In Singing in a Strange Land, Nick Salvatore, a professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and American Studies, explores the celebrated life and career of Rev. Clarence L. Franklin, Baptist minister and father of Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. In ten chapters and an epilogue, Salvatore traces Franklin’s meteoric rise to national preaching acclaim. Utilizing a series of interviews conducted with C. L. Franklin in 1977-78 by ethnomusicologist Jeff Todd Titon, Salvatore establishes that Franklin’s preaching prowess was evident from the time of his first appointment as a minister at age eighteen in rural Mississippi where he grew up. Franklin quickly assumed the helm of a circuit of four small rural Mississippi congregations, and by 1939, at age twenty-three, he was the full-time pastor of four-hundred-seat New Salem Baptist Church in South Memphis, where his preaching attracted people from “all over the city.” In 1944, his career trajectory led him to the pastorate of Friendship Baptist Church in Buffalo, New York. C. L. Franklin was only thirty-one years old when in 1944 he was invited to become pastor of New Bethel Baptist church in Detroit, the position he held until his death in 1984 at age sixty-nine.

Although glimpses of C. L. Franklin’s almost mythical greatness are scattered throughout this biographical record, Salvatore’s most compelling portrait of this towering figure within the African American community appears in the richly detailed epilogue which documents C. L. Franklin’s funeral. A crowd of some ten thousand people gathered in Detroit for this home-going celebration at New Bethel Baptist, six to seven thousand of whom stood outside the overflowing sanctuary on a sultry August day in order to hear the service over loud speakers. The printed funeral program included forty-three speakers and eleven musical selections, while the funeral procession was twenty blocks long. In referencing Franklin during his remarks, Rev. Jessie Jackson lauded him as “Rabbi, the learned one” and “prophet.”

The account of Rev. C. L. Franklin which characterizes the bulk of Salvatore’s biography stands in stark contrast to the larger-than-life image which prevailed at Franklin’s funeral. In writing this biography, Salvatore admittedly seeks to avoid portraying an idealized image of Franklin, an aim which he accomplishes with unquestionable success. On the other hand, Salvatore also expresses a desire to avoid sensationalizing the seeming contradictions and paradoxes that beset Franklin in both his personal life and his ministerial career. Unfortunately, Salvatore is much less successful in achieving this goal.

Throughout the body of Singing In a Strange Land, C. L. Franklin is depicted as a fragmented, contradictory, and often self-serving figure--a man driven, not by love of God, as one might expect, but by greed, personal ambition, unbridled sexual passion, and desire for power. The text is riddled with a litany of Franklin’s perceived foibles--his failure to attend his own wife’s funeral; his fathering a child through an extramarital affair; his alleged romantic relationship with famed gospel singer Clara Ward; his troubles with the IRS over unreported income; and rumors of his involvement with drug trafficking. Most troubling about the dominance of this salacious content is the rather subjective approach that Salvatore is prone to utilize in his analysis. For example, the discussion of Franklin’s involvement with Clara Ward is supported in large part by accounts provided by Clara’s lesser-known sister Willa in How I Got Over: Clara Ward and the World Famous Ward Singers (1997), a biography of Clara written after her death that includes no scholarly documentation.

To Salvatore’s credit, Singing in a Strange Land is a laudable attempt to expand our view of Rev. C. L. Franklin beyond his pulpit ministry. The famed religious leader is placed squarely within the context of the Detroit political scene, the inner workings of the National Baptist Convention, and even the Civil Rights Movement. At the same time, however, dimensions of Franklin’s personal and professional life which contributed to his widespread fame are often shortchanged in the process. Aretha, the famous daughter whose career in secular music her father advocated and nurtured from the start, is glaringly absent from the sixty-eight interviews Salvatore conducted during the eight years he devoted to developing this book. Although Jeff Titon provided tapes and transcripts of more than seventy of C. L. Franklin’s sermons, this content does not constitute the core of Salvatore’s study. James Cleveland, the man who became the founding president of the reputedly twenty-five-thousand-member Gospel Music Workshop of America, lived in the home of C. L Franklin while serving in a role of music leadership at New Bethel, yet the Cleveland-Franklin connection garners little more than passing mention. Rev. C. L. Franklin surrounded himself and his family with legendary musicians who criss-crossed sacred and secular genres from blues, jazz, and popular music to gospel, but Salvatore sheds little light on the significance of these artists to Franklin beyond their appeal as entertainers.

C. L. Franklin was both a minister and a musician himself, yet the discussion of music in Singing in a Strange Land is mired in language that too often bears little resemblance to that used by African American culture bearers. The terms “gospel blues” and “Afro-Baptist,” for example, are unrepresentative of self-designations among African American Christians. Similarly, his reference to “blues sensibility” in Rev. Franklin’s preaching style fails to account for the shared aesthetic values that transcend boundaries of genre as well as historical period. Further questioning of the depth of Salvatore’s familiarity with African American religious music and culture is prompted by his repeated interchangeable references to the distinct genres of gospel music and hymns as if they were synonymous.

While Nick Salvatore’s text is a masterful testament to rigorous research, it is also a glaring reminder of the challenge inherent in attempting to capture the spirit of a man whose power rested in the complex of his religious, musical, and cultural identities, dimensions that come alive through observation and resist interpretation via the distant memories of those with whom Salvatore spoke and the archival resources that Salvatore relies on heavily. What appeared to be contradictions in C. L. Franklin’s life style and his life’s work--in his talk and his walk--could perhaps be interpreted as his effort to navigate the rough terrain of his own career aspirations, his personal needs, and his commitment to African Americans as a people, a possibility that Salvatore concedes to some extent, but neglects to argue in a thorough, sustained, and convincing manner.

Nick Salvatore must be commended for his willingness to confront the legendary status of a man deeply regarded by Black Americans across the United States. Unquestionably, Rev. Franklin is one worthy of the serious and detailed treatment which characterizes Singing in a Strange Land. Salvatore’s study will surely function to enhance scholarly discourse in folklore and ethnomusicology as well as in African American and cultural studies.

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[Review length: 1132 words • Review posted on March 29, 2007]