Queen of Soul wowed nation with her voice
Aretha Franklin, who died Thursday at 76, was a once-in-a-generation singer. She was the Queen of Soul, but she also ventured into — and mastered — virtually every style of music, from jazz and classical to rhythm and blues. She died at her home in Detroit of pancreatic cancer, according to the late singer’s publicist.
The singer was in and out of ill health for years, and last summer in Detroit asked an audience to “keep me in your prayers.”
Though her musical contributions were diverse, ranging in tone from spiritual to gaudy, her inimitable singing style came from a single source. Franklin practically grew up in church, and the emotional intensity and personal connection she nurtured there with the music never left her. It informed virtually every one of her 77 top-100 songs, including 21 No. 1 R&B hits.
“The thing many people don’t understand about this change in my career is that I never left the church,” Franklin once told author David Ritz about her transition to secular music in her late teens. “The church stays with me
wherever I go and wherever I sing.”
She won18 Grammy Awards and was the first female artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987. Not only was her multi-octave mezzo-soprano an instrument of stunning beauty, range and power, but her piano playing — often in counterpoint to her singing — was just as accomplished. She influenced countless singers — Whitney Houston, Adele, Patti LaBelle, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, Mariah Carey, Luther Vandross, Jennifer Hudson, Fantasia. But her legend was forged not just on her ability to hit all the notes and embellish them with astonishing technical flourishes, but also to convey emotional nuance and deep feeling.
Her fame seemed destined, as she grew up in the household of the famed preacher C.L. Franklin and was mentored by his friends, who included gospel greats Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward and Albertina Walker. As a girl, Franklin mesmerized congregations at her father’s house of worship in Detroit, New Bethel Baptist Church.
Aretha Louise Franklin was born March 25, 1942, in Memphis, Tenn., the second youngest of five children. As a teen, Franklin was a soloist in her father’s church and began recording gospel songs. She dropped out of high school and toured the gospel circuit.
Franklin shifted to popular music and moved at age 18 to New York. She was wooed by Motown, a small hometown label, but turned it down because it wasn’t properly established yet and instead signed with Columbia Records. There she was overseen by the legendary producer and talent scout John Hammond, a purist who saw her as an immense talent who shouldn’t be wasted on pop trifles.
Hammond made a number of fine recordings with Franklin that bridged the worlds of gospel and jazz, but Columbia grew impatient for hits, and the orchestral arrangements and choice of material didn’t always underline her strengths.
Whenher contract expired, she moved to Atlantic Records and came under the supervision of producer Jerry Wexler, who admired her gospel recordings and wanted to update their feel for the pop market. Wexler immediately paired Franklin with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section in Alabama. A one-night recording session in January 1967 yielded a landmark song, “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” a smoldering performance that seemed to address Franklin’s deteriorating relationship with her then-husband, Ted White.
Another classic soon followed, “Respect,” a cover of a Redding song that Franklin A view of the marquee at the Apollo Theater in New York City as Aretha Franklin is remembered. In this Nov. 13, 2014, photo, Aretha Franklin performs in concert at The Patricia and Arthur Model Performing Arts Center at The Lyric in Baltimore. transformed in tandem with her sisters Carolyn and Erma. The siblings’ call-andresponse chemistry brought a fresh, fingerwagging energy to Redding’s song that turned it into a ’60s protest anthem.
In 1968, at the funeral for family friend, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin sang a heartbreaking “Precious Lord.” Her voice suggested the depth of a community’s despair.
Her career was derailed by the onset of the disco era and then by the shooting of her father in an attempted robbery in 1979. He spent five years in a coma before dying. A cameo in “The Blues Brothers” movie in 1980 got her back on track, and a typically commanding return to the gospel arena in the 1987 album “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.”
She took her “Queen of Soul” brand to extremes. But she remained capable of summoning greatness. In 1998 she appeared on the nationally televised Grammy Awards as a last-minute replacement for an ailing Luciano Pavarotti. She sang “Nessun Dorma,” an aria from Puccini’s “Turandot,” and won over a new audience stunned by her operatic derring-do.
She knew how to make a statement. She made waves with the bow hat she wore to Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony in January 2009. Her performance of “America (My Country, ’Tis of Thee),” with Franklin giving herself over to the moment, bore witness to the arrival of the first African-American president in her country’s history. “Let it ring, let it ring, let it ring,” she urged, testifying to her community and her country as if she were still singing hosannas at her father’s church.