Today Warner announce the release of the Aretha Franklin boxed set, A Portrait Of The Queen, featuring five classic albums from the early ‘70s, plus bonus material of session alternates, outtakes, B-sides, and demos.
The set features the Lady Soul’s five original studio albums from the first half of the ‘70s – This Girl’s In Love With You, Spirit In The Dark, Young, Gifted And Black, Hey Now Hey (The Other Side Of The Sky) and Let Me In Your Life – and tracks her evolution as a singer/songwriter, showcases the fearlessness of her craft freely exploring genres and sounds, experimenting with writing and arranging various types of songs. The CD set includes bonus material collecting session alternates, outtakes, B-sides, and demos compiled with their accompanying albums, while the LP set includes a sixth LP of highlights from the bonus material.
The albums in both the vinyl and CD sets are remastered from the original analog master tapes by GRAMMY Award-winning engineers Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering and Michael Graves at Osiris Studio, respectively. Produced by Grammy Award-winning Cheryl Pawelski, the sets boasts extensive liner notes from Billboard’s Gail Mitchell and the British Ambassador of Soul David Nathan.
