Aretha Franklin
A gospel-trained voice of great power and control, Franklin fused church music with rhythm and blues and helped define soul music. She guarded her independence closely, in business as well as in art.
Personality
Franklin was confident in her gifts and insisted on being treated with respect. Having seen earlier Black performers such as Ray Charles and B. B. King cheated by the industry, she required promoters to hand her part of her fee in cash before she would sing, a practice a friend summed up as refusing to be disrespected. She was private and kept tight control of her own affairs. Musically she trusted her own instincts, leading from the piano and turning Otis Redding's "Respect" into something distinctly hers. She was active in the civil rights movement and spoke up publicly, as when she backed the jailed activist Angela Davis in 1970.
Under pressure
Six years at Columbia Records brought little commercial success, and Franklin changed course by joining Atlantic in 1966, where her first single went to number one on the R&B chart. When her sales fell sharply in the late 1970s, she left Atlantic for Clive Davis's Arista label and came back with the 1985 album Who's Zoomin' Who and a duet with George Michael that topped the Billboard Hot 100. A fear of flying that began in the 1980s limited her concerts to North America, and she worked around it. Health problems in her final years forced cancellations, but she kept performing when she could.
The arc
Born in Memphis, Franklin moved with her family to Detroit when she was small, and her father, C. L. Franklin, became pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church. She sang gospel solos there and made her first recordings at 14. After signing with Columbia at 18, she found her definitive sound at Atlantic, where "Respect" topped both the R&B and pop charts in 1967. The 1972 gospel album Amazing Grace became one of the best-selling gospel records ever. Later landmarks included singing at Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration and a celebrated performance at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors. She died at her Detroit home on 16 August 2018.
Legacy
Franklin won 18 Grammy Awards and placed 112 singles on the Billboard charts, including 20 R&B number ones, selling more than 75 million records. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which made her its first female inductee, describes her recordings as anthems that defined soul music. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Arts, and in 2019 a posthumous Pulitzer Prize special citation for her contribution to American music and culture over more than five decades. Singers across gospel, soul, pop and R&B still measure themselves against her.
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