Dionne War­wick:

Aretha Franklin and Dionne War­wick are two of the high­est chart­ing women in music his­to­ry. Between them, they’ve made 129 appear­ances in the Bill­board Hot 100. Two of those were with the same song: the 1966 Burt Bacharach and Hal David com­po­si­tion, “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer.”

The song was writ­ten espe­cial­ly for War­wick. David’s lyrics are about a wom­an’s dai­ly thoughts of her man, who is away in Viet­nam. Bacharach arranged and pro­duced the orig­i­nal record­ing in April of 1966, but was unhap­py with the result. “I thought I blew it,” he told the Los Ange­les Times in 1998. “The tem­po seemed too fast. I nev­er want­ed the record to come out. So what hap­pens? They put out the record and it was a huge hit. I was wrong.” The song was released over Bacharach’s objec­tions in Octo­ber, 1967 and rose to num­ber 4 on the Bill­board Hot 100 and num­ber 8 on the Bill­board R & B charts.

Aretha Franklin:

A few months after War­wick­’s sin­gle came out, Aretha Franklin and The Sweet Inspi­ra­tions were singing “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer” for fun dur­ing a break in record­ing ses­sions for Aretha Now. Pro­duc­er Jer­ry Wexler liked what he heard, and decid­ed to record the song. With Franklin on piano and the Mus­cle Shoals Rhythm Sec­tion behind her, it was record­ed in one take. Franklin’s ver­sion has more of a gospel and rhythm & blues feel, with a flu­id call-and-response inter­play between the lead and back­up singers.

Released in July of 1968, the sin­gle was less of a crossover hit than War­wick­’s ver­sion — it peaked at num­ber 10 on the Hot 100 chart — but rose all the way to num­ber 3 on the R & B chart. Over­shad­owed at first, Franklin’s record­ing has grown in stature over the years. Even Bacharach likes it bet­ter than the one he made with War­wick. As he told Mitch Albom ear­li­er this year, “Aretha just made a far bet­ter record.”

You can lis­ten above, as War­wick per­forms “I Say a Lit­tle Prayer” in an uniden­ti­fied tele­vi­sion broad­cast and Franklin sings it with the Sweet­hearts of Soul on the August 31, 1970 Cliff Richard Show. Tell us: Which ver­sion do you think is bet­ter?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Aretha Franklin Per­forms ‘Respect’ Live in the South of France, 1970

The Queen of Soul Con­quers Europe: Aretha Franklin in Ams­ter­dam, 1968

She is 14 years old, and appar­ent­ly French. Not much else is known about this pre­co­cious young gui­tarist who goes by the name “Tina S” on her YouTube chan­nel.

Tina became an Inter­net sen­sa­tion in late May, when she post­ed an aston­ish­ing cov­er ver­sion of “Erup­tion,” from Van Halen’s debut album. Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolf­gang was so impressed he tweet­ed, “I need to meet this girl!!!”

Writ­ing as “@Tina_Guitare,” the young musi­cian replied, “I need to meet you too! Haha :))” Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres also went on Twit­ter and said, “This girl is incred­i­ble. If you know where she is, I want her on my show imme­di­ate­ly.” There was no reply to that one — at least not on Twit­ter.

Now Tina is back with a new video, made by her teacher Renaud Louis-Ser­vais, in which she rips through a cov­er of “Vival­di Trib­ute,” Patrick Ron­dat’s speed met­al adap­ta­tion of the cli­mac­tic “Presto” (very fast) move­ment of the Baroque com­pos­er Anto­nio Vivaldi’s “Sum­mer” con­cer­to from The Four Sea­sons. It’s an amaz­ing per­for­mance for a 14-year-old, although you should also see her play­ing clas­si­cal gui­tar when she was nine.

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!

I recent­ly read an arti­cle in which a music crit­ic argued for Bob Dylan’s 1970 dou­ble album Self Por­trait as his best. This pro­voked so much deri­sion and out­rage in the com­ments that I almost felt sor­ry for the author. But this is not unusu­al. Rolling Stone’s Greil Mar­cus opened his review of the record with a surly “What is this shit?” Dylan him­self explained in a 1984 inter­view with the mag­a­zine that the record was inten­tion­al­ly bad, a “screw you” to his less dis­cern­ing fans. And why not? Bob Dylan can do what­ev­er he wants.

Well, the album The Onion’s AV Club calls “almost uni­ver­sal­ly loathed” is being reis­sued in a four-disc set that includes out­takes and bootlegs, as well as alter­nates and demo takes from Nashville Sky­line and 1970’s New Morn­ing. You’ll find the full track­list of what will be released on August 27 as Anoth­er Self Por­trait here. (The album itself can be pre-ordered here.) For a pre­view, watch the video above of “Pret­ty Saro,” an 18^th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish folk tune Dylan record­ed for Self Por­trait but nev­er released. As with Mar­cus’ review and Dylan’s explana­to­ry inter­view, this comes to us via the stal­wart Rolling Stone.

Film­mak­er Jen­nifer Lebeau made the video, which con­sists of care­ful­ly select­ed pho­tos from the Farm Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion and which Lebeau says “lit­er­al­ly goes from women on farms with wag­ons to Rosie the Riv­et­er.” It’s a cool con­cept and a beau­ti­ful song. Might it per­suade you to re-eval­u­ate Self Por­trait? If you nev­er loathed it but defend­ed it, does this out­take enhance your appre­ci­a­tion of its genius? Maybe you’re in need of a refresh­er on the con­fused, amused, and infu­ri­at­ed reac­tions that this record gen­er­ates. If so, you may wish to vis­it this site for “24 min­utes of footage of peo­ple talk­ing about Bob Dylan’s puz­zling” 1970 album.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Bob Dylan, Nico & Sal­vador Dalí

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

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