Aretha Franklin [ tickets ] interrupted her bandleader H.B. Barnum after telling a mostly full Hollywood Bowl that she was ready to go back.

"We're going back, we're just not going back there," Franklin said early in the second half of her two hours onstage. "We're going back to Atlantic Records." For the moment she was referring to the repertoire--"Today I Sing the Blues" was next on her copy of the set list--but in the grand scheme she was talking about the entire evening, a night rich in the soulful textures that defined her sound in the late '60s and early '70s.

Those defining elements--the tuneful preacher's shout, the manipulation of tension, the dips and rises from the band--were technically tighter Friday (6/26) than other recent L.A. shows. Song after song--and there were 16 of them--hit listeners squarely in the chest.

A two-dozen-strong orchestra of strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion assisted greatly in fleshing out the sound of her octet and four back-up singers. "Respect," for example, was rolled rather than stamped, the singers slowing the delivery of the harmony phrases such as "sock it to me" while Franklin curled her way around Otis Redding's lyric. The reins were removed from "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" and "Ain't No Way" and Franklin made the most of the open space; conversely, "Baby, I Love You," "Angel" and "Chain of Fools" were record-perfect.

The evening's program was smartly focused on the gospel-fused R&B of her classic period. While she also performed material from her glossier and less-dynamic albums of the last two decades, she was able to elevate that material with enough vocal gymnastics, intense humming and exclamations. "I Adore You," the only song she performed while seated at the piano, is scheduled to appear on an album that she said would be released in September.

Franklin had avoided Los Angeles for two decades due to her not flying and disliking the effect on her voice of riding through various altitudes. Discovery of an agreeable route from her Detroit home has increased her visits to the southern portion of the West that she had avoided for decades. At the Greek Theater a few years ago, the cold air impaired her voice, but when she took the Bowl stage, Franklin was flanked by two space heaters. "Mother Nature," she laughed, "won't get me here."