Aretha Franklin was eighteen when she made her first Columbia recordings in 1960 and 1961, with pianist Ray Bryant's combo and under producer John Hammond. Twelve of those sides made up her debut album and were reissued in the early seventies as The First 12 Sides, with new sleeve notes by Hammond. She sings standards here such as Over The Rainbow, It Ain't Necessarily So and Today I Sing The Blues, close to the jazz singing of Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday and years before she turned to soul at Atlantic.

This edition is an LP, pressed in a run of 500 copies.