Aretha Franklin

1942–2018 · 76 years Tier I

Pregnant at 12, and singing solos in her father's Detroit church

Portrait of Aretha Franklin — Atlantic Records (Life time: Published before 1978 without a copyright notice) — 1968 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Her father preached at New Bethel Baptist in Detroit and drew thousands of dollars a night on the road for it — they called him the man with the million-dollar voice, and Martin Luther King Jr., Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson came through the house. Her mother, a singer and pianist herself, left the marriage in 1948 and died of a heart attack in March 1952, weeks before Aretha turned 10. Mahalia Jackson was among the women who helped raise the children afterward. Aretha taught herself piano by ear, sang her first solo at New Bethel that same year, had her first child at 12, dropped out of Northern High School, and spent her summers on the gospel circuit in Chicago.

Columbia signed her in 1960 and spent six years putting a gospel singer in front of show tunes and standards. When the contract lapsed in November 1966 she owed the label money. Jerry Wexler took her to Muscle Shoals that January — one day of work, a fight that ended the session, and I Never Loved a Man in the can. Respect came out that April and stopped being Otis Redding's song. Chain of Fools and Think followed, and in January 1972 two nights at a Los Angeles church produced Amazing Grace, the best-selling live gospel album ever made and the best-selling record of her life. She sold more than 75 million records, put 20 singles at number one on the R&B chart, and won 18 Grammys out of 44 nominations.

The house she came out of was not a safe one. Her father had a daughter in 1940 by a 12-year-old member of his Memphis congregation, and her biographers record that he preyed on pre-teen girls in his churches. Her first marriage, to Ted White at 18, was violent enough that she left him in 1968. Then the family started dying. Her father was shot twice at point-blank range in his own home in June 1979 while she was on stage in Las Vegas, lay in a coma for five years, and died in 1984. Her sister Carolyn went of breast cancer in 1988, her brother Cecil of lung cancer in 1989, her sister Erma of throat cancer in 2002. After a bad flight in 1984 she stopped flying and never performed outside North America again.

She died of a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor at her Detroit apartment on August 16, 2018, at 76. Thousands filed past the casket at the Charles H. Wright Museum, though the family said afterward that the preacher she had chosen used the pulpit for a political lecture instead of a eulogy. She was thought to have died without a will. Then handwritten ones turned up in the house, one of them under a couch cushion, and in July 2023 a Michigan jury ruled that the couch document, dated 2014, was the valid one. The Pulitzer board gave her a special citation in 2019. She had been the first woman elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Lifespan

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Aretha Franklin's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You album
The Atlantic debut, begun in one day at Muscle Shoals 1967
Respect song
Otis Redding's song, taken from him permanently 1967
Lady Soul album
Chain of Fools, Ain't No Way, and the year she became the biggest singer in the country 1968
Amazing Grace album
Recorded live over two nights at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, Los Angeles 1972
Sparkle album
Written and produced by Curtis Mayfield 1976
Who's Zoomin' Who? album
The Arista comeback that put her back on pop radio 1985

Life in brief

with age at each point

March 7, 1952 aged 9 Her mother dies of a heart attack in Buffalo Aretha was nine. She began singing solos at New Bethel that same year.
January 28, 1955 aged 12 Gives birth to her first son at 12 She named him Clarence, after her father.
1960 aged ~18 Signs with Columbia Records at 18 Sam Cooke had tried to bring her to RCA Victor instead.
January 1967 aged 24 One day at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals ends in a fight The session was abandoned. I Never Loved a Man was already recorded.
April 1967 aged 25 Respect is released and becomes hers
January 1972 aged 29 Records Amazing Grace over two nights in a Los Angeles church It outsold everything else she ever made.
June 10, 1979 aged 37 Her father is shot twice in his Detroit home while she is on stage in Las Vegas He never regained consciousness and died in 1984.
1987 aged ~45 First woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
July 11, 2023 aged 81 A Michigan jury rules the handwritten will from her couch is valid The document was dated 2014 and found under a cushion in 2019.