aretha franklin biography english

Aretha Franklin

• Born March 25 , 1942 · Memphis, Tennessee, USA
• Died August 16 , 2018 · Detroit, Michigan, USA (pancreatic cancer)
• Birth name Aretha Louise Franklin
• The Queen of Soul
• Height 5′ 5″ (1.65 m)
• Grammy-winning Queen of Soul and the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Aretha Louise Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Barbara Vernice (Siggers) and C. L. Franklin, a Baptist minister, who preached at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit for over thirty years. Known as the man with the "Million-Dollar Voice", her father was one of the most respected and prominent ministers in the country, and Aretha grew up singing in church, and surrounded by local and national celebrities. She learned how to play piano by ear and soon understood the correct tones and pitches. Aretha released her first single at the age of eighteen, under Columbia Records, it reached number ten on the BillBoard charts and her first record was released in January of 1961. While working for the label, she managed to score two more R&B hits, Operation Heartbreak and Won't Be Long. However the people at Columbia often felt they didn't understand the direction Aretha wanted to go with her music, and ultimately failed to bring out her potential. In 1966, Aretha signed a contract with Atlantic Records, where she released her first legendary single, Respect, written by The King Of Soul, Otis Redding. With this single, Franklin would trigger a new vocal skill called, "call and response," which would help liven up many of her singles. While signed with Atlantic, she released three additional top ten hits, Baby I Love You, A Natural Women,and Chain Of Fools, and won her first two Grammy awards, and eight consecutive Grammys for best female R&B vocal category. Franklin had not only achieved her dream of becoming a musical sensation but stood out in the civil rights movement for her single with Otis Redding, Respect. The song helped send a message to Americans about equality, peace, and justice. Franklin continued to release pop hits throughout the decade, such as Think, I Say A Little Prayer, and Ain't No Way. After these amazing hits to many listeners she was seen as The Queen Of Soul. In the 1970s, she started recording gospel hits such as Don't Play That Song, Rocksteady, and Daydreaming. It was foreseeable that Franklin would soon stumble upon a masterpiece which became the best selling gospel album of all time, which she did in 1972 with her album Amazing Grace. In the mid '70s, even though she was releasing hit songs, she began to lose touch with her soul-pop audiences due to the disco genre making its entrance into mainstream music. In 1979, she released an album in order to gain the audience of disco lovers called, La Diva. La Diva sold less than 50,000 copies and was marked as the lowest point in Franklin's career. On June 10, 1979, her father Clarence was shot by a mugger. This left Clarence in a coma for five years and Aretha decided to move back to Detroit to take care of her father. Clarence Franklin died on July 27, 1984. In 1980, along with several other musicians such as Ray Charles and James Brown, Aretha Franklin appeared in the hit feature film The Blues Brothers. In 1982, she returned to the R&B top ten charts with her hit album Jump To It, featuring Luther Vandross. It sold more than 600,000 copies and was gold-certified, managing to stay on number one for seven weeks. In 1985, Franklin released an album which featured a unique never before heard element of rock. The album, "Who's Zoomin Who?", and soon went on to receive platinum-certified success. The album also featured a hit song with George Michael called I Know You Were Waiting For Me, and went on to sell more than one million copies. In 1987, Aretha sang the theme song to A Different World, a sitcom created by Bill Cosby, and in 1989, she released a pop album which featured Elton John, James Brown, The Four Tops, Kenny G, and Whitney Houston, called Through The Storm. In 1992, Franklin sang the song Someday We'll All Be Free for the soundtrack to the biopic film Malcolm X (1992) . In 1993, Aretha sang at Bill Clinton's inauguration. At a slower rate in the mid-late '90s, she continued to release albums and singles, working with new artists such as BabyFace, Jermaine Dupri, Sean "P Diddy" Combs, and Lauryn Hill along with her label, Arista Records. In 2003, she had ended the 23 year relationship with Arista and opened her own label, Aretha. Franklin released her first album on the label, A Woman Falling Out Of Love, in 2011. It marked her fifty years in show business. Aretha Franklin died of advanced pancreatic cancer on August 16, 2018, in Detroit, Michigan. She will be known as one of the most influential singers of all time, and as an activist who spoke of the world through her music, and used music as a tool for truth, justice, and soul. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Peter Sean
• Spouses Glynn Turman (April 11, 1978 - February 7, 1984) (divorced) Ted White (December 8, 1967 - 1969) (divorced, 1 child)
• Children Clarence Franklin Edward Franklin Ted White Jr. Kecalf Cunningham
• Parents C.L. Franklin Barbra Singers
• Relatives Erma Franklin (Sibling) Carolyn Franklin (Sibling) Carl Ellan Kelley (Half Sibling) Cecil Franklin (Sibling) Vaughn Franklin (Half Sibling)
• Powerful mezzo-soprano vocals
• She had known Whitney Houston since Houston was five years old, and she was her godmother.
• In 1987, she was the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
• On August 13, 2018, Franklin was reported to be in a Detroit hospital, gravely ill with pancreatic cancer, a disease she was first diagnosed with in 2010. Later the same day, CNN reported that she was at home in hospice care surrounded by loved ones. Franklin died at her home on August 16, 2018, aged 76.
• Her voice was designated a "Natural Resource" by the State of Michigan.
• In 2012, she was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame; having been described as the voice of the civil rights movement, the voice of black America and a symbol a black equality.
• Trying to grow up is hurting, you know. You make mistakes. You try to learn from them, and when you don't it hurts even more.
• I didn't think my songs would become anthems for women. But I'm delighted. Women probably immediately feel compassion and relate to the lyrics. We can all learn a little something from each other, so whatever people can take and be inspired by where my music is concerned is great.

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Aretha franklin, the queen of soul, we all need respect. everybody wants respect of some kind..

Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis Tennessee, but at an early age, her family moved, first to Buffalo, New York, and finally to Detroit, Michigan, where she spent her formative years.  Although Aretha Franklin spent much of her adult life in New York and Los Angeles, she would always regard Detroit as her hometown and returned to the city for the last three decades of her life.

Aretha’s mother died when she was ten, and she was raised by her father, a Baptist minister.  For 33 years, Rev. C. L. Franklin was pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit.  Rev. Franklin was not only a popular pastor but an influential civil rights activist, in demand for speaking engagements around the country.  Several of his sermons were recorded and issued as phonograph records. Admirers called him the “man with the million-dollar voice.”  Notable figures from the civil rights movement were regular visitors to New Bethel Church and were welcome guests in the Franklin home.  The country’s premier gospel singers — Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward — as well as secular jazz and blues musicians, also paid calls on Rev. Franklin, Aretha, and her brothers and sisters.

Aretha’s father encouraged her to sing.  When she was very small, her father would stand her on a chair to be seen from the pews when she sang in church.  She learned to play piano by ear, although she resisted formal lessons, and by age ten, she could foresee a career as a gospel singer.  In her teens, she joined the junior choir that traveled with her father on his speaking engagements.  While in California, the Franklins met the young Sam Cooke, lead singer with the gospel group the Soul Stirrers; they followed his career with interest as he left the Soul Stirrers to focus instead on secular pop music.  Sam Cooke’s success made a deep impression on young Aretha, who began to wonder if she too might pursue a music career outside of the church.

Her teenage years were difficult; while still a teenager, she gave birth to two sons by different boyfriends.  Her grandmother and older sisters helped raise the children while Aretha continued to work at her music.  With Rev. Franklin acting as manager, she recorded some gospel songs for a local record label, but her father felt she could do better with a larger national record company.

Passing on an offer from Berry Gordy’s Motown Records in Detroit, Rev. Franklin prevailed on musician friends to form a small group to make a demonstration recording for Columbia Records.  An executive at Columbia, the legendary producer John Hammond, was impressed with Aretha’s demos and invited her to New York for a live audition.  Hammond and his colleagues were sold, and at age 18, Aretha Franklin was signed to a contract with the most prestigious of American record companies.  Leaving her daughters with her family in Detroit, she moved to New York City to make her first major-label recordings.

Hammond teamed Aretha Franklin with some of the best arrangers and musicians in the business and recorded a variety of material, emphasizing the breadth of her talent.  Her early sessions included some blues and gospel-tinged numbers, but for the most part, Columbia seemed to see Franklin as a jazz and pop vocalist in the mode of Dinah Washington.  Her first single for Columbia, “Today I Sing the Blues,” placed in the Top Ten on Billboard magazine’s Rhythm and Blues (R&B) bestseller chart in 1960.  In January, Columbia released her first album,  Aretha: With The Ray Bryant Combo . Her first single on Billboard ’s pop music Top 40 chart was a 1920s standard, “Rock-a-bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody.”

In 1961, Franklin married Ted White, a friend from Detroit who became her manager. Her records were well reviewed, and she swiftly acquired a reputation in the industry as a compelling new voice.  Shy and unassuming by nature, Franklin worked with the veteran African American dancer and choreographer Charles “Cholly” Atkins to acquire a more forceful stage presence.  By the mid-‘60s, she was winning an enthusiastic following for her live performances, and critics had begun to call her the “Queen of Soul,” a title that would never be challenged.

Despite her popularity with critics and audiences, Franklin’s record label seemed uncertain about which direction to take her career. Columbia had her recording both R&B and “easy listening” pop songs.  She scored hits on both the R&B and Easy Listening charts, but with the new sounds of rock and soul music dominating the charts, Franklin did not believe Columbia was providing the best opportunity to fulfill her true potential.

Determined to make a change, in 1967, Franklin moved from Columbia to Atlantic Records, the R&B-oriented label founded by Ahmet Ertegun.  Ertegun, the son of a Turkish diplomat, had spent his student years in Washington, D.C., where he fell in love with jazz, blues, and the entire rich tradition of African American music.  He had focused on bringing black artists to the attention of a larger public, enjoying particular success with singer and pianist Ray Charles.

Ertegun assigned producer Jerry Wexler to work with Franklin. Rather than selecting material for her, Wexler urged her to choose her own songs.  Rather than having elaborate orchestral arrangements written for her, he urged her to accompany herself on the piano and create the groove for each song, allowing improvising musicians to follow her lead. Her first single for Atlantic, “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” shot to number one on the R&B chart, and to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and gave the title to her first album. In December of 1967, the B-side of her first single, “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” also made the R&B Top 40.

The following spring, Atlantic released the single that will forever be inextricably associated with Aretha Franklin. The soul singer Otis Redding had originally written and recorded the song “Respect” in 1965.  Franklin rearranged the song, adding the break in which she spelled out the word  “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” while her sisters rapidly sang the words “sock it to me,” a popular catchphrase of the day.  The new arrangement, her performance — and the unmistakable significance of a woman rather than a man demanding respect from her loved one — spoke to the pent-up frustrations of men and women around the world. The song was embraced as an anthem by both the civil rights movement and by the burgeoning women’s movement.

“Respect” brought Franklin two Grammy Awards, for Best R&B Record and Best Female R&B Performance. Her first Atlantic album became a gold record, selling half a million copies. Franklin scored two more Top Ten singles in 1968: “Baby I Love You” and the unforgettable “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” which was written by Carole King. The following year, she released two Top Ten albums,  Lady Soul and Aretha Now!  The year also saw some of her most successful singles, “Chain of Fools,” “Ain’t No Way,” “Think,” and “Say a Little Prayer.”

In February 1968, she was presented with the Drum Beat Award of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom she had known since she was a teenager.  When Dr. King was murdered in April, Franklin performed the spiritual “My Precious Lord” at his funeral.  Now an international star, she toured Europe that spring and was featured on the cover of TIME magazine.

Franklin divorced husband Ted White in 1969 and took full charge of her career for the first time. In the early 1970s, she continued her run of hit albums with Spirit in the Dark and Young, Gifted and Black .  She was the first soul artist to play at the San Francisco rock venue Fillmore West, a performance documented on the album Aretha Live at Fillmore West , in 1971. Returning to her roots in gospel music, she recorded a live album at New Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles.  Amazing Grace sold over two million copies, making it the bestselling album of her career and the bestselling gospel album of all time.

Jerry Wexler’s departure from Atlantic left her without a strong partner at the label. A collaboration with Quincy Jones on the album Hey Now Hey was a disappointment. She scored her last R&B hit of the ‘70s with “Something He Can Feel” from the soundtrack of the film Sparkle .  Her last albums for Atlantic sold poorly, and in the middle of the decade, her career was faltering.

Franklin moved from New York to Los Angeles in search of renewed inspiration and opportunity.  In 1978, she married actor Glynn Turman, making a new home for her children as well as his.  Family matters took center stage in 1979.  In Detroit, Rev. C. L. Franklin was shot at his home, presumably by a burglar attempting a robbery.  He survived the shooting but fell into a coma. His children provided 24-hour nursing care at home. Her father lingered in a coma for five years and never regained consciousness.

Franklin ended her 12-year relationship with Atlantic Records in 1979 and began looking for a new label. She was back in the public eye with a memorable performance in the highly successful film The Blues Brothers , singing her 1960s hit “Think.”  She signed with Arista Records, run by proven hitmaker Clive Davis.  Franklin gradually returned to the top of the charts with her albums for Arista, scoring a gold record with her 1982 album,  Jump to It .  The same year, Franklin separated from her husband, Glynn Turman, and returned home to Detroit to be near her family.  With her brother and sisters at her side, she saw her father through his last days. C. L. Franklin died in 1984.

For Aretha Franklin, personal loss coincided with renewed career success.  Her 1985 Arista album,  Who’s Zoomin’ Who, was certified platinum and included the massive hit single “Freeway of Love.”  The same year, she became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In 1987, she recorded another gospel album,  One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, at her father’s old church in Detroit. She enjoyed further chart success throughout the 1990s with the singles “A Deeper Love,” “Willing to Forgive,” and “A Rose Is Still a Rose.”  The album of the same name was also a gold record.  The music industry honored her with a Grammy Legend Award in 1991 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994.

In 1998, Franklin was scheduled to appear at the Grammy Awards. When fellow guest performer, the famed operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti, was forced by illness to cancel at the last minute, Franklin was asked to fill in his place in the program. The orchestra had prepared to accompany Pavarotti in one of his signature pieces, the aria “ Nessun Dorma” from Puccini’s opera Turandot .  Franklin already had sung the aria herself at a benefit concert a few months earlier, in her own key.  To the amazement of producers, musicians, and the audience, she offered to sing it with the orchestra in the tenor’s original key. Her astonishing performance stopped the show.  The aria became a regular part of her concert repertoire and inspired her to further explore classical vocal literature.  In 2003, after 20 years with Arista Records, she recorded her last album with the label, Jewels in the Crown: All-Star Duets with the Queen .

More than a beloved entertainer, Aretha Franklin had become a treasured living symbol of the American spirit.  In 2005, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush.  She was no stranger to public ceremonies, having performed at President Bill Clinton’s inaugural gala in 1993. An even more emotional moment occurred when she performed in the frigid open air at the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009, delivering a memorable performance of “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.”

Her 2014 album,  Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics, included not only her version of “ Nessun Dorma ” but a version of “Rolling in the Deep,” previously a hit for the British singer Adele. Franklin’s version became her 100th song to make the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop chart.  She had now received every conceivable honor from her peers in the music world, in addition to her 18 Grammy Awards.

After canceling some concerts due to health issues, she toured the United States again in 2014. In 2015, she sang “ Nessun Dorma ” for Pope Francis at the World Meeting of Families.  At that year’s Kennedy Center Honors, during a tribute to Carole King, Franklin sang “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” to an audience including President Barack Obama and Mrs. Obama, winning a standing ovation from the audience and moving the president to tears.

On November 7, 2017, she gave her last public performance, singing at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, at the 15th Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Gala.  Aretha Franklin succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 76 in 2018.  She was mourned around the world.  Speakers at her funeral included former President Barack Obama, who said her life and work “helped define the American experience.”  Her recorded legacy and the example of her passion, endurance, and commitment to her art continue to inspire musicians, music lovers and ordinary men and women the world over.

On September 15, 2021, Rolling Stone released its list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” and Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” topped the list as the No. 1 song. The outlet said the 1967 hit “catalyzed rock & roll, gospel, and blues to create the model for soul music that artists still look to today…Just as important, the song’s unapologetic demands resonated powerfully with the civil rights movement and emergent feminist revolution, fitting for an artist who donated to the Black Panther Party and sang at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.”

In the late 1960s, the world came to know and love Aretha Franklin as the “Queen of Soul Music.”  Her hit recording “Respect” became an anthem of the civil rights struggle and of the nascent women’s movement.

As a child, she sang gospel at the Detroit, Michigan church of her pastor father; with his encouragement, she pursued a career as a professional singer, signing with Columbia Records at age 18.  A move to Atlantic Records in 1967 led to a series of hit singles — “Think,” “Chain of Fools,” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” — that defined the changing consciousness of the era.

Aretha Franklin continued to record hit albums for the next 30 years, expanding her repertoire to encompass a vast spectrum of music — blues, gospel, R&B, jazz standards, and operatic arias.  She was honored by her peers with 18 Grammy Awards and by her country with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

You were born in Memphis.  What was that like?

Aretha Franklin:   I don’t know what Memphis was like because I was so small when I left there; I don’t even remember being there.  I don’t know.  It’s a very tiny place, what I saw when I went back to the home where I was born.  I can’t say I grew up there because we went to Buffalo from there, I guess when I was maybe about two or three, maybe. I’m not sure.

How did you come to move from Memphis to Buffalo?

Aretha Franklin:  My father moved the family to Buffalo, New York.  He pastored the Friendship Baptist Church there for about four years.  After that, we moved to Detroit and he pastored the New Bethel Baptist Church for about 28 years.

Did your father encourage your singing?

Aretha Franklin:   Oh, sure.  My dad always encouraged me to sing.  Many times, I was too small to be singing, so they would put a chair there, and I would just stand on top of the chair top and sing at the Sunday night broadcast or the Sunday morning services.

So you started singing in the church?

I sang in the junior choir.  And I was one of the lead vocalists for the choir.  I played piano for the choir occasionally.  And customarily on the road when my father would go on the road and have services in major auditoriums and arenas across the country, I would precede him singing, then he would minister from there.

Did you have formal lessons on the piano?

Aretha Franklin:   Yes and no.

Aretha Franklin: I started out playing by ear, and my dad wanted me to take lessons, and I didn’t want to take lessons, so I would run and hide every time the teacher came — hide in the closet behind the coats — and once I thought she was gone, I would come out.  But I wish today that I had taken the lessons.  Now I plan to go to Juilliard sometime soon and hopefully do at least a couple of years there.  So I really wish that I had learned the fundamentals then.

When did you start to think about singing outside the church, as a career?

Aretha Franklin:  I don’t know.  I think maybe about 15 or 16.  Something like that.

I had the occasion to meet Sam Cooke, who came to one of our gospel presentations after church that we would have regularly on Sunday evenings.  And after meeting Sam and listening to him, he left the gospel field and began to record for SAR, S-A-R, Records.  That was Sam Alexander and S. R. Crain, who was one of the Soul Stirrers, and he also was Sam’s manager.  Sam had such great success in leaving gospel, or certainly broadening his horizons, I wondered if I could do the same thing.  I wondered if I could be as successful singing secular music as gospel.  So I talked to my dad about it.  And he said, “If that’s what you want to do, by all means.”

Can you tell us about the journey from singing with the church choir to becoming a secular entertainer?

Aretha Franklin:  Well, there was a lot of rehearsal involved, certainly.  Many hours spent rehearsing, learning the lyrics, and so on. Presentation.  Cholly Atkins, who just passed about two weeks ago (in 2003), was my very first choreographer.  And pretty much, coming up, it was choreography, lyrics, and selection.

Tell us about the first record you made.

Aretha Franklin:  The first record I made for Columbia was “Today I Sing the Blues,” but before that…

Aretha Franklin: I recorded for Chess Records, with whom my dad was affiliated, and in concert out in the Oakland Arena in California. We had services there.  My very first recording really was “Precious Lord” (Part 1 and Part 2).  After that, there were a few things for the Chess label prior to Columbia. And Columbia, in 1962 — I was brought to the company by John Hammond. I did an audition for Mr. Hammond in a little, small room, just a little larger than this one, with a piano; and my manager at the time, Joe King, who took me over to Columbia; my dad, who put a rhythm section together for me, people that he knew. As he and Art Tatum were very good friends, he would always go and see Art Tatum when he would come in town, and Art Tatum would come to church when he would come to town and have dinner at our home or something like that.  But anyway, he knew some of the musicians, so he put a saxophone player — and he called his friend; he asked him to put the rest of the musicians together.  He knew the bass player, but he didn’t know anyone else.  So anyway, the bass player, Mule Holley — who was rather prominent in those days — put the rhythm section together actually.

You were in Detroit while Motown was getting started. We understand that Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, was interested in signing you, but your dad turned him down. Is that right?

Aretha Franklin: He went and he visited Berry (Gordy).  He went to see Berry, and they met, and they talked.  He didn’t feel that Berry had the kind of distribution that he wanted for me.  He wanted me to have national and international distribution, and at that time, Berry was just a fledgling label really.  He was not “the” Berry Gordy that we know today.  Columbia was suggested to him, and it was to my dad’s liking, much better — Columbia — because they had national and international distribution and promo.

You’re lucky to have a father who was so…

Aretha Franklin:  Savvy.

So involved and so supportive.

Aretha Franklin:  Yes, that’s right.

How did you feel about it at that time?  Did you trust him to take care of you and take over your career?

Aretha Franklin:  My dad didn’t take over my career.  He was just the guiding light to New York.  He saw to it that I had the right management and agents and so on before he went back to Detroit.

When did you start writing songs? Was that when you got to New York?

Aretha Franklin: “Without the One You Love” was one of my first compositions.  Bob Mersey at the time — who also did some things for Streisand — was on Columbia.  We were both on Columbia at the same time.  And Mersey arranged that.   I walked in the studio that evening and the string players were there.  I’d never had strings or anything on any of my records.  And just to hear my music being played like that, I just broke down in tears.

How long were you with Columbia?

Aretha Franklin:  I was with Columbia for six years before I went to Atlantic Records and signed with Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun.

That was a big leap.

Aretha Franklin:   Yes.  That was a quantum leap from Columbia.

What was the difference?

Aretha Franklin: At Columbia, everything pretty much was arranged for me by Mr. Hammond.  He would secure the musicians and arrangers — Bob Mersey, who was just magnificent in those days. He probably still is.  Clyde Otis did some of the production work in the early days.  Ray Bryant did some of the production work, a fabulous pianist.  But the difference — I think the main difference was Jerry (Wexler) asked me to sit at the piano and bring in some things, where, at Columbia, they pretty much were telling me what to do rather than just letting me do.  So I think that was the main difference.  I made the selections once we got to Atlantic.

You went for kind of a new sound, didn’t you?

Aretha Franklin:   Well, it was there all the time.  We just hadn’t done it.

Could you tell that you were breaking through at that point?

Aretha Franklin:   Not really.  Not until I heard “Respect” was on the charts, and it was very close to the top of the charts.  Then we kind of knew something was happening.

When you recorded “Respect,” did you ever imagine people would be listening to it and loving it all these years later?

Aretha Franklin:   You never know.  You never know until you put it out there, and the people tell you whether they like it or not, whether you have something or not.  It’s standing up pretty good.  It’s standing up.  That’s what Jerry used to say.  We would record, and sometimes we would be in there for maybe four or five hours, but the proof of the pudding for him was the next day.  If it stood up and it sounded as good the next day as it did the night before, then he felt like we had something.

The thing about that song is not just the greatness of the performance, it became kind an anthem for different movements in our society.

Aretha Franklin:   Well, we all need respect.  Everybody wants respect of some kind.

 How did you feel when you saw that picked up that way?

Aretha Franklin:   I thought it was fabulous. “Hey, go ahead!”

Can you remember how you felt when you won your first Grammy?

Aretha Franklin:  First Grammy? I was not there.  I wasn’t even aware of what the Grammy meant.  Jerry Wexler and Arif (Mardin) and Ahmet (Ertegun) were there, picking up the Grammys.  I didn’t know what Grammys were for maybe the first couple of years, one or two years, and then somebody went, “Hey, you won a Grammy!”  “I did?  Okay.  And a Grammy is what?”  Well, I found out what Grammys were, and what they meant, and I’m very, very proud of the fact that I have a record number of them.

You stayed with Atlantic and Jerry Wexler for a long time.  Was that unusual?

Aretha Franklin:   I don’t think so. I don’t argue with success.  I was there from ‘67 through ‘79.  That’s 13 years.  I think Ray Charles was with the label longer than that.  It’s not very long.

What made that such a successful relationship?

Aretha Franklin:   We were just compatible and had mutual respect, I think, for each other.

Do you ever have stage fright?

Aretha Franklin:   In the early years, yes. After time, I became more confident about it.  You learn a lot as you go

Did you have any tricks to try to get over it?

Aretha Franklin:   No.  I am a trickless artiste.

You mentioned going to Juilliard to get some more training. What do you want to do with that?

Aretha Franklin:   Teach. Teach and coach.  I’d really like to teach a master class in soul at Juilliard, yes.

We’ve all loved hearing you sing Puccini’s “ Nessun dorma .”  Are there other operatic arias or classical songs you’d like to sing?

Aretha Franklin:   “ Nessun dorma ,” yes.  I love that.  That’s one of my favorites, and yes, I love Puccini.  “Song to the Moon” (Dvořák) and some other arias that I’m learning, “Doretta’s Aria,” and “ O mio babbino caro ” — things like that.

There are people who say you are the greatest singer of all time.  Do you agree with that?

Aretha Franklin:  I’ll leave that to other people.  It’s not for me to say.  But as far as singers are concerned, some of the singers that I particularly like would be Barbara Hendricks — classical — and Kathleen Battle, and Leontyne Price, of course.  And I think that Judy Garland was one of the world’s great singers as well.

Have you ever recorded “Somewhere Over the Rainbow?”

Aretha Franklin:  I have.  In fact, it was on one of my first recordings at Columbia.

Well, thank you very much for your time.

Aretha Franklin:   Thank you.

 What a pleasure talking to you.

Aretha Franklin:   My pleasure.  Thank you very much.

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Aretha Franklin: A Legacy in Music

By David Remnick

Aretha Franklin’s voice was a pure, painful, and unforgettable expression of American history and American feeling, the collective experience of black Americans and her own life. The Queen of Soul , who died Thursday morning, was the daughter of the most influential black pastor in Detroit, a charismatic, often cruel man who filled the house with musical friends—Duke Ellington, Della Reese, Nat Cole, Mahalia Jackson—and a constant cloud of threat and fury. Aretha Franklin rarely spoke of her inner life , her crises—she was wary of almost everyone—and yet the sound she made, the emotions she expressed and embodied, was as distinctive as that of Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and John Coltrane. What artist built a sturdier and more sublime arc, from the songs of the first praise houses and black churches to the blues to R. & B. to pop and hip-hop? Like Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, Franklin combined matters of the spirit and matters of the body; the whole of her, it seemed, was in every bar. And though no one could imitate that voice and phrasing —the ecstatic shrieks and eerie note-bending, that sense of behind-the-beat time—her influence was immense. Beyoncé once said that her own “soulfulness” comes “from the gospel. . . . It comes from Aretha.”

Prayer, love, desire, joy, despair, rapture, feminism, Black Power—it is hard to think of a performer who provided a deeper, more profound reflection of her times. What’s more, her gift was incomparable. Smokey Robinson, her friend and neighbor in Detroit, once said, “Aretha came out of this world, but she also came out of another, far-off magical world none of us really understood. . . . She came from a distant musical planet where children are born with their gifts fully formed.” Etta James once recalled listening to Franklin’s version of Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael’s standard “Skylark.” In the second verse, Franklin jumps an octave. “I had to scratch my head and ask myself, How the fuck did that bitch do that? I remember running into Sarah Vaughan, who always intimidated me. Sarah said, ‘Have you heard of this Aretha Franklin girl?’ I said, ‘You heard her do ‘Skylark,’ didn’t you?’ Sarah said, ‘Yes, I did, and I’m never singing that song again.’ ”

“Skylark,” from “Laughing on the Outside,” in 1963.

“Respect,” live in 1967.

“Chain of Fools,” live in 1968, in Amsterdam.

“Bridge Over Troubled Water,” live at the Fillmore West, in 1971.

“Rock Steady,” in 1972.

“Mary Don’t You Weep,” from the gospel album (and still unreleased film) “Amazing Grace,” in 1972.

“Amazing Grace,” with the Reverend James Cleveland on piano, in 1972.

If you want a good cry, you shouldn’t miss Franklin singing at the Kennedy Center Honors—an Obama-era moment, though Obama could hardly claim center stage when the Woman in Mink sat down to the piano. She’s nearing the end, and yet she hits the notes of her youth.

“(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”

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Aretha Franklin, Indomitable ‘Queen of Soul,’ Dies at 76

Remembering aretha franklin, in a musical career of more than five decades, aretha franklin had more than 100 singles on the billboard charts. but more important, says jon pareles, chief popular music critic for the new york times, she freed other singers to let their voices fly..

“Testing, can you hear me?” [playing piano] “I don’t want nobody.” The simple thing about Aretha Franklin is she was a great singer, a singer who could do anything. “The moment I wake up …” She could do rhythm and blues, she could do jazz, she could do opera. She could do country, probably. They started calling her the Queen of Soul in the ’60s, when she was barely in her 20s, and nobody argued. People heard Aretha, and they were inspired. And it was an inspiration that she channeled from gospel, into soul music, into music that spoke to people’s daily lives. There were songs like “Think,” which is a warning shot across a relationship. It’s one of the few songs she wrote, and it’s one of her strongest messages. She had 100 songs in the Billboard R-and-B charts and 17 pop hit singles, but what was more important was the way she freed other singers, the way she showed other singers this is how a voice can fly. You can hear Aretha Franklin in Whitney Houston. You can hear Aretha Franklin in Chaka Khan. You can hear Aretha Franklin in men, too, Luther Vandross. I mean, you can hear Aretha Franklin across R-and-B and across American music. She wasn’t always in the charts. There were long stretches of the late ’70s, the late ’80s, when she couldn’t get a hit. I think the people who were giving her material often let her down. “What do you do if you forget a lyric?” “I keep stepping.” [laughter] “You keep moving fast?” You see here at the end of her career singing an Adele song … and you think, what if Aretha had better songwriters all the way through her career? She would have even more than those 100 R-and-B singles. “Respect” was first recorded by Otis Redding, and for Otis Redding, it was, “Come on, when I get home, baby, you know, be nice to me, I worked.” When Aretha gets it as a woman and turns it around — “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.” — it’s about much more than that. It’s about respect for her as a woman, it’s about respect for her as a person. It’s about respect for her as a breadwinner in this song. But it’s also about sexual respect and physical respect — it’s everything. “Anywhere I’ve gone in the world, people love that song” — “They do” — “Did you have any idea when you recorded ‘Respect’ that it was going to be what it was?” “No, I really did not. I did not have any idea that the civil rights movement would adopt that as its mantra.” “My country, ’tis of thee …” Her father had been involved in the civil rights struggle. She was close to Martin Luther King. She was involved back in the ’60s. To see America’s first African-American president be inaugurated, this was a culmination of something, and you had to have Aretha Franklin there. [applause] “All right, thank you. Good evening, how’s everybody tonight? Feel good? Looking out on the morning rain ...” Aretha Franklin was the Queen of Soul, gospel music applied to secular topics. And that meant putting all of the airborne improvisation of gospel into songs about fighting with your guy, and bringing that spirit, channeling that ecstatic spirit into really down-to-Earth situations.” “Gospel goes with me wherever I go. Gospel is a constant with me.” “Amazing Grace” is a gospel standard. Everybody who sings gospel music knows “Amazing Grace.” It’s a beautiful song. And when you hear Aretha Franklin sing that song, it’s just transcendent. “Amazing grace, how sweet …” There was always that feeling that she was channeling some higher power into whatever she was singing. “... the sound.”

By Jon Pareles

• Aug. 16, 2018

Aretha Franklin, universally acclaimed as the “Queen of Soul” and one of America’s greatest singers in any style, died on Thursday at her home in Detroit. She was 76.

The cause was advanced pancreatic cancer of the neuroendocrine type , her publicist, Gwendolyn Quinn, said.

In her indelible late-1960s hits, Ms. Franklin brought the righteous fervor of gospel music to secular songs that were about much more than romance. Hits like “Do Right Woman — Do Right Man,” “Think,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Chain of Fools” defined a modern female archetype: sensual and strong, long-suffering but ultimately indomitable, loving but not to be taken for granted.

When Ms. Franklin sang “ Respect ,” the Otis Redding song that became her signature, it was never just about how a woman wanted to be greeted by a spouse coming home from work. It was a demand for equality and freedom and a harbinger of feminism, carried by a voice that would accept nothing less.

[Read our appraisal of Aretha Franklin here .]

Ms. Franklin had a grandly celebrated career. She placed more than 100 singles in the Billboard charts, including 17 Top 10 pop singles and 20 No. 1 R&B hits. She received 18 competitive Grammy Awards , along with a lifetime achievement award in 1994. She was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987, its second year. She sang at the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009, at pre-inauguration concerts for Jimmy Carter in 1977 and Bill Clinton in 1993, and at both the Democratic National Convention and a memorial service for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

Succeeding generations of R&B singers, among them Natalie Cole, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Alicia Keys, openly emulated her. When Rolling Stone magazine put Ms. Franklin at the top of its 2010 list of the “ 100 Greatest Singers of All Time ,” Mary J. Blige paid tribute:

“Aretha is a gift from God. When it comes to expressing yourself through song, there is no one who can touch her. She is the reason why women want to sing.”

Ms. Franklin’s airborne, constantly improvisatory vocals had their roots in gospel. It was the music she grew up on in the Baptist churches where her father, the Rev. Clarence LaVaughn Franklin, known as C. L., preached. She began singing in the choir of her father’s New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, and soon became a star soloist.

Gospel shaped her quivering swoops, her pointed rasps, her galvanizing buildups and her percussive exhortations; it also shaped her piano playing and the call-and-response vocal arrangements she shared with her backup singers. Through her career in pop, soul and R&B, Ms. Franklin periodically recharged herself with gospel albums: “Amazing Grace” in 1972 and “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism,” recorded at the New Bethel church, in 1987.

But gospel was only part of her vocabulary. The playfulness and harmonic sophistication of jazz, the ache and sensuality of the blues, the vehemence of rock and, later, the sustained emotionality of opera were all hers to command.

Ms. Franklin did not read music, but she was a consummate American singer, connecting everywhere. In an interview with The New York Times in 2007 , she said her father had told her that she “would sing for kings and queens.”

“Fortunately I’ve had the good fortune to do so,” she added. “And presidents.”

For all the admiration Ms. Franklin earned, her commercial fortunes were uneven, as her recordings moved in and out of sync with the tastes of the pop market.

After her late-1960s soul breakthroughs and a string of pop hits in the early 1970s, the disco era sidelined her. But Ms. Franklin had a resurgence in the 1980s with her album “Who’s Zoomin’ Who” and its Grammy-winning single, “Freeway of Love,” and she followed through in the next decades as a kind of soul singer emeritus: an indomitable diva and a duet partner conferring authenticity on collaborators like George Michael and Annie Lennox. Her latter-day producers included stars like Luther Vandross and Lauryn Hill, who had grown up as her fans. Onstage, Ms. Franklin proved herself night after night, forever keeping audiences guessing about what she would do next and marveling at how many ways her voice could move.

Mother Sang Gospel

Aretha Louise Franklin was born in Memphis on March 25, 1942. Her mother, Barbara Siggers Franklin, was a gospel singer and pianist. Her parents separated when Aretha was 6, leaving her in her father’s care. Her mother died four years later after a heart attack.

Notable Deaths 2018

A memorial to those who lost their lives in 2018

C. L. Franklin’s career as a pastor led the family from Memphis to Buffalo and then to Detroit, where he joined the New Bethel Baptist Church in 1946. With his dynamic sermons broadcast nationwide and recorded, he became known as “the man with the golden voice.”

The Franklin household was filled with music. Mr. Franklin welcomed visiting gospel and secular musicians: the jazz pianist Art Tatum, the singer Dinah Washington, and gospel figures like the young Sam Cooke (before his turn to pop), Clara Ward, Mahalia Jackson and James Cleveland, who became Ms. Franklin’s mentors.

Future Motown artists like Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross lived nearby. Aretha’s sisters, Erma and Carolyn, also sang and wrote songs, among them “Piece of My Heart,” a song Erma Franklin recorded before Janis Joplin did, and Carolyn Franklin’s “Ain’t No Way,” a hit for Aretha. The sisters also provided backup vocals for Ms. Franklin on songs like “Respect.” From 1968 until his death in 1989, her brother Cecil was her manager.

Ms. Franklin started teaching herself to play the piano — there were two in the house — before she was 10, picking up songs from the radio and from Ms. Ward’s gospel records. Around the same time, she stood on a chair and sang her first solos in church. In David Ritz’s biography “ Respect ,” Cecil Franklin recalled that his sister could hear a song once and immediately sing and play it. “Her ear was infallible,” he said.

At 12, Ms. Franklin joined her father on tour, sharing concert bills with Ms. Ward and other leading gospel performers. Recordings of a 14-year-old Ms. Franklin performing in churches — playing piano and belting gospel standards to ecstatic congregations — were released in 1956. Her voice was already spectacular.

But Ms. Franklin became pregnant, dropped out of high school and had a child two months before her 13th birthday. Soon after that she had a second child by a different father. (She never revealed publicly who fathered them, but Mr. Ritz’s book quotes Cecil as saying the father of the first was “just a guy she knew from school.”)

Those sons, Clarence and Edward Franklin, survive her, along with two others, Ted White Jr. and KeCalf Franklin (her son with Ken Cunningham, a boyfriend during the 1970s), and four grandchildren.

In the late 1950s, following the example of Sam Cooke — who left the gospel group the Soul Stirrers and started a solo career with “You Send Me” in 1957 — Ms. Franklin decided to build a career in secular music. Leaving her children with family in Detroit, she moved to New York City. John Hammond, the Columbia Records executive who had championed Billie Holiday and would also bring Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to the label, signed the 18-year-old Ms. Franklin in 1960.

Mr. Hammond saw Ms. Franklin as a jazz singer tinged with blues and gospel. He recorded her with the pianist Ray Bryant ’s small groups in 1960 and 1961 for her first studio album, “Aretha,” which sent two singles to the R&B Top 10: “Today I Sing the Blues” and “Won’t Be Long.” The annual critics’ poll in the jazz magazine DownBeat named her the new female vocal star of the year.

Her next album, “The Electrifying Aretha Franklin,” featured jazz standards and used big-band orchestrations; it gave her a Top 40 pop single in 1961 with “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody.”

Her later Columbia albums were scattershot, veering in and out of jazz, pop and R&B. Ms. Franklin met and married Ted White in 1961 and made him her manager; he shares credit on some of the songs Ms. Franklin wrote in the 1960s, including “Dr. Feelgood.” In 1964 they had a son, Ted White Jr., who would lead his mother’s band decades later. (She divorced Mr. White, after a turbulent marriage, in 1969.)

Mr. White later said his strategy was for Ms. Franklin to switch styles from album to album, to reach a variety of audiences, but the results — a Dinah Washington tribute, jazz standards with strings, remakes of recent pop and soul hits — left radio stations and audiences confused. When her Columbia contract expired in 1966, Ms. Franklin signed with Atlantic Records, which specialized in rhythm and blues.

Pivot Point in Muscle Shoals

Jerry Wexler, the producer who brought Ms. Franklin to Atlantic, persuaded her to record in the South. Ms. Franklin spent one night in January 1967 at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., recording with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, the backup band behind dozens of 1960s soul hits. Ms. Franklin shaped the arrangements and played piano herself, as she had rarely done in the studio since her first gospel recordings.

The new songs were rooted in blues and gospel. And the combination finally ignited the passion in Ms. Franklin’s voice, the spirit that was only glimpsed in many of her Columbia recordings.

The Muscle Shoals session broke down, with just one song complete and another half-finished, in a drunken dispute between a trumpet player and Mr. White. He and Ms. Franklin returned to New York. Yet when the song completed in that session, “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You),” was released as a single, it reached No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 9 on the pop charts, eventually selling more than a million copies.

Some of the Muscle Shoals musicians came north to complete the album in New York. And with that album, “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You,” the supper-club singer of Ms. Franklin’s Columbia years made way for the “Queen of Soul.”

“We were simply trying to compose real music from my heart,” Ms. Franklin said in her autobiography, “ Aretha: From These Roots ,” written with Mr. Ritz and published in 1999.

“Respect,” recorded on Valentine’s Day 1967 and released in April, was a bluesy demand for dignity, as well as an instruction to “give it to me when you get home” and “take care of T.C.B.” (The letters stood for “taking care of business.”) Her version of the song resonated beyond individual relationships to the civil rights, counterculture and feminism movements.

“It was the need of the nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher — everyone wanted respect,” she wrote in her autobiography.

“Respect” surged to No. 1 and would bring Ms. Franklin her first two Grammy Awards, for best R&B recording and best solo female R&B performance (an award she won each succeeding year through 1975). By the end of 1968, she had made three more albums for Atlantic and had seven more Top 10 pop hits, including “Baby I Love You,” “Chain of Fools,” “Think” (written by Ms. Franklin and Mr. White) and “I Say a Little Prayer.”

But amid the success, Ms. Franklin’s personal life was in upheaval. Songs like “Think,” “Chain of Fools” and “The House That Jack Built” hinted at marital woes that she kept private. She fought with her husband and manager, Mr. White, who had roughed her up in public, a 1968 Time magazine cover story noted, and whose musical decisions had grown increasingly counterproductive. Before their divorce in 1969, she dropped him as manager and eventually filed restraining orders against him. She also went through a period of heavy drinking before getting sober in the 1970s.

Her early 1970s pop hits, like her own “Day Dreaming” and the Stevie Wonder composition “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do),” took a lighter, more lilting tone, a contrast to her rip-roaring 1972 gospel album, “Amazing Grace,” which sold more than two million copies, making it one of the best-selling gospel albums of all time. Ms. Franklin recorded steadily through the 1970s and continued to have rhythm-and-blues hits like “Angel,” a No. 1 R&B single in 1973 written by her sister Carolyn.

But her pop presence waned in the disco era, and her 1976 album, “Sparkle,” written and produced by Curtis Mayfield, was her last gold album of the decade. It included “Something He Can Feel,” a No. 1 R&B single. When Ms. Franklin made a showstopping appearance as a waitress in the 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers,” she revived an oldie: her 1968 song “Think.”

Ms. Franklin was married to the actor Glynn Turman from 1978 to 1984, and the divorce was amicable enough for her to sing the title song for the television series “A Different World” when Mr. Turman joined its cast in 1988.

Ms. Franklin’s father was shot during a break-in at his home in 1979 and stayed in a coma until his death in 1984. During those years Ms. Franklin shuttled monthly between her home in California and Detroit. As her marriage to Mr. Turman was ending, she moved back to Detroit in 1982.

Ms. Franklin was deeply traumatized in 1983 by a ride through turbulence in a two-engine plane that was “dipsy-doodling all over the place,” she recalled. She gave up flying, traveling instead by bus to her shows, and ended all international performances. In recent years she had hoped to desensitize herself and fly again, “even if it’s just one more time,” she said in 2007.

Divas and Duets

Ms. Franklin changed labels in 1980, to Arista. There, her albums mingled remakes of 1960s and ’70s hits — “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Everyday People,” “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” “What a Fool Believes” — with contemporary songs.

Luther Vandross’s production of her 1982 album, “Jump to It,” restored her to the R&B charts, where it reached No. 1. But Ms. Franklin did not reconquer the pop charts until 1985, with the million-selling, synthesizer-driven album “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” The singles “Freeway of Love” and “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?,” both produced by Narada Michael Walden, placed Ms. Franklin back in the pop Top 10, and a collaboration with Eurythmics, “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves,” reached No. 18.

Ms. Franklin had her last No. 1 pop hit with “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” a duet with George Michael from her 1986 album, “Aretha.” Her 1987 gospel album, “ One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism ,” featured performances with her sisters Carolyn and Erma, and with Mavis Staples of the Staple Singers, as well as preaching from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Cecil Franklin.

Ms. Franklin recorded more duets (with Elton John, Whitney Houston and James Brown ) on “Through the Storm” in 1989, and she made another attempt to connect with youth culture on “What You See Is What You Sweat” in 1991. She released only a few songs — singles and soundtrack material — through the mid-1990s.

But she rallied in 1998 with televised triumphs. She made a noteworthy appearance at the 1998 Grammy Awards, substituting at the last minute for the ailing Luciano Pavarotti by singing a Puccini aria, “ Nessun dorma ,” to overwhelming effect. On “Divas Live,” for VH1, she steamrollered her fellow stars in duets, among them Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. In the meantime, she had been working with younger producers again for her 1998 album, “A Rose Is Still a Rose”; the title track, produced by Lauryn Hill, reached No. 26 on the pop chart. After her 2003 album, “So Damn Happy,” Ms. Franklin left Arista, saying she would record independently.

Arista released the collection “Jewels in the Crown: All-Star Duets With the Queen” in 2007, including a previously unreleased song with the “American Idol” winner Fantasia. Ms. Franklin said in 2007 that she had completed an album to be called “Aretha: A Woman Falling Out of Love,” with songs she had written and produced herself, but it was not released until 2011, on her own Aretha’s Records label. In 2008 she released a holiday album, “This Christmas.”

Ms. Franklin stayed musically ambitious. She repeatedly announced plans to study classical piano and finally learn to sight-read music at the Juilliard School, but she never enrolled. She received several honorary degrees, including from Yale, Princeton and Harvard.

In 2014, Ms. Franklin returned to a major label, RCA Records, with her executive producer from her Arista years, Clive Davis. “Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics” presented her remakes of proven material: songs that had been hits for Adele, Alicia Keys, Chaka Khan, Gloria Gaynor, Barbra Streisand and Sinead O’Connor. It reached No. 13 on the Billboard album chart and No. 1 on the R&B chart.

She had five decades of recordings behind her, but listeners still thrilled to her voice.

An earlier version of a picture caption with this obituary misstated the year the photograph of Ms. Franklin singing at the opening of the Tribeca Film Festival was taken. It was 2017, not this year. An earlier version of another picture caption misidentified the song Ms. Franklin sang at President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009. It was “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” not “America the Beautiful.”

An earlier version of this obituary referred incorrectly to the shooting of Ms. Franklin’s father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, in 1979. He was shot in the knee and the groin, and one bullet severed an artery, limiting the flow of blood to his brain; he was not shot in the head.

An earlier version of this obituary misidentified an event at which Ms. Franklin sang in 1968. It was a memorial service for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a few months after his assassination — not his funeral.

How we handle corrections

Ben Sisario contributed reporting.

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INDUCTED BY

Keith Richards (Rolling Stones)

The first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Aretha Franklin was an artist of passion, sophistication and command, whose recordings remain anthems that defined soul music. Long live the Queen.

HALL OF FAME ESSAY

By Michael Hill

Aretha Franklin was only twenty-five when she clinched the title of Lady Soul with her unforgettably proud, sexy, candid and confident 1967 version of Otis Redding’s “Respect.”

Franklin had already given notice of the sound of things to come with her first Jerry Wexler-produced single for Atlantic Records, “I Never Loved a Man (the Way l Love You),” cut at Rick Hall’s Fame Recording Studios, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

That legendary one-day session marked not only the emergence of a prodigious talent but the start of a new era of fresh, forthright soul music.

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A timeline of major events in the life of Aretha Franklin

FILE - In this Nov. 21, 2008 file photo, Aretha Franklin performs at the House of Blues in Los Angeles. Franklin died Thursday, Aug. 16, 2018 at her home in Detroit. She was 76. (AP Photo/Shea Walsh, file)

FILE - This Jan. 14, 2012 file photo, shows singer Aretha Franklin performing during the BET Honors at the Warner Theatre in Washington. Franklin died Thursday, Aug. 16, 2018 at her home in Detroit. She was 76. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

FILE - In this April 19, 2017, file photo, Aretha Franklin performs at the world premiere of “Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives” at Radio City Music Hall, during the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, in New York. Franklin died Thursday, Aug. 16, 2018, at her home in Detroit. She was 76. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - In this April 17, 1978 file photo, Aretha Franklin and her new husband, Glen Turman, arrive at a Los Angeles hotel for their wedding reception. Turman signals his okay and pleasure at the reception as Kecalf 8, Aretha’s son looks on. Franklin died Thursday, Aug. 16, 2018 at her home in Detroit. She was 76. (AP Photo/Doug Pizac, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 16, 2011 file photo, Aretha Franklin sings before President Barack Obama speaks during the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington. Franklin died Thursday, Aug. 16, 2018 at her home in Detroit. She was 76. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

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DETROIT (AP) — A timeline of major events in the life and work of Aretha Franklin:

March 1942 — Aretha Franklin is born in Memphis, Tennessee. Her father, a prominent Baptist minister with gospel-music connections, would move the family briefly to Buffalo before settling in Detroit when Aretha was 2. She would call the city home for most of her life, and would always be closely associated with its massive musical legacy.

1956 — Franklin releases her first album, a gospel collection called “Songs of Faith,” recorded at her father’s church when she was 14.

1961 — Franklin marries her manager, Ted White. Their troubled eight-year union is believed to have inspired her performances on many songs.

February 1961 — Franklin releases her first album for Columbia Records. She would have only minor hits in her six years with the label, which pushed her toward jazz and show tunes and away from her gospel roots.

November 1966 — Franklin signs with Atlantic Records, where producer Jerry Wexler encourages her to embrace her classic soul-and-gospel sound. Several classic songs immediately followed, including "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Chain of Fools.”

February 1967 — “Respect,” Franklin’s career-defining anthem, is recorded. The song would reach No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart, win Franklin two Grammys and make her an international star. A month later it would be the opening track on her breakthrough album, “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You.”

June 1972 — A live gospel album, “Amazing Grace,” is released amid a revival in spiritual music. It sold more than 2 million copies and is among Franklin’s biggest hits.

January 1977 — Franklin sings “God Bless America” at the inauguration of Jimmy Carter.

June 1980 — The hit film comedy “The Blues Brothers” is released, with Franklin appearing and singing “Think” in one of the film’s most popular scenes. It signaled that the 1980s would bring a career revival.

July 1985 — “Freeway of Love” off of Franklin’s “Who’s Zooming Who” album, becomes her first top 10 hit in more than a decade.

January 1987 — Franklin becomes the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

April 1987 — “I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me),” a duet with George Michael, reaches No. 1 on the pop chart.

December 1994 — Franklin, at age 52, becomes the youngest person ever chosen for the Kennedy Center honors. In his tribute, President Bill Clinton said he and the first lady considered her among their favorite artists. “You could say that Hillary and I went to college and law school with Aretha because there was scarcely a day when we didn’t listen to one of her songs,” said the president.

September 1999 — She receives the National Medal of Arts and Humanities Award from President Bill Clinton, who says Franklin “brought sunshine to a rainy day and tenderness to a hardened heart.”

November 2005 — President George Bush presents her with the 2005 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civil award.

February 2008 — Franklin wins her last Grammy Award — her 18th — for Best Gospel Performance for “Never Gonna Break My Faith” with Mary J. Blige. She is also a Grammy Lifetime Achievement and a Living Legend awardee.

January 2009 — Franklin sings “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” at the inauguration of Barack Obama.

October 2014 — Franklin’s cover of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” reaches No. 47 on Billboard’s R&B chart. It’s her 100th charting single, and she’s the first woman to reach the milestone.

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10 Things You May Not Know About Aretha Franklin

She was terrified of flying

In the early 1980s, Franklin had to endure some intense turbulence while flying in a small two-engine plane from Atlanta back home to Detroit. As she described it in 2007, "That plane was dipsy-doodling all over the place." The experience resulted in a fear of flying. From that point onward, Franklin traveled by bus, not by plane, to get to concerts and other events.

Franklin tried to rid herself of this fear. She explained in 2014, "I did take a class, Fearless Flyers, but I missed two weeks of it and my fellow students went on to Indiana and passed, and I didn't, so I need to make those two classes and then hopefully I'll pass and I'll be able to fly again." But her aviophobia persisted, and Franklin never again took to the skies.

READ MORE: The Powerful Meaning Behind Aretha Franklin's Equality Anthem "Respect"

She was mistakenly identified as Whitney Houston's godmother

In 2012, swollen feet left Franklin unable to attend Whitney Houston 's funeral. At the service, Dionne Warwick , Houston's cousin, mentioned Franklin before realizing she wasn't present. Warwick then said of Franklin, "She loves Whitney as if she were born to her. She is her godmother." However, Franklin was not Houston's godmother (another popular singer, Darlene Love, filled that role).

Houston's mother corrected Warwick within days, but that wasn't enough for Franklin. Five years later, Franklin sent a fax to the Associated Press that accused Warwick of making a "libelous" statement. In a follow-up interview with the Associated Press , Franklin said, "She blatantly lied on me… fully well knowing what she was doing."

In later years, she wanted to study at Juilliard

Franklin was a self-taught musician who learned to play the piano by ear and couldn't read music. Considering her accomplishments and adulation as a performer, being an autodidact didn't hold her back — but as she grew older, she developed the goal of someday studying piano at Juilliard.

In 2003, when asked what her biggest regret was, Franklin confided to Vanity Fair , "Not learning to read music. However, Juilliard is still on my mind! I’ve come within two blocks of the building, and my schedule would not allow for me to enroll at the time." And in 2007 she told The New York Times , "I have been trying to get over to Juilliard for the last four years."

Franklin never enrolled at the famed school, but she did manage to take private lessons with a Juilliard-trained instructor .

Her voice was declared a natural resource

In 1985, the Department of Natural Resources of the state of Michigan officially declared Franklin's voice a "natural resource of the state."

She walked out of rehearsals for 'Divas Live'

In 1998, Franklin agreed to be part of a group concert for VH1 known as Divas Live. Prior to rehearsals at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, she laid down one simple edict to the show's producer: "I'll come to The Beacon, I'll do it. But I need that air conditioning off."

Yet when Franklin arrived to rehearse, the air conditioning was running. So she did what any self-respecting diva would do — she left. The remaining divas — Shania Twain , Gloria Estefan , Celine Dion , Mariah Carey and Carole King — rehearsed without Franklin. No one knew if she would show up for the concert.

Of course, in the end, Franklin did make it to the theater. Some of her cues were a little mistimed during the show, but the concert was a hit. Its standout performances included Franklin joining with her fellow divas to sing the perennially popular "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman."

She planned to bail Angela Davis out of jail

Following a 1970 attempt to free an incarcerated Black Panther that ended in a deadly shootout, activist Angela Davis was arrested. She was charged with conspiracy, kidnapping and murder because the firearms used in the failed escape were registered to her.

Franklin was committed to the fight for civil rights, but Davis was a divisive figure, referred to as a "dangerous terrorist" by President Richard Nixon . But the controversy surrounding the activist didn't keep Franklin from deciding that she needed to provide the funds for Davis' bail. "Angela Davis must go free," Franklin said in an interview with Jet magazine. "Jail is hell to be in. I'm going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she's a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people. I have the money; I got it from Black people — they've made me financially able to have it — and I want to use it in ways that will help our people."

Davis ended up not being allowed bail, so Franklin wasn't able to come to her aid. But Davis, who went on to be acquitted of the charges she faced, remembered Franklin's intentions. She later said of the singer's gesture, "I thanked her publicly for it many times, but can't remember if we actually spoke to each other."

She performed with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Over the course of her career, Franklin appeared alongside many famous people. Surprisingly, this list of performing partners includes former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice . On July 27, 2010, the two shared a stage in Philadelphia in order to raise money for educational and outreach programs.

According to Rice, the initial inspiration for their collaboration came from Franklin. Rice related that while she was with Franklin at a White House event , "We were just talking and chatting and she said, 'You play, don't you?' And I said, 'Yes.' And she said we should do something together." A month before the concert, Franklin said , "Ms. Rice is a consummate classical pianist and since I sing the arias, I thought we could do something — a bipartisan effort for our favorite charities."

Rice played on her own in the first half of the concert. In the second half, she served as the accompanist as Franklin sang "I Say A Little Prayer" and "America (My Country 'Tis Of Thee)."

She stood up to the Super Bowl

In 2006, the Super Bowl was scheduled to be played in Detroit, a city that holds a special place in music history. Yet instead of turning to a Detroit artist — perhaps Diana Ross , Stevie Wonder or Gladys Knight — for its halftime show, the NFL instead selected the Rolling Stones.

Many who were justifiably proud of Detroit's talent weren't happy with this decision. This included Franklin. She shared how she initially felt in an Associated Press interview: "I didn't think there was enough [representation from Detroit], by any means. And it was my feeling: 'How dare you come to Detroit, a city of legends — musical legends plural — and not ask one or two of them to participate.'"

Fortunately, the NFL tried to rectify its error. In addition to featuring Wonder in a pre-game performance, Franklin was invited to join singer Aaron Neville for the national anthem. Franklin being added to the lineup marked the first time she performed at any Super Bowl. She'd been invited to sing before, but travel concerns — such as her fear of flying — had led her to refuse. She deemed this Super Bowl appearance "an ultra-special honor."

She never forgot her father's church

Throughout her life, Franklin made regular contributions to Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church, which had been led by her father, Reverend C.L. Franklin. She provided $10,000 checks to the church several times a year. In addition, she gave money to struggling families during the holidays, sponsored Thanksgiving and Christmas meals and arranged an annual concert at the church.

Her inauguration hat has a place in history

Franklin belted out "America (My Country 'Tis Of Thee)" at the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama . During her performance, she wore a gray felt cloche hat that was topped with an impressive bow bedazzled with Swarovski crystals. At the time the hat inspired memes and became a viral sensation. Since then it's cemented its place in history.

After the inauguration, Franklin's hat was loaned to the Smithsonian (though it wasn't added to the museum's permanent collection). A replica was added to a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame traveling exhibit. And after Franklin's death, Obama had a request for her estate: He wanted that eye-catching hat.

Confusion over the dispersal of Franklin's estate — she was thought to have died intestate until several handwritten wills were discovered in her home — meant Obama had to wait for the hat. However, it should eventually become part of his presidential library, which seems to be the outcome that would have best pleased Franklin. Luke Song, the milliner who crafted the chapeau, said in 2018, "She told me she wanted it at the Barack Obama Presidential Library, and I think that is exactly where it should be."

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• HISTORY & CULTURE

How a TV crew meticulously re-created Aretha Franklin’s extraordinary life

A new show dedicated to the Queen of Soul meticulously reproduced the trail the singer blazed—down to the studio switchboards and sequined gowns.

As the moon rose high over Atlanta, background actors milled about in rust-colored elephant bell bottoms and Qiana shirts. It had been a long and productive day, as the National Geographic series Genius: Aretha   shot the sixth episode in which the Queen of Soul records the “Amazing Grace” live album.

In a little while, it would be Friday, March 13, and the pandemic would shutter much of the country, including this production. However, on this warm night as executive producer and director Anthony Hemingway leaned against a 1972 Ford Gran Torino, no one knew that yet.

Hemingway began the day reflecting on the anthology series, which each season focuses on a genius who changed the world, first Einstein, then Picasso, and now Aretha Franklin. Unlike the first two subjects, however, Franklin was someone most of us feel connected to. Who hasn’t (wrongly) thought they could sing along with her?

The season airs over four consecutive evenings on Nat Geo beginning March 21, running on Hulu the next day, with the full series on the streaming service March 25, Franklin’s birthday. ( Watch the series trailer here. )

Making these eight hours of television required a small army of people from carpenters to wig makers. In a documentary, filmmakers can merely assemble old footage. Everything for Genius: Aretha had to be created. Producers, directors, writers, actors, and craftspeople told us how they did it.

Like everyone involved in this massive project, Hemingway immersed himself in Franklin’s life. And like everyone, he came to it with her songs deeply embedded in him.

For Hungry Minds

“I remember in the Bronx, my parents cutting a rug to her songs,” Hemingway said. “I still dance to ‘Rock Steady.’ It is my jam. I’m so happy I directed that episode because I love it so much. Cynthia absolutely slays it. I was constantly in awe watching her perform. Aretha is someone she studied. How fluidly she enters her spirit is transformative. The crew was mesmerized watching her. It’s even hard for the camera operators to do what they have to do; everybody wants to stop and listen.”   ( These songs defined Aretha Franklin’s record-breaking career. )

Cynthia Erivo does slay every song and portrays Franklin as self-contained, shy. True, Erivo, a Tony, Emmy, and Grammy Award winner, does not look like Franklin, but about three seconds into the eight hours that’s forgotten. What’s apparent is how she channels Franklin, even though she’s not trying to impersonate her.

“I’ve been listening to her music over and over,” Erivo said. “The thing she does with her voice, they are signature things. I have been learning and listening to her speak and trying to delve into that. Whenever I find an issue, I pull in my vocal coach.”

“Just listening to her music really helps and puts me where I need to be—switching everything else off and focusing in that moment,” Erivo said. “Especially when on set with someone else, it is really about trying to respond to what you are given. I try to turn Cynthia off and find out where Aretha might have been.”  

Erivo’s focus was palpable as the set grew silent. As Aretha, she stormed out of a storefront church on Atlanta’s Abernathy Boulevard. The street was closed except to vintage cars and pick-ups brought in for the production. Sure, it’s a scripted drama, but historical accuracy is crucial. A tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes work made everything look authentic— the right cars, sets, props, makeup, and clothes.

So much of that came from the room where it all really does happen—the wardrobe department. Even background actors did not get on camera until Jennifer Bryan, costume designer, approved. Bryan, who grew up in Jamaica loving Aretha, oversaw a massive project.

She and her staff of 12 rented, designed, sewed, or bought at least 4,000 costumes. Bryan’s domain stretched a city block and was stacked with racks of clothes, some suspended from the ceiling. All were precisely organized into decades, then sizes. Bryan extracted hats pristinely stored in hatboxes from stores that no longer exist and gently displayed hand-beaded gowns. Bolts of fabric Bryan had printed overseas, a riot of 1970s colors and designs, were stacked near sewing machines. Among the unexpected finds in this hub was a vintage dress in different sizes.

“Aretha played piano,” Bryan said. “Cynthia doesn’t play, and when she sits at the piano, I have to dress the double.”

While Genius: Aretha might not seem a period piece, given that she died in 2018, everything was made or sourced to reflect eras from the 1940s, before Franklin was born, through the late 1990s. Certainly Bryan knew these styles, yet she still pored over thousands of photos. Bryan needed to ensure she was re-creating clothes precisely, from the sequined gowns with ostrich feathers Aretha took bows in, to the cotton dresses and cardigans she threw on while puttering around the kitchen.

The behind-the-scenes research was so thorough, prop master Kevin Ladson tracked down Franklin’s fried chicken recipe.

“It was typical breading, salt, paprika, pepper, crushed basil, a double batter,” Ladson said. “I made it, and it was so good. We tried to get her recipe for pigs’ feet. Anthony had a recipe. I gathered that she liked to cook for her family.”

His touches include creating packs of Franklin’s Kool cigarettes, matching how the packaging changed over the years. He also sketched fashion designs for a portfolio belonging to Ken Cunningham, one of Aretha’s serious beaus. When Ladson drew these designs, trying to get into Cunningham’s mindset, he had no idea if even a glimpse of these would make it into the series. They do.

Ladson and Bryan separately described this as a dream job; the Queen of Soul’s music means that much to them. Yet, as thorough as the research was in all aspects of the production, sometimes the result had to be best guesses.

“We know what the outside of the house is like,” Tim Galvin, production designer, said, referring to the Franklin homestead in Detroit. “But the inside is anybody’s guess. There was very little to go on.”

His team found a house in Atlanta closely resembling the Franklins’ Detroit house and replaced its windows. On a sprawling set, workers created interior rooms from bedrooms to Manhattan apartments.

Here, her father’s office is a muted den with a large wooden desk, books about the Bible on bookshelves, and reproductions of framed documents made out to the reverend hang on the walls. The same care can be seen in Aretha’s sons’ bedroom, decorated with Tinkertoys and Hardy Boys books. The living room holds a Steinway grand and an engraving on the mantle, Psalm 137: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” An Underwood typewriter rests on a desk in the sunroom, and the kitchen features a Frigidaire with rounded edges.

All told, Galvin estimated the production used at least 30 locations per episode, totaling about 250 sets. The recording studio replicating Atlantic Records is a striking design feat. The equipment includes a reclaimed control board replete with rows of dials and switches, set up precisely as it had been when Franklin cut records on the label beginning in 1967. The office of the hit-making producer Jerry Wexler, who worked with her on “Respect,” “Chain of Fools,” and “Think” has overflowing ashtrays and framed posters of The Drifters and Ray Charles. This is where the magic happened, and you half expect to hear Franklin belting or her back-up musicians trying yet another way to perfect the sound.

One of those musicians was sax wizard and bandleader King Curtis. Marque Richardson, portraying Curtis, took his role so seriously that he tried to learn to play. By his account, he couldn’t, but he looks as if he can blow a mean sax and that extra bit of prep helped.

Those working on Genius have listened to Franklin constantly, and no one was complaining. Creator Suzan-Lori Parks—a musician, the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama, and a bona fide genius herself having been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant—started work on this more than two years ago.

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She was at Sundance when executive producer Brian Grazer FaceTimed her. “‘Want to do Genius: Aretha ?’” he asked. It felt right to accept the job as showrunner, creator, head writer, and executive producer. After all, Franklin had approached Parks a decade earlier, interested in collaborating on a stage musical. While she worked, Parks listened. “I have vinyl, Spotify, MP3,” she said. “On every device I have, I am listening to her.”

During interviews in Los Angeles and Atlanta, Parks explained how she wrote four of the eight hours of scripts and worked on others. Although she has tackled other complicated projects—writing a novel, a play a day for an entire year—this was different because she was constantly involved in all details of the production. Parks kept her aim clear: “We will show you the spirit behind the songs,” she promised.

The anthology series reveals the world Franklin was born into in 1942, and how through talent and determination, she became a superstar. “I read ‘Respect’ and could not put it down and could not stop talking about it,” said Courtney B. Vance, who portrays the Rev. C.L. Franklin. ( Discover how pain and passion shaped Franklin's genius. )

The series gave the Tony and Emmy winner a chance to sing on camera for the first time. Growing up eight doors down from Motown’s Hitsville, U.S.A., in Detroit, where the Franklins were royalty, Vance understood Aretha’s world.

“You were in church all day,” he said. “It was an absolute world.”

The series reveals Franklin’s foibles as well as her genius. Sometimes she drank too much or stuck with the wrong man for too long. She could be selfish and oblivious to her sisters’ feelings. Both of her sisters also sang, and egos were bruised along the way, especially because Aretha was always their dad’s favorite.  

Ultimately, they were sisters, and director Neema Barnette wanted to make sure their love came across. She suggested to Parks that they have some onscreen bonding time, sharing meals, chatting, laughing. There’s an intimacy and sweetness to scenes shared by sisters, especially around the piano.

Helping to set that mood is Kevin McKnight, director of photography. When Franklin feels safe in the Detroit house or one of her increasingly fancier homes, the tones are warm. And when she’s struggling, fighting with her first husband, unsure if she’ll ever chart with a hit, the tones cool.

“Anthony’s dictate from right upfront is he wanted it to be very definitive on timelines,” McKnight said. And with each period, he custom-blended colors to help move viewers into new times. “Color plays a lot for us in telling our audience how to feel.”

When Little Re, as her family and friends called her, has her first solo in New Bethel Baptist Church, the screen transitions from black and white to color, and it’s impossible not to think of The Wizard of Oz , which Hemingway and McKnight acknowledge . Incidentally, newcomer Shaian Jordan, who plays young Aretha, also sang her first solo in church.

Little Re’s world exploded in vibrant color because she found her voice. Even in a family brimming with talent, the Franklins knew all along that Aretha’s gift was special. As a child, she had the remarkable ability to hear a song and sing it back note for note, a talent she retained. When Franklin saw Erivo in The Color Purple on Broadway, Franklin visited her backstage and sang “I’m Here,” which she had just heard Erivo sing.

Franklin could sing anything—who else could fill in for Pavarotti on no notice? When he fell ill and couldn’t perform at the 1998 Grammys, the Queen of Soul stole the show belting his signature aria, “Nessun dorma.” Franklin proved her genius as she effortlessly segued from gospel to soul, pop, and even disco, which she didn’t love. Still, the soundtrack for Genius could not be limited to Franklin’s hits; it needed to reflect the music of her life.

“It was almost like continuity to make everything authentic to what the music was at that era for different periods,” explained Raphael Saadiq, executive music producer. “How you see it in the film, you see the wardrobe and shots and a continuity on set, and you make sure you are keeping that continuity and authenticity.

The power of Franklin's artistry and her soaring voice, which could hold a note until she damned well felt like letting it go, remains etched into our collective memory. When she lost herself in a song, those who saw her perform reach back to those moments that remind us why music exists.

Terence Blanchard, series composer, approached this with the awe fellow musicians have for this force of nature who could hear the slightest variation in a note. He drew from decades of experience, including working with Franklin on Malcolm X and in concert at the Detroit Jazz Festival. Blanchard used well-known songs and additional music.

“The music exists,” Blanchard said. “That’s all handled by the music she is actually performing. What I try to do is, it is about Aretha, and we are looking at her life. The score has to be that safety blanket, that constant thing that reminds us that this is a tale about Aretha. The music can’t go all over the place when there are things being told about her as a young kid. Musically, I can pick those phrases, and emotionally, you will make the connection. My job is to be that constant, the conscious, driving force behind her personality that can be seen from beginning to end.”

All of it—subdued piano chords and brassy lead-ins to disco, church hymns, and pop hits—are woven in, as is a profound respect for Franklin. Yes, the song that came to be Franklin’s anthem, one of a woman fed up with a man, resonates throughout. Still, that’s what the behind-the-scenes work proves: endless respect for the Queen of Soul.

“Back in the day when you only had three networks, whenever she was on TV, we all gathered around, waiting for her to sing,” Blanchard recalled.

Today, with thousands of choices, everyone involved hopes the Aretha allure remains powerful.

“Knowing our mission, the true message, and the story we are telling gives us great joy and passion,” Hemingway said. “Like her music, this story will connect with viewers.”  

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Aretha Franklin Wasn’t Just a Music Legend. She Also Raised Her Voice for Civil Rights

Aretha Franklin will forever be remembered as the legendary Queen of Soul , but her six decade career (during which she won 18 Grammy awards and was the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) isn’t the only legacy she’ll be leaving behind. The musical icon, who passed away at the age of 76 in Detroit, Michigan on Thursday, was also an integral part of the Civil Rights movement, using both her platform and her voice to advocate for racial equality.

Born to preacher and civil rights activist Clarence L. Franklin ( who organized the 1963 Detroit Walk to Freedom ahead of his good friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s March on Washington ) and his wife Barbara Siggers, Franklin grew up singing gospel music in the church. In her youth, she was mentored by Mahalia Jackson , the “Queen of Gospel” and a noted civil rights activist who was also good friends with King.

In 1967, Franklin released “Respect,” arguably her most famous song, which became an anthem for the racial and gendered political movements of the time, something that wasn’t lost on Franklin who said of her signature track in her memoir Aretha: From These Roots : “It [reflected] the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher—everyone wanted respect,” Franklin wrote. “It was also one of the battle cries of the civil rights movement. The song took on monumental significance.”

The following year, in 1968, Franklin sang “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” a song made famous by Jackson, at King’s funeral. That same year, she also performed the National Anthem at the Democratic National Convention.

The activism that Franklin was surrounded by in her youth quickly became something she was personally and actively engaged in; according to a Detroit Free Press interview with Reverend Jesse Jackson, Franklin often used her talents to help further the civil rights movement, even going so far as to tour with King and fellow singer/activist, Harry Belafonte.

“When Dr. King was alive, several times she helped us make payroll,” Jackson said. “On one occasion, we took an 11-city tour with her as Aretha Franklin and Harry Belafonte…and they put gas in the vans. She did 11 concerts for free and hosted us at her home and did a fundraiser for my campaign. Aretha has always been a very socially conscious artist, an inspiration, not just an entertainer. She has shared her points of view from the stage for challenged people, to register to vote, to stand up for decency.”

One of the most prescient examples of Franklin’s commitment to civil rights was when she offered to post bail for revolutionary activist and scholar Angela Davis in 1970 , after Davis, a member of the Communist Party, was accused of assisting in a courtroom takeover that ended in four deaths. In an interview with Jet , Franklin advocates for not only Davis, but for black liberation.

“Angela Davis must go free,” Franklin said. “Black people will be free. I’ve been locked up (for disturbing the peace in Detroit) and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I’m going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she’s a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people. I have the money; I got it from Black people — they’ve made me financially able to have it — and I want to use it in ways that will help our people.”

Not many people know this story... pic.twitter.com/tdNRl2eqED — Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) August 16, 2018

Franklin’s investment in her community and her dedication to social justice is perhaps best summed up by Barack Obama, a huge fan of the singer and who immediately requested that the soul singer be the performer for his first presidential inauguration in 2009.

i don’t talk a lot about private conversations me and @POTUS44 ever had but when I started a conversation with him about talent for the first inaugural he cut me off and said “Aretha” #RIPArethaFranklin — alyssa mastromonaco (@AlyssaMastro44) August 16, 2018

In an interview with The New Yorker following a performance of Carole King’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” (a performance that memorably brought him to tears,) the former president had this to say: “American history wells up when Aretha sings. Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R. & B., rock and roll ― the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope.”

Following the news of her death, Franklin was mourned by not only fans of her music, but those who recognized her role in the Civil Rights Movement, many of whom worked alongside her in fighting for equality.

https://t.co/LgBOr5vgkA : #RestInPower ... #RestInPeace ... #ArethaFranklin ... We will always love you. All hail to the Queen! pic.twitter.com/QzfIQIs4og — Rev Jesse Jackson Sr (@RevJJackson) August 16, 2018

We were blessed to live in a world with #ArethaFranklin . Beyond her tremendous singing voice, she was a voice in the Civil Rights Movement. An instrument... pic.twitter.com/cTOdv3UGoP — Be A King (@BerniceKing) August 16, 2018

We have lost one of the great artists of our time. Aretha Franklin was one of God’s precious gifts to the world—one of God’s shining jewels. She is deeply loved by millions of people as the Queen of Soul. Her voice is still a guiding light to vocalists today. — John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) August 16, 2018

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Write to Cady Lang at [email protected]