Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich recounts the time Aretha Franklin filled in for Luciano Pavarotti

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(19 Aug 2018) GRAMMYS PRODUCER RECALLS ARETHA FRANKLIN'S FAMED FILL-IN FOR PAVAROTTI It was ten minutes into a live broadcast of the 1998 Grammy Awards when show producer Ken Ehrlich got an unexpected note to call Luciano Pavarotti at home -- a bad sign given that Pavarotti was scheduled to sing "Nessun Dorma" during the broadcast. "So I called and all I heard was the following sentence, 'Mr. Ehrlich, I think he called me – not Ken – I am sick and I cannot sing for you tonight. I promise you I will come and sing for you next year, but I cannot do it tonight.' And I said to myself – not to him – 'That's great, but what ... do I do now?'" Ehrlich recalled Friday (17 AUGUST), a day after the death of soul legend Aretha Franklin. Ehrlich quickly started running through the many performers on hand who could fill the time — he first thought of asking Stevie Wonder to do something amazing. But then Ehrlich recalled Franklin had performed at a tribute concert to Pavarotti two nights earlier, and sung "Nessun Dorma." She was already due to do a short performance of "Respect" for a "Blues Brothers" anniversary number — perhaps she would fill in for the famed opera tenor? So he went to Franklin's cramped dressing room — she had a small one because she was not the main performer — and interrupted her fried chicken dinner to make his last-minute request. "We got to the side of the stage, and she had never seen the staging, which was the deck of Radio City – the whole stage is filled with musicians and then there were 30 male singers upstage, because there's a great vocal ending to 'Nessun Dorma.' She looked at me, grabbed my hand, held my hand and said, 'Oh, this is going to be fun,'" Ehrlich recalls. It became one of her greatest performances, part of music history, and added to her already legendary status, with the Queen of Soul so deftly performing the famous aria. "You can actually watch the transformation," Ehrlich said. "If you watch that performance, which you can do, it starts out kind of tentative. She's starting out and she's there, she's not missing. But it's like she's feeling it. She had never rehearsed with that orchestra. ... But then as she started to get into it, when she got into the last verse chorus and then the tag at the end -- the ride out at the end – the ride out is this extended basically slowed down piece at the end. She Aretha-fied that and it was unbelievable." Ehrlich produced other Grammy shows and events that featured Franklin performances, including a "VH1 Divas" show just several months after that Grammys ceremony. In the run-up to that show, he was reminded of her diva tendencies. She often felt rooms were too cold for her liking and asked that air conditioning be turned off when she was in the building. "What I had done was I had asked someone at VH1 and someone at the building to send someone down to the basement where the air-conditioning unit was and to stay by it and don't let anybody turn it on. Turn it off an hour before she got there and leave it off," Ehrlich recalls. "Five minutes before she was to come on stage, that guy took a break and someone came down and turn the air on. And as she's walking to the stage with me, she hears it – she doesn't feel it, but she heard it. And she looked at me and instead of turning left and going on stage, she basically took off, went out to the car that was waiting for her, went back to the Trump Tower where she stayed, and wouldn't talk to me for four days. Ultimately -- and basically sent me a message despite the flowers and things that I sent her – 'No duets. You promised me.' And I felt awful." Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives ​​ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/af912c0792eb99bebe36be4dbb45f584