Franklin, Aretha

March 25, 1942

Known as "Lady Soul" and "The Queen of Soul," singer Aretha Franklin brought the undiluted power of black gospel singing to American popular music beginning in the late 1960s. Born March 25, 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee, and raised in Detroit, Michigan, she was the fourth of five children of Barbara Siggers Franklin and the well-known gospel preacher and singer, the Rev. C. L. Franklin of Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church. Her mother, also a gospel singer, left her husband and children in 1948 when Aretha was six, and died shortly thereafter.

Aretha's formative years were spent singing in her father's church choir and traveling with him on the gospel circuit. Numerous jazz and gospel figures visited the Franklin's home, and James Cleveland boarded with the family and worked with Aretha as she practiced playing the piano and singing. Clara Ward sang at an aunt's funeral, and Franklin was so moved she decided to become a professional singer herself. At fourteen she recorded a selection of gospel songs including Thomas A. Dorsey's "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." She became pregnant at fifteen and dropped out of school.

At eighteen Franklin was brought to the attention of John Hammond, the producer at Columbia Records who had "discovered" Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and other African-American musicians. Hammond praised Franklin's voice as the best he had heard in twenty years. Franklin signed with Columbia and moved to New York but achieved only marginal success as a pop singer because of Columbia's material and arrangements, a confused hodgepodge of jazz, pop, and standards.

Her breakthrough came in 1966 when her Columbia contract expired and she signed with Atlantic Records, where she was teamed with veteran producer Jerry Wexler. He constructed simple, gospel-influenced arrangements for her, often based on her own piano playing. In these comfortable musical settings her true voice emerged with intensity and emotion. Wexler said, "I took her to church, sat her down at the piano, and let her be herself." Franklin's first record with Wexler was "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" in February 1967. It was an immediate success and topped Billboard 's charts. Her second hit, "Respect," was sung with such conviction it became a call for black and feminist pride and empowerment.

Often compared to Ray Charles for her fusion of sacred and secular styles, Franklin came to personify African-American "soul" music. She produced a series of top records including "Chain of Fools," "Think," and "Don't Play That Song." She has won fifteen Grammy Awards, three American Music Awards, and a Grammy Living Legend Award. With thirty-five albums, she has had seventeen number one rhythm-and-blues singles, and more million-selling singles than any other woman singer. In 1980 she switched to the Arista label.

Franklin experienced further triumphs in the 1980s. In 1987 she was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1988 she won a Grammy for best soul gospel performance. In the 1990s she sang at the 1993 and 1997 inaugurations of President Bill Clinton, and in the mid-1990s she launched her own record label, World Class Records. Two more albums followed—A Rose Is Still a Rose in 1998 and So Damn Happy in 2003.

Throughout her career, her dominant public voice has been contrasted with her private, even reclusive, personality, although she carefully monitors her career and the music industry. Her personal life has at times been difficult, with her mother's abandonment, her own pregnancy at age fifteen, several unsuccessful marriages, and, particularly, the fact that her father, to whom she was very close, spent five years in a coma from a gunshot wound in 1979 until his death in 1984.

See also Franklin, C. L.; Gospel Music; Music in the United States; Rhythm and Blues

Bibliography

Bego, Mark. Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.

Werner, Craig Hansen. Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul. New York: Crown, 2004.

bud kliment (1996)
Updated by publisher 2005