Aretha Franklin

Overview

Aretha Franklin held the Billboard Hot 100’s most-charted-female-artist record for nearly four decades — longer than anyone alive today has been a music fan. From June 18, 1977, when “Break It to Me Gently” became her 54th Hot 100 entry and lifted her past Connie Francis, through March 2017, the mark belonged to her alone: 73 entries, every one lead-billed, spanning 1961 to 1998 (Stereogum). It took Nicki Minaj — three simultaneous debuts on the April 1, 2017 chart, “No Frauds” at No. 14, “Regret in Your Tears” at No. 61, and “Changed It” at No. 71 — to finally push past 73 to 76 (Stereogum). The Queen of Soul then kept making history from beyond it: in 2019 she became the first individual woman to receive a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation since the honor’s inception in 1930, for “her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades” (Ebony).

Gospel roots

Aretha Louise Franklin was born March 25, 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee. The Rev. C.L. Franklin soon moved his family to Buffalo, New York, and then to Detroit, where he became pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church and one of the most prominent Baptist ministers of his era — recording dozens of albums of sermons and music while gospel stars like Marion Williams and Clara Ward mentored Aretha and her sisters Carolyn and Erma (Associated Press). In the Franklin living room, the shy young Aretha awed guests like Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls with her playing on the grand piano; the piano she began learning at age 8 became a jazzy component of much of her work, from arranging to songwriting (Associated Press).

She was in her early teens when she began touring with her father and released a gospel album in 1956 through J-V-B Records. Four years later she signed with Columbia Records producer John Hammond, who called her the most exciting singer he had heard since Billie Holiday — a vocalist he had promoted decades earlier (Associated Press). She considered joining Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr.’s label but decided it was “just a local company at the time” (Associated Press). Six Columbia albums brought a handful of minor hits but never quite caught on, as the label tried to fit her into everything from jazz and show songs to pop numbers — an education, critic Russell Gersten later wrote, in what she didn’t like: “to do what she was told to do” (Associated Press).

Atlantic and “Respect”

Franklin jumped to Atlantic Records when her Columbia contract ran out in 1966, and producer Jerry Wexler teamed her with veteran R&B musicians from Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals — the tougher, soulful sound, with call-and-response vocals anchored by Franklin’s gospel-style piano, that produced “I Say a Little Prayer,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” and her signature song (Associated Press). “Respect” was a deliberate reworking of Otis Redding’s 1965 song, and the story of its handoff is part of music history: “When she walked into the studio, it was already worked out in her head,” Wexler wrote. “Otis came up to my office right before ‘Respect’ was released, and I played him the tape. He said, ‘She done took my song’” (Associated Press).

Franklin herself understood what she had made. Asked in 2004 whether she sensed she was helping change popular music, she answered: “Somewhat, certainly with ‘Respect,’ that was a battle cry for freedom and many people of many ethnicities took pride in that word. It was meaningful to all of us” (Associated Press). In 1968 she was pictured on the cover of Time magazine with more than 10 Top 20 hits across 1967 and 1968 — records the AP described as “a musical union of the church and the secular, man and woman, black and white, North and South, East and West,” produced by New Yorkers Wexler and Tom Dowd, arranged by Turkish-born Arif Mardin, and backed by an interracial assembly of top session musicians based mostly in Alabama (Associated Press).

“Amazing Grace” and the long arc

Her most acclaimed gospel recording came in 1972 with the Grammy-winning “Amazing Grace,” recorded live at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in South Central Los Angeles with gospel legend James Cleveland and her own father — Mick Jagger was among the celebrities in the audience (Associated Press). Her popularity faded during the 1970s despite hits like “Rock Steady,” but the career revived in 1980 with a cameo in the smash movie “The Blues Brothers” and her switch to Arista Records, bringing “Freeway of Love” and a 1987 No. 1 duet with George Michael, “I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)” (Associated Press). From her earliest Columbia sessions, when she asked to sing “Over the Rainbow,” she defied category — most famously at the 1998 Grammys, where she performed “Respect,” then, with only a few minutes’ notice, filled in for an ailing Luciano Pavarotti and drew rave reviews for her rendition of “Nessun Dorma” (Associated Press).

Fellow singers bowed to her eminence and political leaders treated her as a peer: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a longtime friend; she performed at the inaugurations of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — Clinton gave her the National Medal of Arts — and at Rosa Parks’s funeral (Associated Press). Her best-known appearance with a president came in January 2009, when she sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at Barack Obama’s inauguration, wearing a gray felt hat with a huge Swarovski-rhinestone-bordered bow that became an internet sensation with its own website; in 2015 she brought Obama to tears with a triumphant “Natural Woman” at a Kennedy Center tribute to Carole King (Associated Press).

The honors record

The music industry could not honor her enough: 18 Grammy Awards, including the lifetime achievement award, covering a span of four decades. In 1987 she became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; in 2005 President George W. Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom (Associated Press). Then, in April 2019, eight months after her death, the Pulitzer board awarded her a Special Citation — the first such honor for an individual woman since the citation’s inception in 1930 (Ebony). Her niece Sabrina Owens, executor of her estate, told the AP: “Aretha is blessed and highly favored even in death… she’s received almost every award imaginable and now to get the Pulitzer Prize, it’s just amazing” (Ebony).

Franklin, who had announced her retirement from touring in 2017, died August 16, 2018, at 9:50 a.m. at her home in Detroit from advanced neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer, at 76 (Associated Press). She had been married twice — from 1961 to 1969 to her manager Ted White, battles with whom are widely believed to have inspired songs including “Think,” and from 1978 to 1984 to actor Glynn Turman — and was the mother of four sons (Associated Press). A fear of flying, left over from a rough flight to Detroit in 1982, meant she did most of her extensive touring on a custom bus: “You can pull over, go to Red Lobster. You can’t pull over at 35,000 feet” (Associated Press).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not state a net worth or estate valuation for Aretha Franklin — published figures vary and none was verified in the research for this profile. It does not describe the post-2018 estate administration beyond Sabrina Owens’s role as executor, and makes no claims about estate disputes. The Hot 100 record figures reflect Billboard’s 2017 count (73 entries); chart-recount totals differ across tertiary sources and are not adjudicated here. It does not cover her posthumous album releases or the 2021 “Respect” biopic, which were outside the fully-read sources used.