It was a small moment that could reverberate for decades. On January 24th, 1967, Aretha Franklin was struggling to record "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You) ," her first project for Atlantic after several years recording more conventiional material for Columbia. As Franklin would recall, something with the studio musicians wasn't clicking until someone said, "Aretha, why don't you sit down and play?" Taking a seat at the piano, Franklin quickly cut the smoldering track that would become her first No.1 R&B. "It just happened, " she said. "We arrived, and we arrived very quickly."
And it never stopped.
For more than five decades, Franklin was a singular presence in pop music, a
symbol of strength, women’s liberation and the civil rights movement. Franklin,
one of the greatest singers of all time, died
Thursday of pancreatic cancer, according to her publicist, Gwendolyn Quinn.
“It is with deep and profound sadness that we
announce the passing of Aretha Louise Franklin, the Queen of Soul,” Quinn said
in a statement. “Franklin … passed away on Thursday morning, August 16 at 9:50
a.m. at her home in Detroit, MI, surrounded by family and loved ones. In one of
the darkest moments of our lives, we are not able to find
the appropriate words to express the pain in our heart. We have
lost the matriarch and rock of our family. The love she had for her children,
grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and cousins knew no bounds.
“We have been deeply touched by the
incredible outpouring of love and support we have received from close friends,
supporters and fans all around the world,” Quinn added. “Thank you for your
compassion and prayers. We have felt your love for Aretha and it brings us
comfort to know that her legacy will live on. As we grieve, we ask that you respect
our privacy during this difficult time.”
“Aretha Franklin was one of the most iconic
voices in music history and a brilliant artist,” Franklin’s record label Sony
Music said in a statement. “Over the course of her decades-long career, which
included many years with the Sony Music family, she inspired countless
musicians and fans, and created a legacy that paved the way for a long line of
strong female artists.”
Dubbed the Queen of Soul in 1967, Franklin
loomed over culture in several monumental ways. The daughter of a preacher man,
she was born with one of pop’s most commanding and singular voices, one that
could move from a sly, seductive purr to a commanding gospel roar. From early
hits like “I Never Loved a Man” and “Think” up through later touchstones like
“Sisters Are Doin’ it for Themselves” with Eurythmics, there was no mistaking
Franklin’s colossal pipes. As one of her leading producers, Jerry Wexler, said
of her simmering gospel-pop classic, “Spirit in the Dark,” “It was one of those
perfect R&B blends of the sacred and the secular … It’s Aretha conducting
church right in the middle of a smoky nightclub. It’s everything to everyone.”
But Franklin was more
than just a titanic vocalist who could effortlessly move through pop, jazz,
R&B, gospel and disco. Known to her fans simply as “Aretha,” Franklin was
an inordinately complex pop star — “Our Lady of Mysterious Sorrows,” wrote
Wexler in his memoir. Although she exuded a regal, imposing presence,
Franklin’s life often seemed shakier than her voice. She coped with a broken
family, at least one bad marriage, a drinking problem and health and musical
direction issues that made her infinitely relatable and beloved. “In her voice,
you can hear the redemption and the pain, the yearning and the surrender, all
at the same time,” Bonnie Raitt told Rolling
Stone in 2003.
Her journey — from singing in her father’s church
and tackling tasteful pop at the dawn of her career before becoming the voice
of the civil rights movement — also embodied the African American experience of
the 1960s. Her brawny, funked-up makeover of Otis Redding’s “Respect,” based on
what Wexler called her own “stop-and-stutter syncopation” idea, was more than
just a Number One pop hit in 1967. “She had no idea it would become a rallying
cry for African Americans and women and anyone else who felt marginalized
because of what they looked like, who they loved,” Barack Obama said in 2014.
“They wanted some respect.” At 16, she went on tour with Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., and later sang at his funeral.
Born in Memphis on March 25th, 1942, Franklin
was groomed for gospel glory from her childhood: her father was the renowned
and popular Reverend C.L. (Clarence LaVaughn) Franklin, “The Man with the
Million-Dollar Voice,” and she recorded her first album of gospel when she was
14 years old. Her mother, Barbara Siggers Franklin, was also a gospel singer.
When young Aretha was two, she and her family moved to Detroit. It was there
where Aretha was quickly steeped in church services (her father was the star
preacher at the New Bethel Baptist Church) and music. Thanks to her father’s
success, household visitors included Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington.
Franklin's 1971 shows at San Francisco's Filmore West, immortalized on the live album, Aretha Live at Filmore West, were a visceral example of her crossover ability, but they
weren’t a given success: “I wasn’t sure how the hippies reacted to me,” she
later said. But in a sign of how she could easily cross musical fences, she
blew away the counterculture crowd. When she learned her hero Ray Charles was
in the crowd, Franklin pulled him out for the encore and the two wound up
trading piano and vocal parts on an epic version of “Spirit in the Dark.” “She
turned the thing into church,” Charles said later. “Excuse my French, but I
have to say that this bitch is burning down the barn — I mean, she’s on fire.”
Franklin’s personal
life was turbulent — the cover story that Time magazine ran on her in
1968 famously noted that her husband and manager Ted White had “roughed her up
in public,” and they divorced the next year. But Franklin’s voice never let her
down. Her 1972 live gospel album Amazing Grace returned her
to her roots and went double platinum, and her ability to sing glorious pop
resulted in her 1973 smash “Until You
Come Back to Me.” In 1974, Rolling Stone asked her what
made her happy. “My children,” she said. “And having little get-togethers and
making up a whole lot of food. And gold records. And love.”
Over the course of the late 1970s, Franklin
gradually fell off the charts, as her attempts to keep up with the times came
off as tepid schlock. As she told Rolling Stone in 2012, “When
I first started, my dad said to me, ‘No matter how good you are, and no matter
how successful you are, one day, the applause is going to die down. And one day
the applause is going to stop. One day the hallelujahs and the amens are going
to stop. And one day the fans might not be there.’ I saw some of that come to
pass, and it was absolutely true. At one point, my records were not being
played, and of course that immediately crossed my mind.”
In 1980, Franklin left Atlantic for Arista, whereshe began working with Clive Davis, and two years later, the collaboration paid off: 1982's "Jump to It" produced by Luther Vandross, brought Franklin back to R&B radio. But it was the 1985 album, Who's Zoomin' Who? that made her a full-on crossover star again: she collaborated with pop artists like Eurythmics and Carolos Santana on the LP, and "Freeway of Love," her final number One R&B single, introduced her to the MTV generation. "Many thanks to myself for being disciplined and growing as a producer," she wrote in the liner notes to 1986's Aretha.
Never one to shy away
from being contemporary or having pop hits, Franklin continued with the
successful formula of recording with younger artists she’d influenced, cutting
singles with George Michael, Elton John and Whitney Houston. In 1998, her
acolyte Lauryn Hill wrote and produced the hit “A Rose Is Still a Rose” for her.
But Franklin was also up for challenges. She
stepped in to sing “Nessun Dorma” at the 1998 Grammys
when Luciano Pavarotti was unable to perform, a trick few other non-opera
singers would even have dared. As Franklin told Rolling
Stone in 2012, “You have to give people what they want and
what they’re paying for. After that, you can pretty much do whatever you’d like
to do. But once you’ve given them what they’re paying for, then you can put
some things in that you would like to sing, and they’re very well accepted when
they’re performed dutifully.”
In her later years, Franklin was frequently sidetracked
by health problems, and her recordings were slow to appear and spotty; A
Woman Falling Out of Love, which she’d started recording in 2006,
was finally released on her own label in 2011. In 2010, Franklin faced rumors
that she was battlingpancreatic cancer after canceling
her scheduled performances; Franklin denied the cancer diagnosis, instead
revealing she had surgery to remove a tumor. Franklin also canceled her
scheduled 2018 performances after her doctor recommended that the singer rest
for at least two months. Franklin last performed in November 2017 at Elton
John’s annual AIDS Foundation gala.
Still, the power of her voice never left her.
In 2014, her version of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” a song that
would have been unimaginable without her, became the Queen’s 100th R&B
chart hit. (The song was part of her last new album, Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics.)
“She’s an original,” Franklin told Rolling Stone in 2012. “Love
her lyrics — reminiscent of the Carole King lyrics of the Sixties. Just better!
‘We coulda had it all’! Sure you’re right, Adele!” In 2009, she sang at Barack Obama’s Presidential inauguration,
a triumphant moment for the Civil Rights movement her music had influenced so
deeply. “When it comes to expressing yourself through song, there is no
one who can touch her,” Mary J. Blige told Rolling Stone in 2008. “She
is the reason why women want to sing.”
Over the course of
her six-decade career, Franklin garnered 44 Grammy nominations, winning 18, and
became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
Looking back in 2016 at her version of
“Respect,” Franklin elucidated both her own recording and its cultural impact.
“I loved it, and I wanted to cover it just because I loved it so much,” she
said. “And the statement was something that was very important, and where it
was important to me, it was important to others. It’s important for people. Not
just me or the Civil Rights movement or women — it’s important to people. I was
asked what recording of mine I’d put in a time capsule, and it was ‘Respect.’ Because
people want respect — even small children, even babies. As people, we deserve
respect from one another.”
Aretha Franklin,
Queen of Soul, Dead at 76
Hall of Fame singer, cultural icon
and civil rights activist who influenced countless vocalists succumbs to
pancreatic cancer
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/aretha-franklin-queen-of-soul-dead-at-76-119453/
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