From troubled child to the Queen of Soul
AAS a new moviei aboutb hher liflife iis released, we remember one of the world’s most respected singers
She was the iconic musical feminist who ordered her man to show her some respect way back in 1965 – and after that, no one messed with Aretha Franklin, the ordained Queen of Soul.
Even Beyonce found out the hard way after mistakenly introducing Tina Turner as “the queen” at the 2008 Grammys. Aretha would respond in a statement, “I am not sure of whose toes I may have stepped on or whose ego I may have bruised between the Grammy writers and Beyonce, however I dismissed it as a cheap shot for controversy.”
Oops! But Aretha had a point. Rolling Stone crowned her “The Greatest Singer of All Time” in 2010 with her fouroctave speaker-blasting voice that dominated the charts for nearly 60 years, with epic hits including Respect, I Say A Little Prayer and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.
But for all her diva antics – dropping fur coats on the floor and tearing her wig off midperformance – Aretha came from great tragedy, including losing her mother to a heart attack when she was nine and finding herself pregnant with her first son Clarence at age 12 to local playboy Edward Jordan.
“She was a mother before she knew a damn thing about the world,” says a longtime friend. “Everyone talks about her career, the music, but first and foremost, she was a very devoted and loving mother. Clarence was special needs too, so she was pretty vulnerable back then and oh-so-young.”
BITTER SPLIT
Two years later, her second son, Edward, was born but that would be the end of their father in her life and both boys would take her surname.
Aretha’s only mention of ex
Edward was in a handwritten will that was found under a sofa at her house in
Detroit, a year after her death in 2018, aged
76. In it, she
expressly forbade him any access to her or their sons’ $80 million fortune.
Aretha would marry twice – the first at age 18 to musician Ted White, who would prove to be violent. During this time she wrote her hit song Think. The couple divorced in 1968 when their son, Ted Jr, was five.
Two years later she would welcome her last child, son Kecalf, with her road manager Ken Cunningham. The couple never made it to the altar and she went on to wed actor Glynn Turman in 1978 at her father’s church.
“You can talk about the songs, the awards, she even sang at President Obama’s inauguration, but no one talks about Aretha the struggling mum – that’s because she kept her private life private,” adds the friend. “She did a fine job with those boys, against all odds.”
Aretha’s painful death from pancreatic cancer sparked a global outpouring of mourning, from presidents to musical legends expressing their grief.
She’d had 112 Billboard singles, 17 top 10 pop singles and in 1987 was the first female to be added to the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame. And even after her death the accolades kept coming. In 2019, she was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize citation for her “indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades” and was added to the National Women’s Hall of Fame last year.
After Aretha’s passing, Beatles great Sir Paul Mccartney said, “The memory of her greatness as a musician and a fine human being will live with us forever.”
‘She did a fine job with those boys, against all odds’