“Ben, make sure you play ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord’ in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty.”

“Ben” was famed saxophonist and “Pied Piper of the Civil Rights Movement,” Ben Branch. Moments later, a bullet tore through the air, killing the speaker, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on the balcony of Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel. In his last breath, Dr. King requested a song.

The night before, he’d delivered one of his most recognized speeches:

“But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop … I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

Dr. King’s prophetic request for this particular song only served as one more sign that the civil rights pioneer knew his days were numbered. “Precious Lord” was originally penned by Thomas Dorsey, one of the most prolific gospel writers of all time, after his wife died in childbirth. It’s a song soaked in tears time and again.

But in her now-legendary 1972 performance at Los Angeles’ New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, Aretha Franklin sings it with such conviction that there’s only sweat here. She’s accompanied on piano by another tremendous gospel contributor, Rev. James Cleveland, and what might be one of the most ambitious choral arrangements preserved on American film with harmonies and solos that swell and soar behind Aretha’s. Together, these powerhouses deliver a medley that opens with Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend In Jesus” and weaves in “Precious Lord,” turning it into 6-and-a-half minutes (nearly 9 on the live album version) of goosebump-laden praise.

Punctuating Aretha’s famously seamless runs is the church audience and their ever-present call-and-response. They’re truly infectious and so perfectly attuned to Aretha’s every turn of phrase that you’ll almost certainly find yourself shouting out with them between her perfectly pitched notes.

On the day of Dr. King’s funeral, Aretha was one of two women to sing “Precious Lord” in eulogy. The other was Mahalia Jackson, featured on Day 1 of 2021. In those moments, the stories of Dr. King, Ben Branch, Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson, and Thomas Dorsey were forever intertwined in a single American tragedy. And yet, each and every one of them left behind legacies made of joyful noise.

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