights as well.

But first and fore­most, Franklin’s “’Respect’… caught on with the black pow­er move­ment and fem­i­nists and human rights activists across the world,” notes the Post’s DeNeen Brown. “The coun­try was a tin­der box, as peo­ple of col­or demand­ed equal­i­ty and jus­tice that had been too long in com­ing.” Despite land­mark civ­il rights cas­es in the Supreme Court and pas­sage of the 1964 Civ­il Rights Act, resis­tance to change in both the North and South was sus­tained and often bru­tal­ly vio­lent.

For all its deep res­o­nance in the black com­mu­ni­ty, “Respect” spoke to every­one, char­ac­ter­iz­ing defi­ance to a social order that seemed intent on pre­serv­ing oppres­sive hier­ar­chies and his­toric injus­tices; “the song imme­di­ate­ly crossed over, oblit­er­at­ing col­or lines.” Released in April of 1967, it hit Num­ber One on the charts and “stayed there for at least 12 weeks.” It may not have made Franklin the mon­ey she deserved—though it made a mint for Otis Redding—but her record­ing pro­pelled her from star­dom to inter­na­tion­al super­star­dom. Hear her ver­sion fur­ther up and Redding’s orig­i­nal record­ing just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aretha Franklin’s Pitch-Per­fect Per­for­mance in The Blues Broth­ers, the Film That Rein­vig­o­rat­ed Her Career (1980)

Aretha Franklin’s Most Pow­er­ful Ear­ly Per­for­mances: “Respect,” “Chain of Fools,” “Say a Lit­tle Prayer” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

How an Art Conservator Completely Restores a Damaged Painting: A Short, Meditative Documentary

We here at Open Cul­ture take great plea­sure in soup to nuts doc­u­men­taries of mas­ter crafts­peo­ple at work, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the nar­ra­tion has been left out delib­er­ate­ly.

The med­i­ta­tive effect is more pow­er­ful that way, as is our won­der­ment.

We can always go rab­bit­ing after the tech­ni­cal specs of the trade being plied if we’re not entire­ly sure what we’re see­ing.

For instance, those tiny strands con­ser­va­tion­ist Julian Baum­gart­ner of Baum­gart­ner Fine Art Restora­tion places ever so care­ful­ly across a tear in painter Emma Gag­giot­ti Richards’ unti­tled 38”x29” self por­trait?

A tech­nique known as bridg­ing, where­in a rip is sutured using indi­vid­ual strands of Bel­gian linen and reversible con­ser­va­tion adhe­sive.

(We found that out on Baumgartner’s Insta­gram…)

We also take geeky delight in still life-like pre­sen­ta­tions of tools both spe­cial­ized and shock­ing­ly ordi­nary.

Baumgartner’s include an over-the-counter iron and a pair of orange-han­dled scis­sors, labelled so that no one walks away with them…

And who couldn’t think of alter­na­tive uses for those giant Q‑tips, though watch­ing Richards’ skin tones go from dingy to dewy in just a few mea­sured swabs implies that art con­ser­va­tion is the rea­son they were put on earth.

The conservator’s own painter­ly skills are very much on dis­play as he recre­ates dam­aged areas with filler and con­ser­va­tion qual­i­ty oils.

As he has not­ed else­where:

Just as dif­fi­cult as faces but no less impor­tant is fab­ric. Get­ting the col­or and vol­ume just right is very reward­ing. 

The goal of con­ser­va­tion is that the dam­age no longer affects the image as a whole. So we’re not ter­ri­bly con­cerned with whether under a micro­scope or extreme­ly close exam­i­na­tion the restora­tion is vis­i­ble. If you look close enough all con­ser­va­tion is vis­i­ble. 

Our phi­los­o­phy is to alter the art­work as lit­tle as pos­si­ble with respect to the orig­i­nal inten­tion of the artist.

There is one ques­tion left unmet by film­mak­er Jack Brandt­man’s video por­trait, one that casu­al online research seems unlike­ly to sat­is­fy.

What kind of music does the con­ser­va­tor lis­ten to in the stu­dio? Not that soporif­ic instru­men­tal sound­track, we hope!

Per­haps North­west­ern University’s great lis­ten­er-sup­port­ed, stu­dent run sta­tion, WNUR?

WBEZ, the leg­endary pub­lic radio sta­tio?

Or CHIRP, the lat­est addi­tion to Chicago’s radio pedi­gree?

It’d be a pleas­ant sur­prise to find him pow­er­ing through his dai­ly tasks to the tune of the local rock fea­tured in Brantman’s oth­er Made in Chica­go series entries on forg­ing knives and mak­ing jeans.

We live to have our expec­ta­tions defied!

Fol­low Baum­gart­ner Fine Art Restoration’s Insta­gram here.

via The Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Restor­ing a 400-Year-Old Paint­ing: A Five-Minute Primer

The Art of Restor­ing Clas­sic Films: Cri­te­ri­on Shows You How It Refreshed Two Hitch­cock Movies

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Books on Barack Obama’s Summer Reading List: Naipaul, Ondaatje & More

Pho­to by Pete Souza via obamawhitehouse.archive.gov

As the cur­rent pres­i­dent grinds his ax on Twit­ter, the for­mer one reads and reflects. Yes­ter­day, Barack Oba­ma post­ed on Face­book his sum­mer read­ing list, a mix of nov­els, mem­oirs, and instruc­tive non-fic­tion. He writes:

One of my favorite parts of sum­mer is decid­ing what to read when things slow down just a bit, whether it’s on a vaca­tion with fam­i­ly or just a qui­et after­noon. This sum­mer I’ve been absorbed by new nov­els, revis­it­ed an old clas­sic, and reaf­firmed my faith in our abil­i­ty to move for­ward togeth­er when we seek the truth. Here’s what I’ve been read­ing:

Tara Westover’s Edu­cat­ed is a remark­able mem­oir of a young woman raised in a sur­vival­ist fam­i­ly in Ida­ho who strives for edu­ca­tion while still show­ing great under­stand­ing and love for the world she leaves behind.

Set after WWII, Warlight by Michael Ondaat­je is a med­i­ta­tion on the lin­ger­ing effects of war on fam­i­ly.

With the recent pass­ing of V.S. Naipaul, I reread A House for Mr Biswas, the Nobel Prize win­ner’s first great nov­el about grow­ing up in Trinidad and the chal­lenge of post-colo­nial iden­ti­ty.

An Amer­i­can Mar­riage by Tayari Jones is a mov­ing por­tray­al of the effects of a wrong­ful con­vic­tion on a young African-Amer­i­can cou­ple.

Fact­ful­ness by Hans Rosling, an out­stand­ing inter­na­tion­al pub­lic health expert, is a hope­ful book about the poten­tial for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inher­ent bias­es.

POTUS’ pre­vi­ous lists of rec­om­mend­ed books can be found in the Relat­eds below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Barack Oba­ma Shares a List of Enlight­en­ing Books Worth Read­ing

The 5 Books on Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2016 Sum­mer Read­ing List

A Free POTUS Sum­mer Playlist: Pres. Oba­ma Curates 39 Songs for a Sum­mer Day

Hundreds of Classical Sculptures from the Uffizi Gallery Now Digitized & Put Online: Explore a Collection of 3D Interactive Scans

As the mighty House of Medici amassed works of art between the 15th and 18th cen­turies, could its mem­bers have imag­ined that we would still be enjoy­ing their col­lec­tion in the 21st? Per­haps they did, giv­en the ten­den­cy — some­times fatal — of busi­ness and polit­i­cal dynas­ties to imag­ine them­selves as eter­nal. But the Medicis could scarce­ly have imag­ined how peo­ple all around the world have just gained access to the sculp­ture they col­lect­ed, now dis­played at Flo­rence’s Uffizi Gallery and else­where, through the Uffizi Dig­i­ti­za­tion Project.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion between Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty’s Vir­tu­al World Her­itage Lab­o­ra­to­ry, the Politec­ni­co di Milano, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flo­rence, the five-year project, which began in 2016, has as its goal the com­plete dig­i­ti­za­tion of Greek and Roman sculp­ture in the Uffizi Gallery, Pit­ti Palace, and Boboli Gar­dens. Though not yet fin­ished, it has already man­aged to dig­i­tize more works of clas­si­cal sculp­ture than any oth­er effort by a sin­gle muse­um, and at its site you can take a look at every com­plete piece and frag­ment already dig­i­tized — and not just a look, as you’d get while pass­ing by on a walk through a muse­um, but a clos­er and more detailed look than you may ever have thought pos­si­ble.

“The gen­uine­ly easy-to-nav­i­gate web­site proves more inter­ac­tive than many com­put­er­ized muse­um archives,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Jas­mine Weber. “Users are giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trav­el inside tombs and inside every nook of the fig­ures’ con­struc­tion. The inter­face allows users to trav­el around and with­in the sculp­tures, get­ting clos­er than vis­i­tors often can in the muse­um space itself thanks to three-dimen­sion­al ren­der­ing from every imag­in­able angle.” The col­lec­tion, notes the Uffizzi Dig­i­ti­za­tion Pro­jec­t’s about page, con­tains “works of excep­tion­al inter­est to stu­dents of Greek and Roman art, notably the Medici Venus, the Medici Faun, the Nio­bids, and the Ari­adne.”

The Uffizi Dig­i­ti­za­tion Project has so far made more than 300 works avail­able to view as 3D mod­els, and you can find them by either search­ing the col­lec­tion or scrolling down to browse by cat­e­go­ry, a list that includes every­thing from altars and busts to stat­uettes and vas­es. And though no more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly impres­sive col­lec­tion of vir­tu­al clas­si­cal sculp­ture may exist on the inter­net, after expe­ri­enc­ing it you might nev­er­the­less feel the need to see these pieces in an envi­ron­ment oth­er than the black dig­i­tal void. If so, have a look at the vir­tu­al tour of the Uffizi Gallery we fea­tured ear­li­er this year here on Open Cul­ture. But be pre­pared: from there you may want to book a tick­et to Flo­rence and see the sculp­ture col­lect­ed by the House of Medici in the very city where it rose to such vast eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al pow­er.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of The Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the World-Famous Col­lec­tion of Renais­sance Art

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

Artists Put Online 3D, High Res­o­lu­tion Scans of 3,000-Year-Old Nefer­ti­ti Bust (and Con­tro­ver­sy Ensues)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Aretha Franklin’s Pitch-Perfect Performance in The Blues Brothers, the Film That Reinvigorated Her Career (1980)

There are many films of the 70s and 80s that could nev­er get made today. This is not your grumpy uncle’s rant about polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness gone wild. In many cas­es, it’s very much for the best. (And did we ever need “movies” like Porky’s or Hard­bod­ies in the first place? I’m going to say no.) Styles and social mores change. Actors and direc­tors who alone could have pulled off what they did, when they did, pass away. And so too do musi­cians whose equal we will nev­er see again. When these inim­itable forces come togeth­er, it’s once-in-a-life­time cel­lu­loid mag­ic. Remakes and ill-advised sequels seem like sac­ri­lege.

I am speak­ing on this occa­sion of The Blues Broth­ers, the 1980 musi­cal com­e­dy that brought togeth­er a pan­theon of leg­ends now most­ly depart­ed for that hall of fame in the sky. John Belushi, of course, but also John Can­dy and Car­rie Fish­er. James Brown, Cab Cal­loway, Ray Charles, John Lee Hook­er… and Aretha Franklin, whom the whole world now mourns. Charges of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion might get lobbed at The Blues Broth­ers, but they would be mis­placed. For all its absur­dist slap­stick, the film was noth­ing if not a cel­e­bra­tion of black Amer­i­can music, a rev­er­ent, lov­ing trib­ute to the blues, R&B, and clas­sic soul that went direct­ly to the source, and in so doing, rein­vig­o­rat­ed Aretha’s flag­ging career.

The music scene of the late sev­en­ties had “turned away from soul and toward dis­co,” writes Lau­ra Bradley at Van­i­ty Fair. “Franklin was strug­gling to make the tran­si­tion, espe­cial­ly after Atlantic allowed her con­tract to expire.” Her attempt to keep up in the 1979 dis­co album La Diva had flopped. She was the Queen of Soul, not sweaty dance­floors, and so she would remain, thanks in part to the antics of Jake and Elwood and writer/director John Lan­dis, who cast her as Mrs. Mur­phy, a din­er wait­ress who gets to call the broth­ers “two honkys dressed like Hasidic dia­mond mer­chants” who “look like they’re from the CIA.”

The sto­ry of her cast­ing is bit­ter­sweet. “You have to remem­ber that in 1979,” says Lan­dis, “rhythm and blues was basi­cal­ly over, and the num­ber one music in the world was Abba, the Bee Gees… when peo­ple ask, how did you get the likes of Aretha Franklin and James Brown, it was easy. We just called them and said, ‘Wan­na job?’” Stu­dio exec­u­tives balked, want­i­ng hip­per acts like Rose Royce, who had sung the theme from Car Wash. It would have been a tragedy.

Thank­ful­ly, Lan­dis persisted—he had writ­ten the part for her. “Every­one in the movie,” he says in a recent inter­view, “the parts were writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly for them.” (Except James Brown, who took over as the preach­er when Lit­tle Richard “found Jesus, again,” and went to back to his church in Ten­nessee.) Lan­dis also insist­ed on Aretha singing “Think,” a song from her 1968 album Aretha Now, instead of her biggest hit. (“Real­ly?” he recalls her say­ing, “Don’t you want me to sing ‘Respect’?”) The song came direct­ly out of the dia­logue between her and blues gui­tarist Matt Mur­phy, play­ing her hus­band.

Lan­dis remem­bers Aretha’s re-record­ing of the extend­ed film ver­sion of the song:

So, we laid down the tracks for “Think.” She came in, a cou­ple days before she was to be shot. She lis­tened to the track once and said, “OK, but I would like to replace the piano.” We said, great, what do you want to do? She said, “I’ll play.”

So we got a piano, she sat in a record­ing stu­dio, and it was Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios’ record­ing stu­dios in Chica­go, a very old, funky stu­dio we were delight­ed to be in because it was where Chess Records did all their record­ings. We had a piano for her. She sat with her back to us, at the keys, and the piano and her voice was mic’d. She did it once, lis­tened to the play­back. She said, “I’d like to do it again.” She played piano as she sang, and the sec­ond take is the one in the movie. She was just won­der­ful. She didn’t like doing so many takes and she had issues with lip-sync­ing.

Franklin also thought of the expe­ri­ence fond­ly, writ­ing in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy that it was “some­thing I enjoyed mak­ing tremen­dous­ly.” She did final­ly get the chance to sing “Respect” in a Blues Broth­ers film, almost twen­ty years lat­er, when she reprised her role in Blues Broth­ers 2000. It’s arguable whether that movie ever should have been made. But there’s nev­er any argu­ing with Aretha Franklin’s com­mand­ing voice. See her tell off Mur­phy and Elwood Blues, again, in a clip from the belat­ed sequel below. Queen Aretha may have left us, but her lega­cy will live for­ev­er.

via Van­i­ty Fair

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aretha Franklin’s Most Pow­er­ful Ear­ly Per­for­mances: “Respect,” “Chain of Fools,” “Say a Lit­tle Prayer” & More

John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd Get Bri­an Wil­son Out of Bed and Force Him to Go Surf­ing, 1976

The Night John Belushi Cart­wheeled Onstage Dur­ing a Grate­ful Dead Show & Sang “U.S. Blues” with the Band (1980)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

David Bowie’s “Heroes” Delightfully Performed by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

Cov­er tunes are not trib­ute bands. The best cov­ers don’t aim to be car­bon copies. They expand our con­cept of the orig­i­nal with an unex­pect­ed ele­ment or fresh lens.

Would you believe me if I told you that the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s take on David Bowie’s “Heroes”—the sec­ond most cov­ered tune in the late rocker’s canon—is even sex­i­er than the orig­i­nal?

No?

Good.

Noth­ing ever will be.

It is, how­ev­er, a com­pelling case for the pow­er of mul­ti­ple ukule­les.

A sin­gle uke could only be dwarfed by the mem­o­ry of “Heroes”’ dri­ving, famous­ly lay­ered sound, a group effort that includ­ed pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti and gui­tarist Robert Fripp.

Bowie may have referred to the tem­po and rhythm as “plod­ding,” but co-writer Bri­an Eno’s descrip­tion of the sound as some­thing “grand and hero­ic” comes much clos­er to the mark.

Are eight ukes grand and hero­ic? Well, no. Not real­ly.

And there is some­thing unde­ni­ably humor­ous about a row of for­mal­ly attired, seat­ed, mid­dle-aged men and women, wail­ing away in uni­son with their right hands, but it’s telling that the audi­ence at New York’s mul­ti­me­dia art cabaret (le) Pois­son Rouge isn’t laugh­ing.

Admit­ted­ly, there were a few iso­lat­ed chuck­les in the begin­ning, a few notes in.

Philistines.

Prob­a­bly been dragged there on blind dates with ukulele-enthu­si­asts.

To be char­i­ta­ble, there will always be those in need of con­vinc­ing that the ukulele is a legit­i­mate instru­ment.

Who bet­ter to con­vince them than the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain, whose very name sug­gests that its mem­bers are in on the joke, and capa­ble of turn­ing it on its head?

The lyrics, as most Bowie fans can tell you, were inspired by real life, but not exact­ly Bowie’s. The tune was on sol­id foot­ing, but the words were still slow to come, when Bowie glanced out the win­dow of his Berlin record­ing stu­dio to catch a back up singer and Vis­con­ti, mar­ried at the time, enjoy­ing what they believed was a stolen kiss.

The rest, as they say is his­to­ry, kept some­what shroud­ed in mys­tery until rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly.

The Ukulele Orches­tra singers wise­ly steer clear of Bowie’s howl­ing, emo­tion­al deliv­ery, which Vis­con­ti got on tape almost before the ink on those lyrics had time to dry.

Instead, they hon­or him, and the place this song has in so many people’s hearts, with their sin­cer­i­ty.

Lis­ten to the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s take on Bowie’s Life on Mars here.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain Per­forms Stun­ning Cov­ers of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Talk­ing Heads’ “Psy­cho Killer” & More

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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