Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin stood among the towering figures of soul music and indeed American popular song itself. No other artist embodied the gospel-infused essence of soul quite like she did. Her extraordinary sequence of late-1960s singles for Atlantic, among them “Respect,” “I Never Loved a Man,” “Chain of Fools,” “Baby I Love You,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Think,” and “The House That Jack Built,” secured her the enduring designation Queen of Soul. Refusing to rely on past achievements, Franklin followed the early-seventies albums Spirit in the Dark and Young, Gifted and Black with further R&B successes that outpaced her pop-chart entries. She navigated the evolving sound of soul through the seventies and eighties via partnerships with Curtis Mayfield on the 1976 soundtrack Sparkle and with Luther Vandross on 1982’s Jump to It. A striking comeback arrived with the 1985 album Who’s Zoomin’ Who? and its Top Ten single “Freeway of Love,” succeeded two years later by the George Michael duet “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” which marked her first Billboard number-one single since “Respect” in 1967. Over the subsequent three decades she continued to tour and record, preserving her stature as the Queen of Soul until her passing in 2018.

Her gospel foundations extended far beneath the surface. Alongside sisters Carolyn and Erma, both of whom pursued recording careers of their own, she performed at the Detroit church led by her father, Reverend C.L. Franklin, throughout her childhood in the 1950s. At fourteen she cut her earliest sides as a gospel performer. Reports also indicate that Motown considered signing her during the label’s earliest days as a fledgling enterprise. In the end she joined Columbia through the auspices of the celebrated talent scout John Hammond.

Throughout the first half of the 1960s Franklin recorded steadily for Columbia, achieving scattered R&B chart entries and one Top 40 pop single, “Rock-a-bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,” without attaining widespread stardom. Critics have long debated the Columbia output, many arguing that the label’s preference for pop material and arrangements curtailed her deeper artistic impulses. Even so, several tracks, notably “Lee Cross” and “Soulville,” reveal her delivering soul with genuine fire. Nevertheless, the Columbia recordings remained markedly more restrained than the work that followed and often lacked a clear artistic compass, reflecting an apparent effort to position her as a versatile entertainer rather than a dedicated R&B vocalist.

Upon departing Columbia for Atlantic, producer Jerry Wexler set out to highlight her most passionate and soul-rooted qualities. He arranged for her debut single, “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” to be tracked at Muscle Shoals in Alabama with leading Southern R&B session players. Although that proved her sole session there, the majority of her subsequent 1960s material was backed by the Muscle Shoals Sound Rhythm Section, even when the actual recording took place in New York. The partnership produced a rare chemistry: the musicians supplied a tougher, more rhythm-and-blues-oriented foundation that allowed Franklin’s voice to rise with an unprecedented fervor and freedom.

By the close of the 1960s Franklin ranked among the foremost international recording artists in popular music. Many observers also viewed her as an emblem of Black America, mirroring the growing assurance and self-assertion of African Americans amid the Civil Rights era and its accompanying victories. The commercial figures speak for themselves: ten Top Ten hits within an eighteen-month stretch from early 1967 to late 1968, followed by a consistent run of medium-to-major successes over the next five years. Her Atlantic albums likewise sold in substantial numbers and displayed greater artistic cohesion than those of most contemporaries. Franklin sustained her creative momentum through an adventurous selection of repertoire that blended original material of the highest caliber with covers drawn from gospel, blues, pop, and rock sources, including songs by the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Sam Cooke, and the Drifters. She was likewise an accomplished and underappreciated pianist.

Her artistic and commercial stride continued into the early seventies, yielding further major hits such as “Spanish Harlem,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and “Day Dreaming.” She also delivered two of her most acclaimed and unvarnished albums, Live at Fillmore West and the 1972 double-LP Amazing Grace, the latter a powerful return to gospel recorded with James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir that nevertheless reached the Top Ten and stands as one of the most successful gospel-pop crossovers ever.

Additional hits followed in the mid-seventies, among them “Angel” and the Stevie Wonder composition “Until You Come Back to Me.” With the expiration of her Atlantic contract at the decade’s end, she moved to Clive Davis’s Arista label, where she scored number-one R&B singles with “Jump to It,” “Get It Right,” and “Freeway of Love.” Many of these successes involved duets or the contributions of peers such as Luther Vandross and Narada Michael Walden. In 1986 she issued the self-titled album Aretha, whose single “I Knew You Were Waiting for Me,” a collaboration with George Michael, topped the charts. The following year she became the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and revisited gospel with One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism. She returned to pop-oriented material on 1989’s Through the Storm, which met with limited commercial response, as did the 1991 new-jack-swing-styled effort What You See Is What You Sweat.

After 1994 Franklin assumed the role of revered elder stateswoman, maintaining an active performing schedule and issuing albums at measured intervals. A Rose Is Still a Rose attained gold status in 1998 on the strength of its title track and “Here We Go Again,” both number-one R&B singles, and also included the Grammy-winning song “Wonderful.” Following 2003’s So Damn Happy she departed Arista, though the label later released the 2007 anthology Jewels in the Crown: All-Star Duets with the Queen. She established her own imprint, Aretha’s Records, for the 2008 holiday album This Christmas. After 2011’s A Woman Falling Out of Love she reunited with Clive Davis at RCA, working with Babyface and OutKast’s André 3000 on 2014’s Sings the Great Diva Classics, which featured interpretations of songs associated with Gladys Knight, Barbra Streisand, and Adele. The 2017 archival set A Brand New Me paired classic Franklin vocals with newly recorded orchestral arrangements by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Also in 2017 Franklin canceled several engagements owing to health concerns, yet she performed at a November concert marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Elton John AIDS Foundation; the appearance proved to be her final public show. Throughout 2018 her condition deteriorated as a result of pancreatic cancer. She entered hospice care on August 13 and died at her Detroit residence three days later. The August 31 memorial service at Greater Grace Temple drew tributes from fellow musicians, Civil Rights figures, and political leaders and was broadcast worldwide.

The first posthumous collection, The Atlantic Singles Collection 1967-1970, appeared in September 2018. It was followed in March 2019 by the complete edition of Amazing Grace: The Complete Recordings. In July 2021 Atlantic issued the four-disc career retrospective Aretha to coincide with the Jennifer Hudson biopic Respect. The 2023 boxed set A Portrait of the Queen 1970-1974 gathered her initial five studio albums of the seventies.