Everybody knows Aretha Franklin. Few apart from hardcore soul fans remember the Queen of Soul’s big sister Erma.
Erma recorded very sporadically through the ’60s before retiring from the music biz altogether. But she left a mark – most notably with the original version of Piece Of My Heart before it became Janis Joplin’s signature tune.
But it’s not her only great song. For my money, this song stands up alongside almost anything her little sister recorded.
Born four years before Aretha in 1938, in Shelby, Mississippi, Erma moved with her family as a child: first to Memphis, then to Buffalo, New York (where she made her singing debut in her father’s church at age five), and finally Detroit.
She sang in the church choir with her sisters Aretha and Carolyn and performed with a school vocal group called the Cleo-Patrettes, which won a state talent contest and even recorded for a small Detroit label.
When they broke up after high school, she toured with her father’s gospel group for two years and turned down chances to record for Chess – and to join Motown’s early roster – in order to follow her father’s wishes that she go to college first.
By the time she graduated in 1961, little sister Aretha was already signed to Columbia Records, and Erma auditioned successfully for their subsidiary Epic, moving to New York to record a debut album of jazz and pop standards.
One of those – Abracadabra – was written by Van McCoy, later of The Hustle fame. But none were hits and for the next five years Erma’s solo ambitions took a back seat as she toured as a “featured vocalist” with New Orleans R&B legend Lloyd Price.
Erma finally found solo success after Aretha moved to Atlantic Records and her career took off with Respect topping the charts in 1967 – with Erma on backing vocals.
That same year Erma signed a new deal of her own, with Bert Berns’s Shout Records, and had her first hit single with Piece Of My Heart, written by Berns and Jerry Ragovoy.
But after touring the US and Europe on the back of its success, her first album for the new label was shelved when Berns suddenly died, throwing the company into chaos.
During that hiatus, Erma continued to back her sister on many of her recordings before signing a new deal with Brunswick in 1969, and releasing a second album, Soul Sister.
But at the dawn of the new decade Erma decided to walk away from the industry altogether.
She turned down the opportunity to record an album produced by Aretha and moved back to Detroit in 1972 to work in PR, moving on to a high-level job with a children’s charity, where she lived until her death in 2002.