But the Queen of Soul, who passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 76, was much more than just a chart star. She was a cultural force in America and a leading symbol of both the civil and women’s rights movements.
Indeed, what leading influencers of the #MeToo era bidding to enforce change in Hollywood would give now for a song like Respect as a sound-track to what they want to achieve.
Aretha was a one-off and a mainstay of black America, performing at Martin Luther King’s funeral in 1968 and Barack Obama’s Presidential inauguration in 2009.
Nobody put her standing in context better than Obama who, shortly after the singer made him cry during a performance of (You Made Me Feel Like) A Natural Women at the 38th Annual Kennedy Center Honors in Washington in 2015, said “American history wells up when Aretha sings”.
Aretha managed to achieve greatness while suffering heartache and tragedy in her own life, including the loss of her mother at just nine years old, the tragic shooting of her father, two failed marriages and battles with alcohol and her weight.
The singer’s path to greatness was shaped by her preacher dad and civil rights activist Reverend C.L. Franklin, who was the first to recognise her precocious musical talents.
She was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 25, 1942, but her family — also including mother Barbara, two sisters, Erma and Carolyn, and brother Cecil — later relocated to Detroit, where her father became a minister at New Bethel Baptist Church.
He showcased Aretha’s voice at services attended by other civil rights activists, including family friend Martin Luther King Jr, and became her music manager.
Aretha’s father was known as a serial philanderer and it is claimed his church was notorious for wild orgies. His wife, Aretha’s mother, moved to New York following his infidelities and died of a heart attack when her daughter was just nine.
Soul legend Ray Charles, who toured gospel churches, described Rev Franklin’s church as a “sex circus”.
He said: “When it came to pure sex, they were wilder than me — and that’s saying something.”
Aretha’s not-so-holy father didn’t make any attempt to hide the wild goings-on at the church from Aretha and her exposure to such scenes at an impressionable time in her life is thought to have played a part in her becoming a mum at 12 years of age to son Clarence.
False rumours said her dad may be the father, but it was Donald Burk, a boy from school.
ARETHA'S TOP 10
Aretha had another child, Edward, two years later by lover Edward Jordan. Both children were brought up by her grandma and sister.
This enabled her father to take Aretha on speaking tours across the country in the Fifties, when she would sing — and it was during this time she spoke out about racial discrimination they experienced, saying: “There were certain restaurants I could not eat at.
“We bought groceries then ate them in the car. When we’d stop to get gas we had to go to certain gas stations because we could not use the restrooms at all of them.” Aretha signed her first record deal with J.V.B Records and her first gospel singles were released in 1956.
But after turning 18, she expressed her desire to record pop music and caught the attention of Columbia Records.
The label signed her in 1960 — a year before her marriage to Theodore White, the father of her third child, Ted. They divorced nine years later. By 1967 Aretha switched to Atlantic Records and her potential was unlocked.
She recorded a version of Otis Redding’s Respect — adding the memorable spelled-out R.E.S.P.E.C.T line and the “sock it to me” lyrics to feminise the track, giving it extra sass. It became her break-through hit and an unofficial anthem for civil and women’s rights.
Referring to the track in 1998 autobiography Aretha: From These Roots, she said: “So many people identified with Respect. It was the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher — everyone wanted respect.
“It was also one of the battle cries of the civil rights movement. It became the respect women expected from men and men expected from women, the inherent right of all human beings.”
Her first album with Atlantic, I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You, went gold in 1967 — followed by Lady Soul and Aretha Now the next year, which included some of her most popular hit singles including Think, Chain Of Fools and I Say A Little Prayer.
In 1968, Aretha won the first of her 17 Grammys.
By the mid-Seventies, after the release of gospel album Amazing Grace, Aretha’s career stumbled as soul music lost its political significance. She switched labels in 1976 to Warner Bros but left them just three years later having enjoyed little success.
Now a mother of four, after having son Kecalf in 1970 with road manager Ken Cunningham, her demons were beginning to take control.
Having battled booze during her poisonous and short-lived first marriage in the Sixties, junk food became her nemesis.
She also became jealous of her female contemporaries, convinced the likes of Gladys Knight and Diana Ross were going to steal her soul crown.
Aretha got married for a second time, to actor Glynn Turman, in 1978 but they divorced in 1984.
The marriage overlapped another traumatic time, when her father was shot during a robbery at her Detroit home in 1979. He was in a coma for five years.
Aretha’s struggles with her weight were well documented. Quitting smoking and the passing of old friends made her turn to food.
During the Eighties, she enjoyed a comeback. She sang in the movie The Blues Brothers, to critical acclaim — and signed to the Arista label, where 1982 album Jump To It, produced by Luther Vandross, took her back to No1.
Three years later Who’s Zoomin Who? went platinum — including Aretha’s hit duet with the Eurythmics, Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves.
Even bigger followed in 1987 with George Michael collaboration I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me) — her first US No 1 single since Respect.
In 1987, she became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In 2010 she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer but battled back.
She lost six stone, telling US talk show The View in 2012: “I feel wonderful, I’ve got more energy. I’ve changed my diet — going to whole food, getting the best stuff. Dropped the chitlins, dropped the ham hocks.”
Her sassiness continued until her final interviews, lauding young singers including Adele and Alicia Keys, but when asked about Taylor Swift, she merely said: “Great gowns, beautiful gowns.”
Aretha’s final concert was in November last year at Elton John’s private Aids Foundation event in New York.
Her last public show was four months earlier, in Philadelphia, when she battled exhaustion and dehydration to perform.
Respect.
'AS BIG AS ROCK 'N' ROLL'
I NEVER Loved A Man The Way I Love You, released in 1967, was the album that sealed the deal for Aretha Franklin.
Kicking off with her towering rendition of Otis Redding’s Respect, Aretha’s version added the R.E.S.P.E.C.T. chorus and the insistent “sock it to me” refrain from her backing singers.
Boy, did she sock it to her listeners – this strong, impassioned black woman ruffling the feathers of a male-dominated Establishment.
She was part of a movement as significant as Elvis and rock ’n’ roll, the British Invasion led by The Beatles or the punk of The Sex Pistols and The Clash.
In the liner notes to 1968’s follow-up album Lady Soul, featuring Chain Of Fools and Carol King’s (You Make Me Feel Like (A Natural Woman), her impact was neatly summed up.
“It was the year in which rhythm and blues became the music of the charts and the year in which ‘soul’ became the popular music of America.” (Make that the world.)
“And in the vanguard of this sweeping restyling of popular music was the remarkable Aretha Franklin.”
Aretha could move effortlessly through the gears to her trademark full-throated holler but just consider the delicate beauty and controlled emotion she gave to I Say A Little Prayer, by the great songwriting partnership Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
And though she’s defined by her Sixties music, she scored an Eighties hit with Eurythmics on Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves.
Aretha and Annie Lennox made a formidable pair.
It is ironic that she died on Madonna’s 60th birthday. The Queen Of Pop surely approves of all the Queen Of Soul stood for.
The Sun Says
WE’RE saying a little prayer for the Queen of Soul.
Aretha Franklin redefined the music landscape, her songs influencing everybody from Luther Vandross to Adele.
But she also raised huge amounts of money for the civil rights struggle in the US, doing it not for publicity but because she believed in it.
Her extraordinary take on Otis Redding’s Respect became an anthem not just for African Americans but for feminists the world over.
Rest in peace.
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