Profile of Aretha Franklin on Famous Like Me

Aretha Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an iconic American gospel, soul and R&B singer born in Memphis, Tennessee, but raised in Detroit, Michigan. On January 3, 1987 she became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Many have called her "The Queen Of Soul" and "Lady Soul". She is renowned for her soul and R&B recordings but is also adept at jazz, rock, blues, pop, gospel, and even opera. She is generally regarded as being one of the best vocalists ever by such industry publications/media outlets as Rolling Stone and VH1, due to her phenomenal ability to inject whatever she may be singing about with gut wrenching soul (hence the title) and sheer conviction. She has won 16 competitive Grammys (including an unprecedented 12 for Best female R&B vocal performance) and the state of Michigan has declared her voice to be a natural wonder.

Unknown by most people, Franklin surprisingly has only had 2 songs hit the #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100, "Respect" in the 1960s, and her 1980's duet with George Michael, "I Knew You Were Waiting For Me". However, many of her singles have hit Top 20, Top 10, and Top 5 positions.

Biography

As a child, Franklin and her sisters, Carolyn and Erma, sang at her father's Detroit-area church and made her first recordings at the age 14. She signed with Columbia Records after being discovered by legendary A&R man John Hammond. In the early 1960s, Franklin had a few popular songs, most notably "Rock-a-bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody." Though Columbia really wanted her as a jazz singer, the results never gave full rein to Franklin's talents. Her greatest and most innovative work was yet to come.

After moving to Atlantic Records in 1967, Franklin teamed up with producers Jerry Wexler and Arif Mardin, resulting in some of the most influential R&B recordings of the 1960s, including "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)", a much more soulful and impassioned song than most of her earlier work. By the late 1960s, Franklin had earned the nickname "The Queen of Soul", having become an internationally famous artist and a symbol of pride for the Black community. Franklin said herself of this period, "When I went to Atlantic, they just sat me down at the piano and the hits started coming."

She released numerous Top Ten hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s, dabbling in gospel music, blues music, pop music, psychedelic music and rock and roll, including notable covers of songs by The Beatles ("Eleanor Rigby"), The Band ("The Weight"), Simon & Garfunkel ("Bridge Over Troubled Water"), Sam Cooke and The Drifters. Live at Fillmore West and Amazing Grace were two of her most influential full-length releases, the latter a double LP of live gospel music recorded in a Los Angeles Baptist church. Surprisingly she never made it to number one in the UK pop charts — the best result being a number four with her version of Burt Bacharach's "I Say a Little Prayer" in 1968.

Among her most successful hit singles from this era were "Chain of Fools", "You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman)", "Think", "Baby I Love You", "The House That Jack Built", and "Respect", a cover of an Otis Redding single which became her signature song. After the R&B category was added to the Grammy Awards in 1968, she was virtually unchallenged, winning eight successive awards for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance; she later added three more Grammies in this category in the 1980s.

In the early 1970s, her music mellowed slightly, though losing nothing of its power, and she continued the hugely successful relationship with Wexler and Mardin while beginning to take a greater role in producing her work. A partnership with Quincy Jones led to a disappointing album in 1973 Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky). But it still produced a standout track "Angel", written by her sister Carolyn which became a soul classic.

She returned to working with Wexler, but their last collaboration, the Atlantic LP You was released in 1975.

Franklin released several LPs after You including Sparkle in 1976 which yielded a #1 R&B single, "(Giving Him )Something He Can Feel" , Sweet Passion, Almighty Fire (also produced by Curtis Mayfield) and La Diva, her last Atlantic LP.

Wexler had now left Atlantic and the partnership was over. Despite working with artists of the stature of Curtis Mayfield, popularity and critical success waned during the mid to late 1970s and the 1980s, though she scored several hits, often with partners (such as Luther Vandross). Her most notable 1980s hit was the dance song "Freeway of Love", which charted in 1985. Most critics dismiss her post-Atlantic material as far inferior to the legendary recordings of the mid to late sixties.

She married Ted White in 1962 and he became her manager during her years with Columbia Records. The marriage ended in 1969 and she has always refused to answer questions about it. A Time Magazine cover story in 1968 led to a lawsuit from Ted White over allegations that he had roughed her up in public. The affair made her guard her private life even more jealously and she gave no interviews for several years after that. She lives today in Detroit.

Interesting Facts

Aretha Franklin was sued for breach of contract in 1984 when she was unable to star in the Broadway musical Sing, Mahalia, Sing, (based on the life of gospel legend Mahalia Jackson) mainly because of her phobia of flying.

She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 2001.

Albums

• 1956 The Gospel Soul of Aretha Franklin
• 1961 Aretha
• 1962 The Electrifying Aretha Franklin
• 1962 The Tender, The Moving, The Swinging Aretha Franklin
• 1963 Laughing on the Outside
• 1964 Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington
• 1964 Songs of Faith
• 1965 Yeah!: Aretha Franklin in Person
• 1965 Once in a Lifetime
• 1967 I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)
• 1967 Aretha Arrives
• 1967 Take It Like You Give It
• 1967 Lee Cross
• 1968 Lady Soul
• 1968 Aretha Now
• 1968 Aretha in Paris
• 1969 Aretha Franklin: Live!
• 1969 I Say a Little Prayer
• 1969 Soul '69
• 1970 This Girl's In Love with You
• 1970 Don't Play That Song
• 1970 Sweet Bitter Love
• 1970 Spirit in the Dark
• 1971 Aretha Live at the Fillmore West
• 1971 Young, Gifted and Black
• 1972 Amazing Grace
• 1973 Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky)
• 1974 With Everything I Feel in Me
• 1974 Let Me in Your Life
• 1975 You
• 1976 Sparkle
• 1977 Satisfaction
• 1977 Sweet Passion
• 1977 Most Beautiful Songs
• 1978 Almighty Fire
• 1979 La Diva
• 1980 Aretha
• 1980 Aretha Sings the Blues
• 1981 Love All the Hurt Away
• 1982 Jump to It
• 1983 Get It Right
• 1984 Never Grow Old
• 1985 First Lady of Soul
• 1985 Who's Zoomin' Who?
• 1986 Aretha
• 1986 Soul Survivor
• 1987 One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism
• 1989 Through the Storm
• 1991 What You See Is What You Sweat
• 1998 A Rose Is Still a Rose
• 2003 So Damn Happy

Filmography

• The Blues Brothers (1980)
• Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)
• Immaculate Funk (2000) (documentary)
• Tom Dowd & the Language of Music (2003) (documentary)
• Singing in the Shadow: The Children of Rock Royalty (2003) (documentary)

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