The iconic Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin died at her Detroit home the Associated Press reports. She was surrounded by family and friends and had been battling various undisclosed illnesses for years, and, in recent weeks, was receiving hospice care. She was 76 years old. The American singer and songwriter whose stunning voice graced hits such as “Natural Woman”, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T”, “Jump To It” and “Freeway of Love” among many other classics was born in Memphis, TN on March 25, 1942. She moved to the city of Detroit at age 5 and began her career as a child singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist Church in her hometown of Detroit where her father Reverend C.L Franklin, was minister.
By 1960, at the age of 18, she embarked on a career in secular music and the hits never stopped recording acclaimed albums such as I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, Lady Soul, Young, Gifted and Black and Amazing Grace before experiencing problems with her record company by the mid-1970’s. After her father was shot in 1979, Franklin left Atlantic and signed with Arista Records, finding success with her part in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. Over the course of her nearly seven-decade career, Franklin established herself as one of the most important artists in music history, winning 18 Grammy Awards, selling more than 75 million records worldwide, becoming the first female performer to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and recording 112 charted singles on Billboard, thus setting the record for the most charted female artist in the trade magazine’s history.
Franklin’s other accolades during her lifetime included three American Music Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, three NAACP Image Awards, one Golden Globe, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a Grammy Legend Award and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a Kennedy Center Honor, being named 2008’s MusiCares Person of the Year, and honorary degrees from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, and the Berklee College of Music. She performed at Martin Luther King’s memorial service and at the inaugurations of three presidents: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.
In 2010, Franklin’s commanding mezzo-soprano voice earned her the No. 1 spot on Rolling Stone‘s list of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time” Contributing to that issue, admirer Mary J. Blige wrote, “You know a force from heaven. You know something that God made. And Aretha is a gift from God. When it comes to expressing yourself through song, there is no one who can touch her. She is the reason why women want to sing. Aretha has everything — the power, the technique. She is honest with everything she says.” This same year, Franklin canceled several concerts while recovering from an operation to remove a tumor. (Franklin denied reports that her “unspecified illness” was pancreatic cancer.) Over the years she returned to performing sporadically, but she still dropped out of many shows, including her birthday concert this year at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and 2018 appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Toronto Jazz Festival.
In February 2017, Franklin told Detroit TV station WDIV that she planned to make one more album, with several tracks produced by her old friend Stevie Wonder, before officially retiring to spend more time with her grandchildren — though she hoped to open a nightclub in Detroit where she could occasionally perform. That album never materialized, though in November 2017 she released A Brand New Me, a collection of archival Atlantic Records vocal recordings set to new orchestral arrangements by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. (Another compilation from that era, The Atlantic Singles Collection 1967-1970, is due out Sept. 28.)
Franklin gave her final performance on Nov. 7, 2017, at Elton John’s 25th anniversary gala for the Elton John AIDS Foundation in New York City, at which John declared Franklin the “greatest singer of all time.” However, Franklin’s last public concert took place several months earlier, on Aug. 26, at the Mann Center in Philadelphia. Last week, on August 13, 2018, Franklin was reported to be gravely ill at her home near Detroit. She was reported to be under hospice care and was surrounded by friends and family. Stevie Wonder and Jesse Jackson, among others, had visited her.
Source: Associated Press