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Aretha Franklin, Indomitable ‘Queen of Soul,’ Dies at 76
transcript
Remembering Aretha Franklin
In a musical career of more than five decades, Aretha Franklin had more than 100 singles on the Billboard charts. But more important, says Jon Pareles, chief popular music critic for The New York Times, she freed other singers to let their voices fly.
“Testing, can you hear me?” [playing piano] “I don’t want nobody.” The simple thing about Aretha Franklin is she was a great singer, a singer who could do anything. “The moment I wake up …” She could do rhythm and blues, she could do jazz, she could do opera. She could do country, probably. They started calling her the Queen of Soul in the ’60s, when she was barely in her 20s, and nobody argued. People heard Aretha, and they were inspired. And it was an inspiration that she channeled from gospel, into soul music, into music that spoke to people’s daily lives. There were songs like “Think,” which is a warning shot across a relationship. It’s one of the few songs she wrote, and it’s one of her strongest messages. She had 100 songs in the Billboard R-and-B charts and 17 pop hit singles, but what was more important was the way she freed other singers, the way she showed other singers this is how a voice can fly. You can hear Aretha Franklin in Whitney Houston. You can hear Aretha Franklin in Chaka Khan. You can hear Aretha Franklin in men, too, Luther Vandross. I mean, you can hear Aretha Franklin across R-and-B and across American music. She wasn’t always in the charts. There were long stretches of the late ’70s, the late ’80s, when she couldn’t get a hit. I think the people who were giving her material often let her down. “What do you do if you forget a lyric?” “I keep stepping.” [laughter] “You keep moving fast?” You see here at the end of her career singing an Adele song … and you think, what if Aretha had better songwriters all the way through her career? She would have even more than those 100 R-and-B singles. “Respect” was first recorded by Otis Redding, and for Otis Redding, it was, “Come on, when I get home, baby, you know, be nice to me, I worked.” When Aretha gets it as a woman and turns it around — “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.” — it’s about much more than that. It’s about respect for her as a woman, it’s about respect for her as a person. It’s about respect for her as a breadwinner in this song. But it’s also about sexual respect and physical respect — it’s everything. “Anywhere I’ve gone in the world, people love that song” — “They do” — “Did you have any idea when you recorded ‘Respect’ that it was going to be what it was?” “No, I really did not. I did not have any idea that the civil rights movement would adopt that as its mantra.” “My country, ’tis of thee …” Her father had been involved in the civil rights struggle. She was close to Martin Luther King. She was involved back in the ’60s. To see America’s first African-American president be inaugurated, this was a culmination of something, and you had to have Aretha Franklin there. [applause] “All right, thank you. Good evening, how’s everybody tonight? Feel good? Looking out on the morning rain ...” Aretha Franklin was the Queen of Soul, gospel music applied to secular topics. And that meant putting all of the airborne improvisation of gospel into songs about fighting with your guy, and bringing that spirit, channeling that ecstatic spirit into really down-to-Earth situations.” “Gospel goes with me wherever I go. Gospel is a constant with me.” “Amazing Grace” is a gospel standard. Everybody who sings gospel music knows “Amazing Grace.” It’s a beautiful song. And when you hear Aretha Franklin sing that song, it’s just transcendent. “Amazing grace, how sweet …” There was always that feeling that she was channeling some higher power into whatever she was singing. “... the sound.”
Aretha Franklin, universally acclaimed as the “Queen of Soul” and one of America’s greatest singers in any style, died on Thursday at her home in Detroit. She was 76.
The cause was advanced pancreatic cancer of the neuroendocrine type, her publicist, Gwendolyn Quinn, said.
In her indelible late-1960s hits, Ms. Franklin brought the righteous fervor of gospel music to secular songs that were about much more than romance. Hits like “Do Right Woman — Do Right Man,” “Think,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Chain of Fools” defined a modern female archetype: sensual and strong, long-suffering but ultimately indomitable, loving but not to be taken for granted.
When Ms. Franklin sang “Respect,” the Otis Redding song that became her signature, it was never just about how a woman wanted to be greeted by a spouse coming home from work. It was a demand for equality and freedom and a harbinger of feminism, carried by a voice that would accept nothing less.
[Read our appraisal of Aretha Franklin here.]
Ms. Franklin had a grandly celebrated career. She placed more than 100 singles in the Billboard charts, including 17 Top 10 pop singles and 20 No. 1 R&B hits. She received 18 competitive Grammy Awards, along with a lifetime achievement award in 1994. She was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987, its second year. She sang at the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009, at pre-inauguration concerts for Jimmy Carter in 1977 and Bill Clinton in 1993, and at both the Democratic National Convention and a memorial service for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
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