The folk hit was originally written by John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkins about how the famous Aretha Franklin was the daughter of a preacher man, and how John was as well. Aretha Franklin was originally reluctant to record the song, because she found the song to be a little offensive towards preachers. Eventually though, Aretha did subsequently change her mind and did a cover version of it, as well.
how long it took to write this tune…
In an interview, Ronnie recalls, “We were thinking of Aretha, and her father was a preacher and both of my grandfathers were preachers. I said, ‘She’s the daughter of a preacher man and you might say I’m the son of a preacher man,’ and that’s how we came up with the title. It took us half an hour- maybe 45 minutes, to write the song.” Two weeks later, the song was produced and the two songwriters were able to cut a recording of it with Aretha Franklin, herself. The song was too gospel-esque for the way her album was already sounding, so the two songwriters moved onto other potential takers…
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