Closer honors the Queen of Soul’s legendary life and musical legacy.
AMERICA’S MOST BELOVED SOUL SINGER SURVIVED HEARTBREAK — AND INSPIRED MILLIONS WITH HER POWERFUL VOICE
If you’re cute, you might be a star [these days],” Aretha Franklin once said. “But coming up through the ranks of my generation, you had to have it. Whatever it is.” Aretha, who died on Aug. 16 at the age of 76, most definitely had it. Otis Redding, who penned “Respect” and had an R&B hit with it in 1965, knew it instantly when he heard Aretha’s remake two years later. “That little girl done took my song away from me,” he said of the Queen of Soul’s breakthrough.
Over her 60-plus-year career in music, she rose to become — and embrace the mantle of — the Queen of Soul. She landed 17 Top 10 pop singles and 20 No. 1 R&B hits and was the first woman ever to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Aretha sang at three presidential inaugurations, including Barack Obama’s, and at Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral. The day of Aretha’s death, Diane Warren, who wrote several duets for her including “It Isn’t, It Wasn’t, It Ain’t Never Gonna Be,” which she sang with Whit-
ney Houston, told Closer, “Aretha could sing anything and make it her own. She was the Soul Goddess and the Soul Queen. She earned that title. She will always be a legend.”
NATURAL WOMAN
She had obvious talent since childhood, but Aretha got off to a rocky start in life. Her parents split when she was 6, mostly due to her father Clarence “Frank” Franklin’s philandering. Her mother, Barbara, died four years later of a heart attack, devastating the young Aretha. “She was a traumatized child,” her booking agent Ruth Bowen said. “Frank told me that he was afraid that Aretha wouldn’t ever recover. She crawled into a shell and didn’t come out until many years later. What brought her [out], of course, was the music.” Aretha taught herself to play piano by ear and began belting out solos in the choir at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, where her father preached and was known as “the man with the golden voice.” She cited gospel as her roots. Her nephew Tim Franklin tells Closer, “She was a woman of faith. She grew up in the church, started out singing gospel, and she had a personal relationship with God.”
But stars such as Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington and Sam Cooke often congregated at her dad’s home, so Aretha grew up surrounded by all kinds of music. “[She] was always around, a shy girl who came alive when we started playing records,” said Smokey Robinson. He also marveled at how she could play the piano. “When Aretha sat down, even as a 7-year-old, she started playing chords — big chords. All I could do was view Aretha as a wonder child.”
As her career began to grow, she went on tour with her father while he preached at various churches. At 12 she had a child, Clarence, and would have a second son, Eddie, not long after. Motherhood didn’t slow her down. “Everybody stepped in [to help],” says Tim. “She didn’t hand them over to anybody else.”
Around that time, she recorded her own album of hymns, but then focused on secular music after her idol Sam Cooke crossed over with “You Send Me.” Ready for the big time, she moved to New York in 1960 and took finishing classes and dance lessons for her gigs at comedy and jazz clubs. She also met and wed Ted White, who became her man-
ager. But their marriage was stormy and reportedly abusive and they divorced in 1969.
ROCK STEADY
Aretha rarely spoke about her personal life but Tim tells Closer that family sustained her. “When she’d come to Dallas to perform, she would see me,” he recalls. The Queen of Soul would arrive with her bus and entourage but then “we’d sit across the table and chat. She said, ‘Tim, this is what it’s all about. It’s all about family, baby. Nothing else matters.’ ”
Family had long helped Aretha through her life. Her grandmother and her sister often cared for her kids when she was touring (she had another son, Ted White Jr., in 1964). But Tim says, “She was a giver, never asked for anything, never took anything.”
Her career continued to rise slowly. Aretha’s first two albums with Columbia Records were a mix of jazz and blues, but she switched labels in 1966, and Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler sent her to the Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., where Aretha honed
her signature sound. “We weren’t getting to the music in the way that we should have,” she recalled. “Finally someone said, ‘Aretha, why don’t you sit down and play?’ And I did, and it just happened. We arrived.” Her 1967 album, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You, topped the R&B charts and contained “Respect,” the legendary song that would become her trademark anthem.
“We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It’s our basic human right,” Aretha said, touching on the song’s reach and power beyond just romantic relationships. “It was also one of the battle cries of the civil rights movement. Some were saying that in my voice they heard the sound of confidence and self-assurance. They heard the proud history of a people who had been struggling for centuries, and I took these compliments to heart and felt deeply humbled and honored by them.”
Throughout the rest of her career, her voice and artistry were unparalleled. “Her music set a standard for every single lady in this industry to rise to,” says Gladys Knight. Aretha racked up 18 competitive Grammy Awards through the years, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the NAACP Vanguard Award, just to name a few of the myriad accolades for her talents, which inspired generations of artists who followed her.
Though her public persona was always larger than life, she was a fiercely private person out of the spotlight. “I’m the lady next door when I’m not onstage,” she quipped, and she proved reluctant to open up too much about her sometimestroubled personal life. She married actor Glynn Turman (Cooley High)
“I’m a people person. And I love performing.”
— Aretha
“I didn’t think
my songs would become
anthems for women, but I’m
delighted.”
— Aretha
in 1978 at her father’s church. Tragically, just a year later her father was shot in the head during a home burglary, and Aretha moved home to Detroit to help care for him. He lingered in a coma until he died in 1984, the same year her second marriage ended in divorce.
Still, Aretha forged ahead. “Nothing would make me happier than to see her purge all of that pain she’s been through,” her sister Erma said, “But…she’s built a wall around herself that no one’s been able to climb over.”
Her family surrounded her with love and respect, and she returned it in kind. “Her proudest accomplishment,” says Tim, “was being able to step in when all of our parents had passed away and become the true matriarch of the family. She wouldn’t let us mourn, she kept everything upbeat.”
HER FINAL ACT
In the past year, Aretha all but retired from the public eye. “I will be spending more time with my grandchildren and my family,” she told Closer, though she was contemplating opening up a club in her beloved Detroit and record- ing a duet with her pal Elton John.
When her nephew saw her a few weeks before her death, she insisted to him, “Tim, I’m not giving up. God has control over this situation,” he shares. “And she said, ‘When He’s ready, I’m ready.’ ”
Now that she’s gone, Tim reveals “she did what she preached to us, to fight a good fight.”
The outpouring of love and tributes to the Queen are proof that Aretha will never be forgotten.
“Her legacy is her music and her voice,” friend A. Curtis Farrow tells Closer. “She was one of the only artists that I’ve ever seen be able to go from pop, rock, R&B and soul, and go back and do one of the topselling gospel albums of all time. She was so accepted in every genre it didn’t matter.”
Many of her songs became instant classics, like 1967’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” “It’s the most stellar and stunning vocal of all time,” says Diane. “Every singer needs to listen to what Aretha does to and with a song. Listen, and learn. If you’re a singer, songwriter, producer or arranger: Learn from the master, Aretha.”
Over the course of her life she came to embody the ultimate powerful woman. “I am Aretha, upbeat, straight-ahead, and not to be worn out by men and left singing the blues,” she once said.
As her nephew Tim concludes, “One can only hope to make a difference in life, and she did. There was nothing she couldn’t do.”
— Reporting by Katie Bruno, Rick Egusquiza and Ilyssa Panitz