RESPECT
Aretha Franklin
1942-2018
Aretha Franklin, who has died aged 76, had a vocal range that combined the soaring sweetness of gospel with the indomitable grit of black pride; with songs such as I Never Loved a Man (The Way I
Loved You), Respect, Think and I Say a Little Prayer, the ‘‘Queen of Soul’’, as she was known, had one of the best known and most distinctive voices in contemporary music.
Although she was quietly spoken, timid and even reclusive offstage – a reflection of a profoundly troubled childhood and life – Franklin’s remarkable singing voice possessed a power that set her apart from the stylised girl groups of the Motown era, placing her alongside Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye as a singer who brought spiritual passion to pop music. While Diana Ross and the Supremes trilled pretty and unthreatening harmonies for teenagers to swoon to,Franklin sang about real life, real heartbreak and real women.
Aretha Louise Franklin was born in 1942 in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the five children of the Reverend Clarence L. Franklin and his wife Barbara. Her father, a Baptist evangelical preacher and a popular figure on the gospel circuit, was known as ‘‘The Man with the Million-Dollar Voice’’ and was said to charge $4000 for one of his rolling-thunder sermons.
The Franklins moved to Detroit, Michigan, when Aretha was two years old. Four years later her mother abandoned the family, leaving Aretha to be brought up by her father – a dominating figure and a strict disciplinarian. Her first manager, Jo King, would describe her as ‘‘a desperately unhappy child’’.
Music was the grain of family life. Many of the most celebrated gospel and blues singers of the time – including Cooke, B B King, the Rev James Cleveland, Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward – were frequent visitors to the family home, and Aretha sang at the Baptist church where her father was pastor. Holy shouting and audience participation defined the mood, which was so intense that the congregation cooled themselves on hot days with hand-held cardboard fans printed with advertisements for local funeral homes.
It was when she was nine, at the funeral of an aunt, that Aretha discovered her vocation. When Clara Ward concluded her rendition of Peace in the Valley by hurling her hat to the ground, Aretha realised that ‘‘from then on I knew what I wanted to do – sing!’’.
At 12 she sang her first solo in church, and it was there that she acquired her distinctive way of singing while seated at the piano. She felt, she would later explain, less self-conscious when sitting down, and found it easier to sing ‘‘from the stomach’’.
Aretha Franklin had two of her four sons in her teens and dropped out of high school when she was 15. Determined on a singing career, however, in 1960 she left her children with their grandmother and moved to New York, where in 1961 she gained a recording contract at Columbia through John Hammond, the CBS talent scout who had discovered Billie Holiday.
That year she married Ted White, who became her manager. But it would take several years and nine albums before Franklin hit the big time. Her producers at Columbia recorded her singing jazzed-up pop standards, Broadway show tunes and stringladen ballads instead of making the best of her gospel roots.
Her confidence crushed, she recalled later that she spent much of her time singing ‘‘to the floor’’.
Her personal life was equally unhappy. ‘‘She had lived more than most people lived in a lifetime,’’ Hammond would later recall. ‘‘Aretha was lost.’’
In 1967 she joined Atlantic Records, which was then a small label based in New York. Atlantic was run by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, who had the inspired idea of teaming Franklin with the session musicians of the Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, who were providing the rootsy, deep soul backing for many of the rhythm and blues hits of the day.
Franklin flew to Muscle Shoals to record a song called I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You), but the mood between Ted White and the (white) musicians grew increasingly sour as drink was taken. The sessions were dramatically abandoned when one of the horn section was accused of making an untoward advance on the singer herself, but not before she had recorded I Never Loved a
Man. The result was musical nitroglycerine – a song infused with all the rousing passions of gospel and blues sexuality: ‘‘You’re a no good heartbreaker,’’ she begins, ‘‘you’re a liar and a cheat’’, before growling resignedly: ‘‘I ain’t never, no no/ Loved a man, the way that I, I love you.’’
The combination of Aretha’s impassioned vocal styling with the southern soul sound resulted in her first big hit. She would never return to Muscle Shoals, but Wexler knew he had a winning formula.
The same musicians, recording in New York (without the miscreant horn player) would become her core accompaniment, creating a template that would bring her an unbroken succession of Top 10 songs and Grammy awards over the next seven years.
With Respect, a version of an Otis Redding song, she had her first international success. This was followed up with a string of further hits, including Baby I Love You, Chain of Fools, (You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman (by Carole King, Gerry Goffin and Wexler), Think and I Say a Little Prayer. E ach new song revealed further strengths in Aretha Franklin’s voice; the powerful and anthemic Respect became a rallying cry for black activism, feminism and sexual liberation (‘‘I just lost my song,’’ Redding told Wexler on hearing for the first time her interpretation of what was his signature piece. ‘‘That girl took it away from me.’’) Natural Woman was infused with eroticism, while I
Say a Little Prayer combined a touching verse with an uplifting gospel-style crescendo in the chorus. It became Aretha Franklin’s biggest UK hit.
In 1968 she made her first tour of Europe. By the early 1970s she had become friendly with Martin Luther King and was seen by many as a female symbol of AfricanAmerican pride.
But while she was enjoying unrivalled professional success, Franklin’s personal life was falling apart. In 1968, in an interview with
Time magazine, she described herself as ‘‘26 going on 65, an old woman in disguise’’.
Following the birth of a third son, her marriage to White collapsed in 1969, the same year in which her father was arrested for
possession of marijuana. Although she was rumoured to be drinking heavily, she threw herself into her work and had further hits in the 1970s, among them Bridge Over Troubled Water, Don’t Play That Song, Spanish Harlem and Rock Steady.
During this period, while in a relationship with her road manager Ken Cunningham, she gave birth to a fourth son.
By the end of the 1970s her star seemed to be waning. In an attempt to fit into the disco scene she had lost 18kg and exchanged her African print robes for fur-laden evening gowns. But musical tastes were changing, and what she described as her ‘‘hot and greasy’’ soul was being overtaken by the pumping beat of disco music. At one stage the Queen of Soul was reduced to entertaining holiday diners at the Lake Tahoe resort.
In 1978 she married the actor Glynn Turman, and, having left Atlantic, she had a minor hit in
1980 with What A Fool Believes on the Arista label. Her real renaissance, however, came later, when she played the owner of a soul food restaurant in the film The
Blues Brothers (1980).
Her glorious rendition of Think in that film introduced her music to a younger audience who had tired of disco. But by then her personal life had come under further strain when, in 1979, her father fell into an irreversible coma after being shot by burglars. He died five years later, shortly after she divorced Turman.
In 1986 she released the album Aretha, which included the No 1 duet I Knew You Were Waiting (For
Me), recorded with George Michael. It was one of a number of collaborations with artists such as Luther Vandross, the Eurythmics and Whitney Houston which were to re-establish her status.
Even so, she never again achieved the explosive effect of her
1960s hits; by the 1990s she was focusing much of her energy on a range of television advertisements, a cookery video entitled Queen of Soul Food and the launch of a chain of Aretha’s Chicken and Waffles restaurants.
When performing live, however, she would return to form in the most spectacular manner. With her ample form enveloped in an enormous meringue of a dress, her voice would soar through the old favourites.
For all the power and unleashed emotionalism of her singing, Franklin remained shy and withdrawn, a woman who never appeared able to escape the air of being burdened with unfathomable troubles. Until she gave up cigarettes in 1991 she was permanently shielded behind a cloud of smoke.
In the 1980s, there were some much-publicised problems over unpaid taxes, and she developed a fear of flying. She was said at one stage to be housebound and, particularly in later years, had been dogged by health problems, with concerts cancelled.
She was never entirely comfortable with her fame, however, observing: ‘‘I’m the lady next door when I’m not on stage.’’
She was most content when singing. ‘‘Being a singer,’’ she explained, ‘‘is a natural gift. It means I’m using to the highest degree possible the gift that God gave me to use. I’m happy with that.’’
But she was not one to philosophise about her music. When pressed, she would explain that ‘‘to sing a song I must find meaning in the lyric’’, adding: ‘‘Of course, I must feel the groove.’’
She is survived by four sons. –
‘‘She had lived more than most people lived in a lifetime.’’ John Hammond, of CBS, on Aretha Franklin