Aretha Franklin on TV, Film and Video

Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter and pianist commonly referred to as "The Queen of Soul". Although renowned for her soul recordings, Franklin is also adept at jazz, rock, blues, pop, R&B and Gospel music. Rolling Stone magazine ranked Franklin #1 on its list of The Greatest Singers of All Time.[1]

Franklin is one of the most honored artists by the Grammy Awards, with 18 Grammys to date, which include the Living Legend Grammy and the Lifetime Achievement Grammy. She has scored a total of 20 #1 singles on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart, one of which also became her first #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100: "Respect" (1967). "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" (1987), a duet with George Michael, became her second #1 on the latter chart. Since 1961, Franklin has scored a total of 45 "Top 40" hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

In 1987, Franklin became the first female artist to be entered into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[2]

Franklin was the only featured singer at the 2009 Presidential inauguration ceremony for Barack Obama.

Biography

Early life and career

Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee to Rev. C. L. Franklin, a famous Baptist minister, and Barbara Siggers Franklin, a singer and pianist. In addition to Aretha the couple had four more children, Erma, Cecil and Carolyn as well as Vaughn (Barbara Franklin's son by a previous relationship, whom C.L. adopted). Aretha's parents had a troubled relationship and separated for the final time when Aretha was six, leaving her and her siblings to be raised by their paternal grandmother, Rachel Franklin (known as 'Big Momma'), as well as numerous female family friends who regularly visited the home, including Clara Ward and Mahalia Jackson. Aretha's mother died when she was 10 years old.

Aretha was a self-taught piano prodigy and her extraordinary vocal gifts were manifest by the time she entered her teens. At the age of fourteen, she recorded her first album for JVB/Battle Records, where her father recorded his sermons and gospel vocal recordings and she issued Songs of Faith in 1956. Her earliest influences included Clara Ward and Mahalia Jackson, and Aretha has noted in her autobiography that her early gospel singing was patterned after Albertina Walker's Caravans, as she worked under the direction of gospel legend and Franklin family friend James Cleveland.

Early motherhood derailed Franklin's gospel career, and when she returned to singing, she decided to secure herself a deal as a pop artist. After being offered contracts from Motown and RCA, Franklin signed with Columbia Records in 1960. Her recordings during that time reflected a jazz influence and moved away from her gospel roots. Franklin initially scored a few hits on Columbia including her version of "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody", which peaked at number 37 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart in 1961, and the Top 10 R&B hits, "Today I Sing The Blues", "Won't Be Long" and "Operation Heartbreak." However, by the end of 1966, with little commercial success in six years with Columbia, and desperate for a sound of her own, she accepted an offer to sign with Atlantic Records and work with producer Jerry Wexler. According to Franklin years later, "they made me sit down on the piano and the hits came."

"Soul Sister #1"

In 1967 Franklin issued her first Atlantic single, "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)", a blues ballad that introduced listeners to her gospel style. Recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and produced by Wexler, the song became Franklin's breakthrough single, reaching the Top 10 on the Hot 100 and holding the #1 spot for seven weeks on Billboard's R&B Singles chart. The B-side, "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man", charted on the R&B side, and introduced a more gospel element to Franklin's developing sound.

The success of her debut Atlantic single led to her recording her first Atlantic album I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, which includes the title song and its B-side along with additional songs recorded at Atlantic Recording Studios in New York, both originals and cover versions of well-known R&B songs including one which would become her signature tune.

Her next single, "Respect," written and originally recorded by Otis Redding, firmly launched Franklin on the road to stardom. Franklin's feminist version of the song became her signature tune for life, reaching #1 on both the R&B and the Pop charts—holding the top spot on the former chart for a record eight weeks. In the next ten months, Franklin released a number of top-ten hits including "Baby I Love You," "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," and "Chain of Fools."

In early 1968, Franklin won her first two Grammys (for "Respect"), including the first Grammy awarded in the "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance" category. She went on to win eight "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance" awards in a row.[3] Over the next seven years, Franklin continued to score hit singles including "Think," "The House That Jack Built," "I Say a Little Prayer," (a cover of Dionne Warwick's hit) "Call Me," and "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)." "Spanish Harlem" reached #2 on Billboard's Hot 100 and gave Franklin her first Top 10 Adult Contemporary (at the time labeled Easy Listening) hit.

By the end of the 1960s, Franklin's position as Soul Sister #1 was firmly established. Her albums were also hot sellers; one in particular, 1972's Amazing Grace, eventually sold more than two million US copies - going double platinum - and becoming "the best-selling gospel album of all time".[4] Franklin's hit streak continued into the mid-1970s. The emotional plea "Angel," produced in 1973 by Quincy Jones and written by Franklin's sister Carolyn and William "Sonny" Sanders, was a stand-out single that became yet another #1 on the R&B chart, although the subsequent album, Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky), was trashed by critics and not successful.

The gold-certified single of 1974, "Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do)," hit #1 R&B and #3 pop but was her last Top 10 Pop hit until 1985. By 1975, however, with the expanding exposure of Disco and the popularity of fellow Atlantic artist Roberta Flack, relations between Franklin and Atlantic Records had become strained. Jerry Wexler left the company during this time as well. As a result, Franklin was recording poor material such as 1975's listless You album, and her record sales declined dramatically. Franklin had peaked, and the music industry was moving on to younger black female singers such as Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, and Donna Summer.

Return to prominence

After several years of failed recordings, Franklin's career was given a much-needed boost in 1980 by a vibrant performance as Mrs. Matt Murphy in the successful movie The Blues Brothers, singing "Think". That same year Clive Davis signed Franklin to his Arista Records. The singles "United Together" and "Love All The Hurt Away"—a duet with George Benson—returned her to the Top 10 on the Billboard R&B Singles chart. But it was the spectacular 1982 album, Jump to It, produced by the late Luther Vandross, and the title-track single that gave Franklin her first R&B chart-topping and pop success since "(Giving Him) Something He Can Feel." The album enjoyed a seven-consecutive-week run at #1 on Billboard's R&B Albums chart. It won an American Music Award (along with several other nominations), was nominated for a Grammy, and was certified gold in early 1983 - Franklin's first gold disc since the 1976 Sparkle album.

The following year Franklin and Vandross collaborated again on the disappointing Get It Right. But in 1985, Franklin's sound was commercialized into a glossy pop sound as she experienced her biggest-selling album to date, Who's Zoomin' Who?. Yielding smash hits like the Motown-influenced "Freeway of Love" (#3 Pop/#1 R&B), the title track (#7 Pop/#2 R&B), and her duet with Eurythmics, "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" (#18 Pop/#66 R&B), the album became the first platinum certification of Franklin's entire career, introducing her sound to a younger generation of fans. In 1986, Franklin did nearly as well with an album simply titled Aretha, which yielded her first #1 pop single in two decades with the George Michael duet "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)." The song also held at #2 for several weeks on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart and won a Grammy. (It also sold over one million copies in the United States but Arista Records never requested the corresponding certification.) The album itself is noteworthy for the striking cover which was Andy Warhol's last work before his death. Other hits from the album included Aretha's hard rocking cover of The Rolling Stones' classic "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and the girl group-inspired "Jimmy Lee." When Aretha was taken out of print, it had sold approximately 900,000 US copies.

Franklin returned to gospel in 1987 with her album One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, which was recorded live at her New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit. However, the disc was a far cry from her 1972 effort Amazing Grace and peaked at #106 on Billboard's album chart. Follow-ups such as 1989's Through the Storm and 1991's What You See Is What You Sweat sold poorly and failed to produce any major mainstream hits—other than the former album's Elton John-featured title track—but her career got a slight boost in 1993 when she scored a dance-club hit with "Deeper Love" from the Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit soundtrack. In 1994, she scored another hit with the Babyface-produced ballad "Willing to Forgive," which hit the Top 5 of Billboard's R&B chart and #26 on the Hot 100.

Franklin returned to prominence with her 1998 album, A Rose Is Still a Rose. The album's mixture ...   More