American singer of gospel, soul and rhythm and blues music, known as “The Queen of Soul” by the end of the 1960s. Also a songwriter and pianist, she won 18 Grammy Awards, including the first eight awards given for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, from 1968 through to 1975, and is one of the best-selling musical artists of all time, having sold more than 75 million records worldwide. Franklin recorded 112 charted singles on Billboard, including 77 Hot 100 entries, 17 top-ten pop singles, 100 R&B entries and 20 number-one R&B singles, becoming the most charted female artist in the chart’s history. After 58 albums and countless sold out performances, Franklin heartily embraced her success, but never forgot her roots.
Music was an integral part of her life since birth. Her mother Barbara was a pianist and choir mistress and her father, C. L. Franklin, was one of the country’s most powerful black ministers, operating a branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference known as the New Bethel Baptist Church. Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, Aretha was the favored daughter of the Franklin’s four children; whose musical ability showed early in her father’s church and whose charismatic talents exactly mirrored those of her parents. Standing on a chair behind the podium in church, the small child astonished parishioners in her first public performance with her four-octave version of the gospel classic “Jesus Be a Fence.” Her warm and nurturing early environment came to an abrupt halt in 1948 when Barbara permanently left her family due to her husband’s frequent philandering. Franklin’s grandmother, “Big Mama,” kept the family together, including a step-brother from her mother’s first marriage. Mother Barbara Franklin’s death in 1952 opened more wounds for the family, some of which never healed, as Aretha never spoke of her mother’s death in public. Friends later recalled, “I think that was the worst that could happen to her, not to know her mother.”
By age 14, it was clear that Aretha was her father’s favorite as she toured throughout the South with him as the featured member of The New Bethel choir. She made her first gospel recording at this age followed by her first hit at age 15. Her success brought personal setbacks. During the next three years, Franklin would give birth to two sons by two different men whom she did not marry, first becoming an unwed mother at 14. She never identified their fathers. In a confessional society, Franklin believed in the dignity of silence. “Trying to grow up is hurting, you know. You make mistakes. You try to learn from them and when you don’t it hurts even more. And I’ve been hurt – hurt bad.” As a testament to her independence of spirit, Franklin never played the role of the wounded woman, even in song. “She would never do a song of self-pity… the scorned woman, the hurt woman, that was absolutely out.” Bumped off the “Ed Sullivan Show” in the late fifties for showing too much cleavage, Franklin was later given the reason there were too many artists appearing that evening and she was cut. She ran out in tears.
In 1961 Franklin married Ted White, put him in charge of her career and subsequently had a third son with him. White was not popular with Franklin’s family, especially her Revered father and the alleged rumors of White’s abusive treatment toward his wife manifested into public spectacles. They divorced in 1969. Whether or not Franklin suffered in her private life, her public life was a smashing success. In 1963 she brought down the house at a Chicago concert that honored the local heroes of Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights movement. After family friend Martin Luther King spoke, Mahalia Jackson and Dinah Washington held the audience until two o’clock in the morning, when 19 year old Franklin walked on stage. Four years prior to national stardom, her performance was riveting. “She gave the whites in her audience a glimpse of the future. She wrung them all inside out with the Thomas Dorsey classic “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and by the time she finished, few doubted that for one night they had held the most favored spot on earth.”
Her father had turned down a contract offered by Berry Gordy of Motown Records, telling his daughter she would one day sing for kings and queens. Franklin’s eventual decision to broaden her musical perspectives beyond gospel was controversial among her peers, yet she harbored no regrets. New York sessions singing jazz and rhythm and blues brought the desired results, Franklin signed with Columbia records in 1960.
In 1967 “I Never Loved a Man” made Franklin a superstar, but the following year “Respect” earned her the first two of her Grammy Awards.
In 1978 Franklin married actor Glynn Thurman in her father’s church. The grapevine concurred that she had finally found the perfect man and a brief period of domestic bliss followed until tragedy struck in 1979. Reverend C. L. Franklin was shot in his home by two burglars. He survived the incident, but slipped into a semi-coma for five years, passing away in 1984. Franklin moved back to Detroit in 1982 to maintain a close vigil. “The best thing that happened to Aretha was that ….they kept him alive, because if he had died right then…there would have been no more Aretha.”
Her long awaited autobiography was still in progress and, when asked who she would pick to play her life on film, she favored Natalie Cole, the Queen of Soul’s heiress apparent.
Franklin’s two marriages ended in divorce. In the late ’90s, she made her home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, modestly enjoying her fame at its current level, doing her own shopping, laundry and gardening. She describes her music as “me with my hand outstretched, hoping someone will take it.” In 1999, she published her autobiography, “Aretha, From Those Roots,” written with David Ritz.
On 25 October 2002, Aretha lost a $1.4 million house in Detroit to a devastating fire just weeks after the death of her sister Erma. It was not occupied but used for storage. Since 1988, more than 30 lawsuits were filed against her by creditors totaling more than $1 million. In many cases, she paid bills only after being sued and the Detroit house was a large part of her estate.
Aretha Franklin was admitted to a Detroit hospital on 20 March 2004 for treatment of a low platelet count. The disorder was apparently caused by a virus or an allergic reaction to antibiotics and was not related to her hypertension, doctors said. The singer was released on 24 March 2004. In November 2010 she canceled all forthcoming concerts. In the first week of December, she underwent an unspecified surgery and on the 8th of that month it was reported that she was suffering from pancreatic cancer. Franklin denied that she was suffering from the disease; a significant weight loss then gave rise to reports that she had undergone gastric bypass surgery. Again she denied them.
On 13 August 2018, Franklin was reported to be gravely ill at her home in Riverfront Towers, Detroit. She was reported to be under hospice care and surrounded by friends and family. Stevie Wonder and Jesse Jackson, among others, had visited her. Franklin died at home in Detroit on 16 August 2018 at 9:50 a.m., aged 76, surrounded by family and friends. The cause was reported to be advanced pancreatic cancer.
Link to Wikipedia biography