FEATURE:
Aretha Franklin at Eighty
IN THIS PHOTO: Aretha Franklin performing in Los Angeles on 16th May, 1975/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
A Testament to the Queen of Soul: Her Greatest Tracks
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MAYBE I have put together…
IN THIS PHOTO: Aretha Franklin in 1968
an Aretha Franklin playlist a couple of times before but, as the Queen of Soul would have been eighty on 25th March, I couldn’t pass that by without revisiting her work. We lost the icon on 16th August, 2018. It is almost too difficult to write about the influence and legacy of Aretha Franklin. In terms of the artists who are influenced by her and how successful she became. It would take a lot of words to properly and truthfully discuss why Aretha Franklin was so special. Others might mark her eightieth birthday by looking at her accolades or the way her career developed. Some might talk about her best solo albums. I wanted to put together a career-spanning playlist but, more than that, say something else about Franklin. When I think about her, I think about her songs and their incredible power. I think about her as a Soul singer and how she started singing as a child at church and rose to become this icon. I think one of the most defining aspects of her career and legacy is her voice during the civil rights movement. As Far Out Magazine wrote in their article exploring the legacy of Aretha Franklin, she was a champion and supporter of the African-American people (especially strong women) at a time of riots and division:
“The most defining point of her career, however, arrived in 1967 when she released ‘Respect’. The song became an anthem for the civil rights and feminist movements, a legacy that still endures today. In her 1999 autobiography, Aretha remembered how the song captured the essence of the era: “It (reflected) the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher—everyone wanted respect.” She characterised the song as “one of the battle cries of the civil rights movement,” she said, before adding: “The song took on monumental significance.”
Substantiating her stance and support for strong African-American women, Franklin weighed in on the arrest of popular activist and philosopher Angela Davis in 1970, stating: “Angela Davis must go free … Black people will be free. I’ve been locked up (for disturbing the peace in Detroit) and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I’m going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she’s a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people.” She didn’t stop there and, in her next move, Franklin would end up funding the bail for Davis.
The singer didn’t limit her activism to solely African-American/feminist issues, however. Throughout her life, albeit less explicitly, she was a supporter of a vast array of movements that supported the plight of the Native American’s and other indigenous peoples worldwide. A leading light in bringing the attention to the downtrodden, Franklin would continue with this attitude right up until her death in 2018. Her final act came in 2017 when she, along with other American icons, declined to perform at the inauguration of then-President Donald Trump. The Queen of Soul abhorred his politics and remarked that “no amount of money” could persuade her to take the stage.
Shifting from one President to another, in 2015, then-incumbent Barack Obama wrote of Franklin: “Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R. & B., rock and roll—the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope. American history wells up when Aretha sings.”
He tactfully captured her importance, adding: “That’s why, when she sits down at a piano and sings ‘A Natural Woman,’ she can move me to tears—the same way that Ray Charles’s version of ‘America the Beautiful’ will always be in my view the most patriotic piece of music ever performed—because it captures the fullness of the American experience, the view from the bottom as well as the top, the good and the bad, and the possibility of synthesis, reconciliation, transcendence.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Aretha Franklin‘s legacy will continue to endure, as in life and music she captured the most important elements of American society. Not afraid of discussion and protest, she helped to drag America out of the past and into the future. For this, she will never be forgotten”.
It is Aretha Franklin’s spectacular and unsurpassed catalogue that will endure for centuries and be talked about by fans, historians and people all around the world. A stunningly expressive, soulful and electrifying singer who has inspired so many people and is one of the most successful artists ever, I wanted to mark her upcoming eightieth birthday with a selection of her songs (with some classic cover versions included). This is my tribute and salute to…
THE Queen of Soul.