Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin was the daughter of C. L. Franklin, a nationally known Baptist minister, and Barbara Siggers Franklin, a gospel singer and pianist. Her parents separated when she was six, and her mother died when Franklin was 10. She remained with her father in Detroit, where New Bethel Baptist Church and the Franklin home attracted gospel singers, civil rights figures, and musicians.

Franklin became a mother to Clarence at age 12 and to Edward two years later. She later had two more sons, Ted White Jr. and Kecalf Cunningham. Her grandmother and older sisters helped raise her children while she continued pursuing music.

She was married to Ted White from 1961 to 1969. White also served as her manager, but Franklin eventually fired him and took full charge of her career after their divorce. She married actor Glynn Turman in 1978, and they divorced in 1984.

Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and spent most of her formative years in Detroit after her family moved there. She sang in the junior choir of her father’s church and performed on his traveling gospel programs in major cities. Her father sometimes placed her on a chair so that the congregation could see her while she sang.

Largely self-taught, Franklin learned to play piano by ear and became recognized as a vocal prodigy. Gospel singers Clara Ward, Mahalia Jackson, Albertina Walker, and Jackie Verdell influenced her style. She also met Sam Cooke through her father’s gospel work, and Cooke’s move from gospel to secular music helped Franklin imagine a similar path.

Franklin recorded the gospel album Songs of Faith in 1956, when she was 14. At 18, with her father’s encouragement, she moved to New York City to pursue secular music and signed with Columbia Records after an audition arranged by producer John Hammond.

At Columbia, Franklin recorded blues, jazz, pop, and rhythm and blues material. Her first Columbia single, “Today I Sing the Blues,” reached the Top Ten on the Billboard R&B chart in 1960, and her debut album, Aretha: With The Ray Bryant Combo, followed in 1961. She also had a pop hit with “Rock-a-bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,” but Columbia’s varied approach did not fully reveal her gospel-rooted musical identity.

Franklin moved to Atlantic Records in 1966, where producer Jerry Wexler encouraged her to choose her own songs, play piano, and shape the arrangements. Her first Atlantic album, I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You), produced the million-selling title track and established the forceful gospel and R&B sound associated with her career.

Her 1967 recording of Otis Redding’s “Respect” reached number one on both the pop and R&B charts and won her first two Grammy Awards. Franklin’s rearrangement, including the spelled-out “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” refrain, turned the song into an anthem associated with civil rights and the women’s movement. “Think,” “Chain of Fools,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Baby I Love You,” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” followed among her major hits, helping earn her the title “Queen of Soul.”

Franklin returned to gospel music with Amazing Grace, a 1972 live recording made with a choir at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles. The album became the best-selling gospel album of its time and was regarded as one of the great gospel recordings. She also expanded her work through albums such as Spirit in the Dark and Young, Gifted and Black and collaborated with Curtis Mayfield and Quincy Jones.

The rise of disco weakened the commercial performance of some of Franklin’s late-1970s releases, including La Diva. She revived her career after signing with Arista Records and releasing Jump to It in 1982. Her 1985 album Who’s Zoomin’ Who? included “Freeway of Love,” while her duet with George Michael, “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” reached number one in 1987.

Franklin appeared as Mrs. Murphy in The Blues Brothers in 1980 and reprised the role in Blues Brothers 2000. Her later musical highlights included her surprise performance of “Nessun dorma” at the 1998 Grammy Awards, her 2009 performance of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration, and her final public performance at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Gala in 2017.

Franklin received 18 Grammy Awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. She died of advanced pancreatic cancer in Detroit on August 16, 2018.

Franklin performed at the 1968 funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., a longtime friend of her father, and sang the national anthem at the Democratic National Convention later that year. She also offered to pay bond money for activist Angela Davis after Davis’s arrest in 1970. Franklin later performed at campaign and inauguration events for Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

Her music connected gospel intensity, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, pop, rock, and opera. “Respect” became a lasting expression of self-assertion and equality, while Amazing Grace demonstrated the continuing importance of her gospel foundation. Franklin’s recordings and performances established her as a defining vocalist of 20th-century popular music.