A Tribute
By Jason Kellner, ReMIND Magazine
Aretha Franklin
Born: March 25, 1942
Died: Aug. 16, 2018
Before she passed in August of 2018 at the age of 76, Aretha Franklin had left an indelible mark on the music world: 18 Grammys, 17 Top 10 singles, a catalog of more than 40 studio albums and recognition as the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But it was more than numbers with Miss Franklin, as she preferred to be addressed. The Queen of Soul advanced soul music to the masses in America. She spoke up confidently for women, women’s rights and civil rights in a career that spanned more than 60 years.
Born in Memphis, Franklin watched as her parents separated early and her mother died before she was 10. She learned to sing in her father’s church after relocating to Detroit. With her father’s blessing, she went to New York in 1960 to start her professional recording career with Columbia Records. While she made a number of Columbia albums and some time-tested singles, the music she made there isn’t what cut through the static of the ’60s.
The real breakthrough came during her next stop at Atlantic Records. Franklin produced hits including “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Think,” “Respect” and “Chain of Fools” during that second phase of her career. Amazing Grace, her 1972 live gospel album, reached double-platinum status and remains her bestselling album of all time, as could be expected from the daughter of a preacher. Though the album had no hit singles, the power and quality of the work as a whole stands on its own. Franklin could take you to church and make you a believer.
Some hits weren’t hers originally, but she was a great songbook interpreter who often took a song and eclipsed the original. Few recall that it was Otis Redding who first wrote and recorded “Respect.”
Franklin hit a rough patch in the late 1970s when the hits seemed to dry up, but her 1980 cameo in the classic diner scene from The Blues Brothers reminded everyone of her place in the music world. It was the dawn of the third phase of her career, the Arista Records phase, which included a return to the charts with hits like “Freeway of Love” and “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me).”
Even late in her career, Franklin was a commanding diva. So powerful and confident was her voice that in 1998 she stood in last-minute at the Grammys for Luciano Pavarotti and sang a flooring version of “Nessun Dorma.” That same year she released the gold-certified album A Rose Is Still a Rose, whose title track was written for her by the Fugees’ Lauryn Hill.
In 2005 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She continued to perform live regularly but had to cancel a number of dates in the 2010s due to health issues.
Franklin’s lifelong friend Stevie Wonder tearfully remarked in an interview with CBS This Morning, “She was just consistently a great human being. … She believed, I think, that most of all, she was doing God’s work. And she was. She brought joy to others’ lives, and her voice and the essence of her will [outlive] all of us.”
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