Aretha worried she wasn’t good enough as a singer...or a mother

her paternal grandmother, ‘Big Mama’ — to join her father’s travelling ‘Gospel Caravan’, singing and playing piano. She recalled how they often encountered racial segregation, only able to eat at certain restaurants and stopping only at petrol stations where they knew they could use the lavatories.

At 18, she went to New York and signed with Columbia, making nine albums with just one single making the Top 40. Her fortunes changed when she moved to Atlantic records in 1967. Her first five releases were all in the Top 10.

Musical success contrasted with private life disaster. She married her first husband, Ted White, in 1961 when she was 19. A brutal Detroit street criminal and pimp, he financed Aretha’s early career with the profits of prostitution. He also ‘didn’t hesitate slapping [Aretha] around and didn’t care who saw him do it,’ according to the singer’s producer, Otis Taylor.

As if to compensate, she ate and drank compulsively — the alcohol helping to numb the pain of her terrible marriage, according to friends. Performing her 1967 hit respect in a concert that year, a tipsy Aretha fell off the stage and broke her arm, later claiming she had been blinded by the stage lights. However, she was arrested for disorderly behaviour and cancelled concerts unexpectedly.

‘She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown,’ her sister Carolyn said of Aretha during her time with White. She had her third child with him in 1964 but they were divorced by 1969.

Over the next decade, Aretha managed to get her drinking (if not her eating) under control, but her private life continued to be messy. Like her father, fame went to her head.

‘She was the Queen of Soul and I think at times she saw her boyfriends like her servants,’ said her former lover Dennis edwards, lead singer of The Temptations.

She had another child by Ken Cunningham, her road manager, and married second husband Glynn Turman, an actor, in 1978. By then, her first run of hit records had dried up, but she never stopped fighting to remain relevant to audiences, duetting with George Benson, George Michael, and the eurythmics over the next decade.

Her mental health, though, was always fragile and she was oppressed by the pressures of her industry, according to Carolyn. ‘She was afraid she wasn’t good enough as a singer, pretty enough as a woman, or devoted enough as a mother,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to call it but deep, deep insecurity.

‘Her style was to either drink away the anxiety or, when that stopped working, disappear for a while, find her bearings, and go right back onstage and wear the crown of the impervious diva.’

Her brother, Cecil, repeatedly had her hospitalised in a remote Connecticut clinic for ‘nervous exhaustion’.

She would seemingly recover and dive back into her career, only to end up in hospital again.

Irked by these rumours of her mental instability, Aretha fed the Press with fabricated tales about her wonderful life, concocting stories about mystery lovers and once announcing she was getting married to a man who, it turned out, knew nothing about it.

She was always deeply jealous of other stars. recording a song with gospel star Mavis Staples, Aretha insisted Staples’s voice was turned down so much it was barely audible.

Barbra Streisand and Diana ross were viewed as rivals for her crown and she had little time for them, while friendships with other singers lasted only as long as it took Aretha to take offence at some perceived slight and put them on what she called her ‘s**t list’.

In 1989, she sang a duet with Whitney Houston (It Isn’t, It Wasn’t, It Ain’t Never Gonna Be) when Whitney was at the peak of her fame, and probably the biggest pop star in the world.

But the older star was aloof and unfriendly, entering ‘ the studio as Queen Aretha, the original diva’, Houston observed. When the song failed to become a hit, Aretha blamed Houston, saying: ‘Whitney lacked [her] wisdom and maturity as a recording artist.’

Male stars were no different. Luther Vandross never got over her insistence on calling him ‘Vandross’ and he having to call her ‘ Miss Franklin’ when he produced a 1981 album for her.

‘Falling-outs are her specialty,’ said ruth Bowen, her booking agent and a longtime friend.

She clashed with her family, too. Her two sisters were both talented singers but the fiercely competitive Aretha sometimes tried to hold back their careers. She further clashed with her family members about the care of her father after he was shot during a robbery attempt in 1979 and spent five years in a coma.

It was her absolute refusal to show any hint of weakness that meant she never got the professional help which her family believe she needed.

‘She takes her suffering and turns it into anger,’ said her brother Cecil. ‘It’s all about diva drama. It’s hard for her to deal with extreme sadness and loss. rather than deal, she acts out. She goes to rage. rage without reason. It’s crazy.’

Aretha developed a fear of travel and particularly of flying, boarding her last plane in 1982. She would only go on tour by bus and, even then, refused to go through the rockies or drive in bad weather. In later years, her inability to play either abroad or on the West Coast severely hampered her singing success.

It was Bill Clinton who saved her — and who kick started her later career. Keen to capture the black vote, he asked her to sing at the Democrat national convention in 1992.

On becoming President, he repaid the favour by inviting her to the White House and to perform at various official functions.

The Diva was back and to celebrate she bought a mink coat so big it needed its own seat when she took it off — as famously happened when she went to see the musical Sunset Boulevard on Broadway.

Her habit of failing to turn up at recording studios and even performances continued to ensure her finances never kept up with her extravagance. The department store Saks Fifth Avenue once sued her for long overdue bills that amounted to more than $262,000 (£206,000) for furs and shoes. It was one of more than 30 lawsuits brought against her by plumbers, caterers, florists and the like for not paying their bills.

Does any of this ultimately matter, fans may ask, given she was one of the greatest singers of the 20th century? As she once told her sister erma: ‘If Queen elizabeth gets to be queen for the duration of her life, why not Queen Aretha.’

It took a brave pretender to her throne to argue otherwise.