0:09

I

0:11

just can't say enough about

0:13

what music can do for the soul

0:15

if you need, as we did

0:18

in Vietnam, something to hold on

0:20

to.

0:22

The moment I wake up,

0:26

before I put on my

0:28

makeup, I say a

0:30

little prayer for you.

0:32

That prayer was for the soldiers. Burt

0:35

Bacharach, when he wrote that song, intended

0:38

it, when Dionne Warwick recorded it, as

0:40

an anthem and a call-out

0:43

and a reflection memory for

0:45

soldiers in Vietnam.

0:47

We'll love you forever and ever, we

0:49

never will part of our love you to...

0:52

Hi, this is Doug Bradley. I'm a Vietnam

0:54

veteran. I served in the U.S.

0:57

Army in Vietnam November of 1970, November 1971, mainly

1:01

sustained by music. It kept me

1:03

and others alive in Vietnam, and I've spent most

1:06

of my 50-plus years since then

1:09

writing about that experience and

1:11

the experience of others and really channeling

1:14

it through the music that we all listened to

1:16

during that time. It was so integral

1:19

to who we were and what was going on

1:21

and how we got back home.

1:26

This is the American Forces Vietnam

1:28

Network. We all listened

1:30

to the same music. It was a shared soundtrack. It was

1:32

communal for us and there for all

1:35

of us. There

1:37

were some singers and artists that,

1:39

regardless of the time you were in Vietnam,

1:42

remember that we're talking about a war

1:44

that went from 64 to 75. Parts

1:47

of music that were essential, Aretha

1:49

was one of those voices. How

1:51

her music sort of spoke to the soldiers,

1:54

two great examples. One is Chain

1:56

of Fools,

1:57

a civil rights song, a song about the

1:59

chain of command. And I say a little

2:01

prayer even more emphatically. African

2:04

American soldiers, they talk about the assassination

2:07

of Dr. Martin Luther King. Many

2:09

soldiers said, if you can't protect my leader

2:12

at home, what am I doing over here fighting this

2:14

person? And I'm not sure what this is about.

2:17

And Aretha tapped into that

2:20

notion and those feelings of chain

2:22

of fools and chain of command, and mostly African

2:24

American soldiers being at the bottom of that chain of command,

2:27

and then later comfort of prayer.

2:31

I

2:32

had always loved this song. It

2:34

was part of the ecosystem of

2:37

my household

2:38

growing up, African American

2:40

in the 70s in

2:42

the San Francisco

2:45

Bay Area. The daughter of

2:48

Southern parents who escaped the Jim

2:50

Crow South, lovers of

2:52

music, as well as educators. It's

2:55

a song that is very

2:58

dear to me and extremely intimate.

3:00

My name is Daphne A. Brooks. I

3:03

am professor of African American studies

3:05

at Yale University. I

3:07

can't think of another pop

3:10

song by any

3:12

vocalist, but especially

3:14

by black women vocalists Aretha

3:17

and Dionne before her, who

3:20

walked us through the

3:22

various intimate domestic

3:25

details of everyday

3:28

life. Moving from inside

3:31

of the home, getting dressed,

3:33

putting your makeup on, to going

3:36

to work. So we're also thinking

3:38

about the late 60s, the early

3:40

70s, the ways in which

3:43

the civil rights movement, the black power movement,

3:46

and the second wave feminist movement

3:49

are all these historical phenomena

3:52

that the protagonist in this

3:54

song is navigating

3:57

in these very casual ways.

4:01

Hi, my name's Ruma and I'm a singer-songwriter.

4:04

I think I Say a Little Prayer was probably one

4:06

of the first Bacharach and David songs

4:09

I had heard and fallen in love with.

4:11

There is so much of the New Testament

4:14

in Hal David's lyrics, so much reference

4:16

to the Bible and Bible passages.

4:19

I wonder if he was writing for Dion.

4:26

Dion Warwick, you know, being from

4:28

the church community and

4:30

having such a close relationship with Hal

4:33

David, I think that

4:35

he was writing for her, wanting

4:38

her to relate, to like the song,

4:40

to connect to the song. So

4:42

that spiritual element in the song

4:45

probably initially was for Dion. But

4:49

just like some songs Bacharach and

4:51

David wrote that many artists covered,

4:54

some songs Dion owns, and

4:56

this is a song that Aretha owns.

5:03

When I was, I

5:05

think in my early teens, maybe 13,

5:07

14, I chanced upon the best of Aretha Franklin.

5:13

A Say a Little Prayer was on that tape, I used

5:15

to have it on my Walkman. It

5:17

fast became my favourite go-to

5:20

record and I got really attached to it. I

5:23

wrote a song called Aretha and it was

5:26

about a little girl who walks to school

5:28

and doesn't have anyone to talk to. She's

5:30

getting bullied at school, her mother has a mental

5:33

illness. My mother had a mental illness

5:35

and I didn't really have much encouragement. And

5:38

so I think that I was looking for

5:40

the maternal, you know, the mother Mary,

5:43

the feminine,

5:44

the ultimate female musical

5:47

icon as a sort of mother

5:49

figure in the song.

5:51

It's about feeling encouraged

5:53

and inspired by music

5:56

and how music can be a friend,

5:58

can be a companion.

5:59

can save you basically.

6:11

My husband Rob Chirac-Barry, when

6:14

he was about 18, 19 years old, he

6:16

was working with Stevie Wonder and

6:19

Stevie Wonder recommended Rob

6:22

as a young, talented musician

6:24

to Dion.

6:25

And Dion had hired Rob as

6:27

a musician.

6:29

I've had the privilege of pretty much my whole life

6:31

getting to work with both Burt Bacharach and

6:33

Dion Warwick since I was, I think,

6:35

my late teens. Met Burt through

6:37

Dion. This was around the time they had started

6:40

touring together again. So I was

6:42

very fortunate to be sitting on stage about six

6:44

feet away from Burt. We could

6:46

actually high five on stage. We were so close. And

6:49

then with Dion sitting in the crook of the piano.

6:52

So I had a really bird's eye view into that dynamic

6:54

of the two of them together.

6:58

My name is Rob Chirac-Barry. I

7:00

say a little prayer has always been in both

7:02

of their shows. Different versions of

7:04

that have changed over time. And

7:08

I got to play Burt's

7:10

version slightly different than Dion's version

7:13

with every cover like Aretha's cover. They

7:15

changed slightly. But the DNA

7:17

of the song is really still there.

7:21

And what's

7:21

inherent in that song that

7:23

makes it so spectacular are the time

7:25

changes and the tempo changes. There's

7:28

four fours going to three fours and back to four

7:30

fours where you drop a beat and you add a beat

7:33

and then you break the phrase. So he was already

7:36

at that point playing with odd phrasing

7:38

in his compositions. And the

7:41

beautiful thing about that is he was able to

7:43

do that so naturally. And as

7:45

you've seen from when that song has shown up in movies and stuff,

7:48

every person out there still knows

7:50

how the phrasing goes and

7:51

can sing it, sing along. And so that's

7:53

a real testament to the genius of his composition

7:56

that you can do something that's really highly complex

7:58

under the hood.

7:59

and make it come off so natural. And

8:02

again, it's one of those songs you think, well, that must

8:04

have always been in the ether and he plucked it

8:06

down because it just seems like it's

8:08

always been there. And

8:11

you take, of course, the Hal David

8:14

lyric. One of the beauties

8:16

of Hal was that he was very

8:19

constricted oftentimes by Burt

8:22

in the amount of syllables and the amount of notes he could have.

8:24

So he really had to be a master

8:26

of lyric to find the right words that also

8:28

hit

8:29

the right amount of syllables and the right amount

8:31

of notes because very often it was, no,

8:34

you may not add an extra note syllable there.

8:37

You have to make it work with the melody that exists. So

8:40

when that comes together as it often did with

8:42

Bach, Rach, and David, it's

8:43

a really glorious thing.

8:45

I run for the bus dear, oh,

8:48

while riding I think of a steer,

8:52

I stay a little careful for

8:54

you. They

8:58

had a show that they would do together and

9:01

then Deion had her show that she would do separately

9:03

and Burt had his show that he would do separately and

9:05

I played in all three of those shows. We

9:08

called them the record medley. I

9:10

say a little prayer, do you know the way to San Jose?

9:13

And the funny thing was you've got to keep all those medleys

9:15

in your head because it'd be very easy

9:17

to hit the ending of San Jose and

9:20

because of another medley, wanted to circle back to,

9:22

I say a little prayer. And

9:25

that was always a bit of exercise to

9:27

keep all those medleys in the right keys

9:28

in mind. But it was a great

9:30

exercise for me because I got to learn firsthand

9:33

the inner workings of those songs. And

9:36

then also to find out where Burt

9:38

really wanted the accents on things.

9:42

I say a little prayer for you.

9:43

You know in that chorus. I'm giving,

9:45

I'm giving, I'm giving, I'm giving, I'm

9:47

giving. I'm giving, I'm giving, I'm giving. Really

9:50

wanted the accent on that downbeat, on

9:52

that lyric. The guy

9:54

just, I don't know what to say. Those were just wonderful times.

9:57

And I was so honored to be, to

9:59

really kind of.

9:59

graduate from the school of Bacharach

10:02

and Warwick because I got

10:04

to learn from them first hand really young and I learned

10:07

so much from both of them so much about

10:09

arranging and phrasing and composition

10:11

from Bert so much about styling

10:13

and how to crawl into a lyric and

10:16

of course Dion's version and Aretha's

10:18

version are a bit different I mean Aretha has

10:20

certainly put the sass and the swank in that

10:22

version and that's a lovely lovely

10:25

version. Dion really shines through

10:27

that bell of a voice and that sort of perfection

10:29

on a melody and then Aretha's approach

10:32

being so full of soul and

10:35

energy and urgency that

10:37

it just it just gives

10:38

a new meaning to that song.

10:48

In our family music

10:51

was a form of communicating

10:54

and bonding with one another across

10:57

our unique kind of generational divides.

10:59

My brother is 17 years older than me, my

11:02

sister is 10 years older than me, so

11:04

we had these kinds of intergenerational

11:06

moments of being able to share things

11:09

about ourselves and the socio-cultural

11:12

experiences that we each uniquely

11:14

had through the music that we valued.

11:17

And

11:19

Aretha is kind of an interesting figure

11:23

Having grown up in the church, been

11:25

the daughter of this legendary preacher

11:28

Cielle Franklin, she was

11:30

beloved by my parents. She

11:33

was giving us a kind of mature

11:36

black womanhood that was very

11:38

aspirational

11:39

modeling a kind of fullness

11:41

of black womanhood.

11:47

Aretha took that in a different place

11:50

not just the way she covered it but

11:52

the way she owned it. She

11:55

brought I think some quiet and

11:57

comfort and solace and frankly campered

11:59

down.

11:59

the temperature of what was going

12:02

on with black troops in Vietnam. Her

12:04

message, her song, particularly that song,

12:07

did a lot to help them to get

12:09

through their period in Vietnam and to come home and

12:12

maybe not want to shoot the first white guy that

12:14

they saw. The

12:16

song got a lot of airplay. Armed Forces

12:18

Vietnam Network, AFVN, was

12:20

broadcasting 24 hours a day, seven

12:23

days a week. And one night, I

12:25

remember, when they were playing songs

12:28

for Labor Day weekend,

12:28

it was almost like a countdown.

12:31

A bunch of us were gathered in a hooch, these makeshift

12:34

barracks that we lived in, in Vietnam. So

12:36

a bunch of guys were gathered in our hooch set night because we were

12:38

trying to decide what songs were going to be played on the radio.

12:41

Aretha kept getting a lot in there. They're

12:43

going to play Chain of Fools, they're going to

12:45

play Respect, they're going to play

12:47

Think, and what did they play? They

12:50

played I Say a Little Prayer, and we

12:53

all just sat there. It was

12:55

almost like we were holding hands and praying. When

13:00

that came on and you

13:02

looked around the hooch, everybody

13:05

was back home somewhere else. They weren't with one another.

13:09

They were transported into a place

13:11

where they were safe, where they were loved, where

13:13

somebody cared for them. And

13:16

that was the power of her and that song.

13:20

We were aware when we heard that song

13:22

that this was a woman, Aretha

13:25

Franklin, that could take any song and

13:28

make it stronger, better, her own.

13:32

That song became ours. She was ours

13:34

by doing that to us.

13:37

My mother was a grand, extraordinary,

13:40

Afro-steel magnolia,

13:44

as

13:50

I sometimes called her, astonishingly

13:53

elegant.

13:54

She was 96 when she passed

13:56

away and vibrant

13:58

to the very end of her life. life. She

14:01

loved music. For

14:03

me, as she was beginning

14:05

her transition, the best way to stay

14:08

connected to her was to build a playlist

14:12

that was a love letter to her. And

14:15

Say a Little Prayer was one of the first songs that I

14:17

put on the playlist. And so as

14:19

I was driving to see

14:22

her

14:22

each morning, I would

14:24

listen to the song.

14:29

For me, it was a way

14:32

of sustaining

14:34

a form of communication

14:36

with her when the conventional

14:40

forms of human communication

14:42

were beginning to fail us.

14:46

I do really value

14:49

the message of

14:52

the ways in which care for a loved

14:54

one can remain unbroken.

14:57

It is a testament to the

14:59

unbrokenness of care

15:02

and intimacy. And that,

15:05

for me, has translated

15:07

into a form of

15:09

strength and recovery

15:12

in the face of devastating loss.

15:20

So it's 1968 and a replay is in Stockholm to do a show

15:22

at a rather famous ballroom. A

15:32

good friend of mine and I, we

15:35

dearly wanted to meet her.

15:37

I'm Hasse, Hassehus. I'm

15:40

a Swedish retired

15:42

social anthropologist. I've dabbled

15:44

at songwriting and I used

15:47

to be a club DJ.

15:48

We went down to the hotel where

15:51

Aretha Franklin was staying and I

15:54

think we waited in the lobby for a while

15:56

and when she appeared we

15:58

ran up to her and

15:59

We gave her a Swedish

16:02

wooden horse, which is kind of a traditional

16:05

gift in these parts. I had

16:07

brought my copy of Lady Soul for

16:10

her to sign. And she signed

16:12

it and we had a chat and she

16:14

was ever so friendly. And

16:16

then she said, why don't you come to the rehearsals

16:19

tomorrow? You know, would you like to do

16:21

that? And we said, wow,

16:23

yes, of course. So the next

16:25

day we went to the ballroom.

16:29

And when she saw us, she said, oh, hi.

16:31

Oh, I remember you guys from yesterday and

16:34

welcome.

16:35

And then after a while, she said, why don't you come up

16:37

on stage with us? So

16:39

there we were on stage with Aretha

16:43

and her sister Carolyn, who was

16:45

wonderfully friendly as well, and

16:47

the band. And we spent

16:50

the whole afternoon with

16:51

her.

16:56

She was rehearsing her moves, you know,

16:58

and she was in ordinary pants and

17:00

a t-shirt. And I

17:03

took some photos and they didn't

17:05

come out incredibly well. But I look at

17:07

them often thinking, wow, I

17:09

spent the day with Aretha when I was 15.

17:12

Many

17:14

years later, I read that she

17:16

was tough on journalists.

17:18

But with us, she was extremely

17:20

friendly and fun, all

17:23

smiles and laughter. I

17:25

think my friend, Joanne, being a fan of

17:27

Dionne Warwick's, probably

17:29

knew the

17:31

song better than I did. But we

17:34

listened to it together and we sort of

17:36

both agreed that this is the ultimate

17:38

version.

17:41

I mean, Burt Bacharach wrote incredible

17:44

melodies and Hal David obviously

17:46

wrote incredible lyrics. But

17:49

that one, it's a match in heaven, isn't

17:51

it? What I love

17:53

about it is it sort of mixes

17:55

the everyday with the spiritual,

17:58

all those lines about.

17:59

waking up in the morning and wondering

18:02

what dress to wear and riding

18:04

on the bus and at work

18:06

I just take time and all through my coffee

18:09

break time and then I say a little

18:11

prayer for you. That's just incredible.

18:16

It

18:16

moved me then but I think it moves

18:18

me even more now. Getting

18:20

older I realize what

18:22

those words can mean.

18:26

I think it evokes feelings

18:29

of joy because it's such a joyful,

18:33

generous song. It's one of the greatest

18:35

ever. I go back to it a lot.

18:39

The song means so much to me that I'm actually

18:41

thinking of incorporating it

18:44

into a speech I'm going to make for

18:46

my son

18:47

and his fiance when they get married

18:49

this summer. You know it's such a loving,

18:52

loving message in that song. It

18:56

takes me back to my meeting

18:59

her all those years ago. To that

19:02

day 55 years ago is

19:04

it? When she invited us to join her

19:06

on stage. I'm sort of overwhelmed

19:10

by joyful memories of

19:12

having spent a day with arguably

19:14

the finest voice of the moon.

19:23

Okay we're recording.

19:26

My name is Nina Freelon

19:28

and I am a singer. The

19:33

moment I wake

19:35

up before

19:39

I put on my

19:42

makeup I say

19:44

a little prayer. The song is one

19:46

that I first encountered with Dionne

19:49

Warwick's arrangement. I mean

19:51

that's the first time it touched

19:52

my heart. The

19:56

song has such a beautiful

19:58

quality in her hands.

20:01

of love and

20:03

hopefulness and just

20:06

beauty. And then of course

20:08

Aretha Franklin's version

20:14

touched my heart. It had

20:17

a bit of a different quality rooted

20:20

in a kind of a gospel understanding

20:23

and again hope. But

20:25

for me

20:27

it never held grief until

20:31

after my husband passed

20:32

away. I

20:36

say a little prayer for you in every

20:38

moment. In the mundane

20:40

moments of life when

20:42

I'm combing my hair, when I'm getting dressed, what

20:46

is it getting used to the presence of his

20:48

absence? That's where the prayer

20:51

lives for me.

20:53

Not only am I saying a little prayer for

20:57

him, I'm also saying

20:59

a little prayer for myself.

21:03

Phil Freelon was, and I you know

21:05

I struggle with that, was,

21:07

I want to say

21:11

is, he was

21:12

kind

21:21

and he loved me unconditionally. He

21:24

just was such a great father, a great

21:27

husband. We had a lot of fun

21:29

together. He was my confidant,

21:31

my friend, my lover, my soulmate.

21:35

He was the architect of record on the Smithsonian

21:38

Museum of African-American History and Culture

21:40

in Washington DC. And so

21:43

we had these sort of

21:45

kind of like a power couple vibe.

21:47

I had my area of shine.

21:49

He had his area of shine. Together

21:52

we applauded and

21:54

supported and loved each other.

21:57

It was not a competitive

21:59

spirit.

22:00

I can't even speak

22:02

about what kind of space that

22:05

leaves in my life right

22:06

now. To live without you

22:08

will only mean heartbreak

22:11

for me. So

22:16

when Phil passed away in 2019,

22:18

one of the things he said to me was, keep

22:21

singing. He had ALS,

22:23

so that meant a long

22:27

journey where we could see the

22:29

end coming. That was a queer

22:32

kind of mixed blessing. You

22:34

know, it wasn't a sudden thing where you

22:36

wake up one morning and the one you love

22:38

is gone, and there's not even the opportunity

22:40

to say goodbye. We had many moments

22:43

that were quite powerful. And one of

22:45

the things he said to me was, don't stop

22:48

singing.

22:50

And I promised him that I would not stop.

22:53

But I had no idea if I could keep that promise.

22:57

So my creative

22:59

life was a way for me to

23:02

cope with my grief. That's the simplest way

23:04

I can put it.

23:06

Being strong, I wasn't strong

23:08

enough. Having enough faith, I

23:10

didn't have enough faith.

23:12

Being able to bear up, you know,

23:14

stiff upper lip kind of thing, I didn't have

23:16

that. What I did have access

23:19

to after a time

23:22

was my creative life.

23:24

And so it was a place for me to tell story,

23:27

to sing, to create,

23:30

to engage with my grief.

23:33

Not to pretend that everything was okay,

23:35

because everything was not okay. But

23:38

music was a profound and sturdy

23:41

container to place

23:44

my grief inside.

23:50

The real mark of the power

23:53

of a tune is how it can

23:55

accompany you through your life. In

23:58

the happy times, in the not so easy times.

23:59

happy times. And so this is one of those tunes

24:02

that has really held

24:04

me in good stead. I've

24:07

actually recorded it more than once. The

24:09

first time I recorded it had

24:11

a whole different kind of Latin vibe

24:14

and it just, it was a beautiful arrangement,

24:16

but it didn't

24:18

touch me the way this

24:20

recording on Time Traveler, I had to

24:23

take it back to church. I just had to.

24:34

It's a kind of prayer

24:37

and a kind of way of reckoning

24:39

because sometimes you don't know what you're feeling

24:41

really until you write it down

24:43

or until you sing about it or until you,

24:46

you know, you engage with

24:49

it. And I tried running. I

24:51

really did try to just put it to the side

24:54

and be okay.

24:57

It was impossible.

25:00

I wanted to express the way I was feeling,

25:02

the

25:03

strength of the plea, you

25:05

know, the moment I wake up, before

25:09

I put on my makeup in

25:12

a way that was different from, you know,

25:15

just kind of getting pretty for the day.

25:20

Prayer is technology.

25:22

Prayer changes things. It changes

25:24

things on a molecular level. And

25:27

singing, in my humble

25:29

opinion, is profound

25:32

prayer. It is the casting

25:35

into the ethers in a way we don't

25:37

quite understand

25:39

this hope, this

25:42

desire, this plea,

25:45

this connection with

25:48

the other side of the veil that

25:51

exists because we can feel it. I know he

25:55

can feel.

25:56

I know I

25:58

feel his presence. Not

26:00

just when I'm singing, but I feel his presence

26:02

daily.

26:09

I don't think you can be married 40 years and

26:11

have all of these experiences and just

26:13

have it wink off. I

26:17

just don't believe that.

26:24

For me, that song makes

26:27

me smile, which is a

26:29

crazy thing when I think about it. There was not a lot to smile

26:31

about at times about Vietnam. There's

26:33

still a lot of pain, but that song

26:36

gives me comfort and makes me smile because I

26:38

know that it not

26:40

only helped to bring me home, but

26:42

it helped to bring a lot of vets home too. It

26:45

calmed a lot of hearts. And in

26:47

some ways that's the best we could do.

26:51

Yeah, it's a song that's gone through the

26:53

decades with me. It's

26:56

a very comforting song. It's a radically

26:58

comforting song. And so

27:00

when I listened to that song, that song is

27:02

about coming home. It's about

27:05

being at home.

27:06

It's about safety. It's

27:09

about always remembering

27:11

and holding onto the

27:14

people who constitute

27:17

the very core of who you are,

27:20

the absolute necessity

27:22

of black love and

27:25

the ways in which we carry black love with

27:27

us from inside the home

27:29

to out into the world,

27:32

a world that is so often cruel to

27:35

black folks. This is our

27:37

shield, our cover. This

27:40

is our place that we can always come back to.