Aretha Louise Franklin
She was the third of four children born to Barbara (née Siggers) and C.L. Franklin and the fifth of six overall in between past relationships by her parents. Franklin's family moved to Buffalo, when Franklin was two, and then by four, had settled in Detroit. Following the move to Detroit, Franklin's parents, who had a troubled marriage, split. Due to her father's work as a Baptist minister, Franklin was primarily raised by her grandmother, Rachel. Franklin suffered a tragedy when her mother died in Buffalo when Aretha was ten. Franklin sang in church at an early age and learned how to play piano by ear.
By her late preteens, Franklin was regularly singing solo numbers in her father's New Bethel Baptist Church. C.L. (né Clarence LaVaughn) Franklin), Aretha's father, was a respected local preacher. She grew up with local and national celebrities hanging out at her father's home including gospel greats Albertina Walker and her group The Caravans, Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward, three women who played a pivotal role in her vocal development as a child.
[edit]Early success: 1960–1966
She released her first single for Columbia in September 1960, aged 18. It reached No. 10 on Billboard's R&B chart. Her first album was released in January 1961. The label had her record mainly jazz-influenced pop music, hoping for success with this format as the label had with Billie Holiday. Columbia founder John H. Hammond later admitted in an interview years later that he felt Columbia did not really understand Franklin's background in gospel and failed to bring that aspect out in her secular recordings.[7] After scoring two more top ten R&B hits with "Operation Heartbreak" and "Won't Be Long" in 1961, Franklin scored her first top 40 pop hit with her rendition of "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody". However later releases failed to find similar success, although Franklin had a near-Top 50 hit with "Runnin' Out of Fools" (1963).
After the release of a tribute album to Dinah Washington, Columbia drifted away from their early jazz dreams for Franklin and had the singer record renditions of girl group-oriented hits including "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)", "Every Little Bit Hurts" and "Mockingbird" but every attempt to bring her success with the material failed. However, she had garnered fame for being a multi-talented vocalist and musician. During a show in 1965, the master of ceremonies gave Franklin a tiara crown declaring her "the queen of soul". The title would prove to be prophetic. By 1966, struggling with recording for Columbia, Franklin decided not to sign a new contract with the label and settled with a deal with Atlantic. After she gained success in Atlantic, Columbia would release material from Franklin's prior recordings with the label which continued until 1969.
[edit]Superstardom: 1967–1972
Franklin began recording her first songs for Atlantic in early 1967. Initially sent to Muscle Shoals's legendary FAME studios where the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section was the in-house band, Franklin cut her first song – the blues ballad "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)",[7] which finally allowed Franklin to show her gospel side. Tensions between Franklin's then-husband and then-manager Ted White and a musician led to Franklin and White hiding from public view in New York. Franklin eventually returned to the studio in New York to record the b-side, the gospel-oriented "Do Right Woman". "I Never Loved a Man" soared up both the pop and R&B charts upon its release peaking at number-nine and number-one respectively.
Her second single with Atlantic would also be her biggest, most acclaimed work. "Respect",[7] originally recorded and written by R&B singer Otis Redding, would become a bigger hit after Franklin's gospel-fueled rendition of the song. The song also started a pattern of Franklin in later songs during this period producing a call and response vocal with Franklin usually backed up by her sisters Erma and Carolyn Franklin or The Sweet Inspirations. Franklin is credited with arranging the background vocals and ad-libbing the line, "r-e-s-p-e-c-t, find out what it means to me/take care of TCB", while her sisters shouted afterwards, "sock it to me". Franklin's version peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming a sixties anthem. Franklin had three more top ten hits in 1967 – "Baby I Love You", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and "Chain of Fools".[7] "Respect" later won Franklin her first twoGrammys. She eventually won eight consecutive Grammys under the Best Female R&B Vocal Performance category.[8]
By the end of the year, Franklin not only became a superstar but she stood as one of the symbols of the civil rights movement partially due to her rendition of "Respect", which had a feminist-powered theme after Franklin recorded it. Franklin's other hits during the late sixties included "Think",[7] her rendition of Dionne Warwick's "I Say a Little Prayer", "Ain't No Way" and "The House That Jack Built" among others. By the end of the sixties, Franklin's title as "the queen of soul" became permanent in the eyes of the media. After a few struggles in 1969, she returned with the ballad, "Call Me" in January 1970. That same year she had another hit with her gospel version of Ben E. King's "Don't Play That Song", while in 1971, Franklin was one of the first black performers to headline Fillmore West[9] where she later released a live album. That same year she released the acclaimed Young, Gifted & Black album, which featured two top ten hits, the ballad "Daydreamin'" and the funk-oriented "Rocksteady". In 1972, she released her first gospel album in nearly two decades with Amazing Grace. The album eventually became her biggest-selling release ever, selling over two million copies and becoming the best-selling gospel album of all time.
[edit]Decline and fallout with Atlantic: 1973–1979
Aretha had another number-one R&B hit in 1973 with the Carolyn Franklin and William "Sonny" Sanders-composed "Angel", however its parent album, Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky), failed to repeat the success of Franklin's other albums. By 1974, after four years performing in Afrocentric-styled clothing, the singer glammed up her look and styled red hair releasing Let Me In Your Life. The album yielded the smash single, "Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do)".[citation needed] While several singles would later find success on the R&B charts, Franklin was losing favor with pop audiences as soul music was starting to be overtaken by the emerging disco genre. Atlantic Records had also by this point given priority attention to Roberta Flack, leading to relations between Franklin and the company becoming estranged as a result. Franklin turned down a number of tracks giving to her by Marvin Yancy and Chuck Jackson (though eventually they would contribute to her 1975 album, You). Several of the songs including "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)" was later recorded by Natalie Cole. After the arrivals of Cole and Chaka Khan, Franklin's star ebbed.[citation needed]
She briefly returned to the top 40 in 1976 with the Curtis Mayfield production, Sparkle, which spawned the number-one R&B hit, "Giving Him Something He Can Feel". Despite this, Franklin struggled to find success with subsequent releases. After the release of 1979's La Diva, an attempt for Franklin to find a disco audience that flopped, selling less than 50,000 copies, Franklin's contract with Atlantic expired. Neither Atlantic nor Aretha had any interest in renewing it. While she was performing in Las Vegas on June 10, 1979, Franklin's father, C.L., was shot during an attempted robbery at his LaSalle Street home in Detroit. The incident left C.L. in a coma for the next five years. Aretha moved back to the Detroit area in late 1982 from Los Angeles (where she had lived since 1976) to help care for her father.
[edit]Comeback: 1980–1989
In 1980, Franklin among other prominent rhythm and blues and soul artists including Ray Charles and James Brown appeared on the film, The Blues Brothers. Franklin appeared as the wife of musician Matt "Guitar" Murphy, who engages in a brief war of words with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi before going into "Think". Following that performance, Clive Davis signed Franklin to his Arista Records imprint. The singles "United Together" and the George Benson-featured "Love All the Hurt Away" returned Franklin to the R&B top ten while 1982's Jump to It, featuring a contemporary R&B production style by Luther Vandross, became a comeback of sorts for Franklin on the pop music chart. The album stayed at No. 1 on the R&B Albums chart for seven weeks and crossed to No. 23 on the Billboard 200 album chart, selling over 600,000 units and becoming Aretha's first gold-certified album since the Sparkle soundtrack. The title track became Franklin's first number-one R&B hit in five years while also hitting No. 24 on the Hot 100. After the relative failure of her 1983 follow-up, Get It Right, also produced by Vandross, Franklin took some personal time off. Following the July 1984 death of her father, she entered the United Sound Studios in Detroit to record a new album for Arista in October of that year. Inspired by the recent success of fellow artist Tina Turner and Arista's emerging star Whitney Houston, Arista paired Franklin with Narada Michael Walden.[citation needed]
The album released in July 1985, Who's Zoomin' Who?, featured R&B, pop, dance, synthpop and rock elements and became Franklin's first platinum-certified success. The album launched several major hits including the title track and the Motown-inspired "Freeway of Love". The rock-influenced Annie Lennox duet, "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" also became a hit for Franklin on the pop charts though it failed to climb higher than No.66 on the R&B chart due to its more pop rock-leaning sound. Music Videos for each of the singles became prominent fixtures on MTV, BET and VH-1 among other video channels. In 1986, Franklin released her self-titled follow-up to Who's Zoomin' Who. The album sold almost a million copies, and featured the number-one hit, "I Knew You Were Waiting for Me", a duet with George Michael. In April 1987, the song became Franklin's first single since "Respect" to hit No. 1 on the Hot 100.[citation needed]
Other hits from the album included a cover of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and another Motown-inspired hit, "Jimmy Lee". In 1987 she returned to her gospel roots with the album, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, which failed to repeat the success of Amazing Grace despite a powerful rendition of "Oh Happy Day", featuring Mavis Staples, but did reach the Top 10 of Billboard's gospel chart. In 1986, she sang the theme song ("Together") for the ABC television network.[citation needed]
[edit]Later work: 1989–2003
In 1989, Franklin returned with her first pop album in three years with Through the Storm but despite scoring a Top 20 hit with the title track featuring Elton John and the presence of Whitney Houston in their duet single, "It Isn't, It Wasn't, It Ain't Ever Gonna Be", the album tanked, as did a follow-up, 1991's new jack swing effort, What You See Is What You Sweat. After singing Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All Be Free" on the Malcolm X soundtrack in 1992 and singing at then-President Bill Clinton's inauguration ceremony in 1993, Franklin returned to favor with pop audiences later in 1993 with the release of the dance single, "Deeper Love", which was featured on the soundtrack of Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. The following year, Franklin issued her Arista hits album and with Babyface released two hit singles, "Honey" and the top 40 pop ballad "Willing to Forgive". In 1995, her song "It Hurts Like Hell" appeared on the soundtrack for the movie Waiting to Exhale. Four years passed until Franklin released another album. 1998's A Rose Is Still a Rose reintroduced Franklin to a new R&B audience and featured elements of neo soul and hip hop soul with production from Lauryn Hill, Jermaine Dupri and Sean "Puffy" Combs. The title track, written and produced by Hill, became Franklin's biggest hit in years reaching number 26 on the Hot 100 and reaching the R&B top five.
She later reprised her role as Matt "Guitar" Murphy's wife in the Blues Brothers remake, Blues Brothers 2000 singing "Respect". She struggled to record a succes
Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Although known for her soul recordings and referred to as The Queen of Soul, Franklin is also adept at jazz, blues, R&B, gospel music, and rock. Rolling Stone magazine ranked her atop its list of The Greatest Singers of All Time[1][2][3][4] as well as the ninth greatest artist of all time. She has won 18 competitive Grammys and two honorary Grammys. She has 20 No.1 singles on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart and two No.1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100: "Respect" (1967) and "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" (1987), a duet with George Michael. Since 1961, she has scored a total of 45 Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. She also has the most million-selling singles of any female artist (14)[citation needed]. Between 1967 and 1982 she had 10 No.1 R&B albums—more than any other female artist. In 1987, Franklin became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[5] She was the only featured singer at the 2009 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.Aretha Louise Franklin (named for two aunts) was born in a two-room house in Memphis located at 406 Lucy St.[6] She was the third of four children born to Barbara (née Siggers) and C.L. Franklin and the fifth of six overall in between past relationships by her parents. Franklin'sfamily moved to Buffalo, when Franklin was two, and then by four, had settled in Detroit. Following the move to Detroit, Franklin's parents, who had a troubled marriage, split. Due to her father's work as a Baptist minister, Franklin was primarily raised by her grandmother, Rachel. Franklin suffered a tragedy when her mother died in Buffalo when Aretha was ten. Franklin sang in church at an early age and learned how to play piano by ear.
By her late preteens, Franklin was regularly singing solo numbers in her father's New Bethel Baptist Church. C.L. (né Clarence LaVaughn) Franklin), Aretha's father, was a respected local preacher. She grew up with local and national celebrities hanging out at her father's home including gospel greats Albertina Walker and her group The Caravans, Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward, three women who played a pivotal role in her vocal development as a child.
[edit]Early success: 1960–1966
She released her first single for Columbia in September 1960, aged 18. It reached No. 10 on Billboard's R&B chart. Her first album was released in January 1961. The label had her record mainly jazz-influenced pop music, hoping for success with this format as the label had with Billie Holiday. Columbia founder John H. Hammond later admitted in an interview years later that he felt Columbia did not really understand Franklin's background in gospel and failed to bring that aspect out in her secular recordings.[7] After scoring two more top ten R&B hits with "Operation Heartbreak" and "Won't Be Long" in 1961, Franklin scored her first top 40 pop hit with her rendition of "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody". However later releases failed to find similar success, although Franklin had a near-Top 50 hit with "Runnin' Out of Fools" (1963).
After the release of a tribute album to Dinah Washington, Columbia drifted away from their early jazz dreams for Franklin and had the singer record renditions of girl group-oriented hits including "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)", "Every Little Bit Hurts" and "Mockingbird" but every attempt to bring her success with the material failed. However, she had garnered fame for being a multi-talented vocalist and musician. During a show in 1965, the master of ceremonies gave Franklin a tiara crown declaring her "the queen of soul". The title would prove to be prophetic. By 1966, struggling with recording for Columbia, Franklin decided not to sign a new contract with the label and settled with a deal with Atlantic. After she gained success in Atlantic, Columbia would release material from Franklin's prior recordings with the label which continued until 1969.
[edit]Superstardom: 1967–1972
Franklin began recording her first songs for Atlantic in early 1967. Initially sent to Muscle Shoals's legendary FAME studios where the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section was the in-house band, Franklin cut her first song – the blues ballad "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)",[7] which finally allowed Franklin to show her gospel side. Tensions between Franklin's then-husband and then-manager Ted White and a musician led to Franklin and White hiding from public view in New York. Franklin eventually returned to the studio in New York to record the b-side, the gospel-oriented "Do Right Woman". "I Never Loved a Man" soared up both the pop and R&B charts upon its release peaking at number-nine and number-one respectively.
Her second single with Atlantic would also be her biggest, most acclaimed work. "Respect",[7] originally recorded and written by R&B singer Otis Redding, would become a bigger hit after Franklin's gospel-fueled rendition of the song. The song also started a pattern of Franklin in later songs during this period producing a call and response vocal with Franklin usually backed up by her sisters Erma and Carolyn Franklin or The Sweet Inspirations. Franklin is credited with arranging the background vocals and ad-libbing the line, "r-e-s-p-e-c-t, find out what it means to me/take care of TCB", while her sisters shouted afterwards, "sock it to me". Franklin's version peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming a sixties anthem. Franklin had three more top ten hits in 1967 – "Baby I Love You", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and "Chain of Fools".[7] "Respect" later won Franklin her first twoGrammys. She eventually won eight consecutive Grammys under the Best Female R&B Vocal Performance category.[8]
By the end of the year, Franklin not only became a superstar but she stood as one of the symbols of the civil rights movement partially due to her rendition of "Respect", which had a feminist-powered theme after Franklin recorded it. Franklin's other hits during the late sixties included "Think",[7] her rendition of Dionne Warwick's "I Say a Little Prayer", "Ain't No Way" and "The House That Jack Built" among others. By the end of the sixties, Franklin's title as "the queen of soul" became permanent in the eyes of the media. After a few struggles in 1969, she returned with the ballad, "Call Me" in January 1970. That same year she had another hit with her gospel version of Ben E. King's "Don't Play That Song", while in 1971, Franklin was one of the first black performers to headline Fillmore West[9] where she later released a live album. That same year she released the acclaimed Young, Gifted & Black album, which featured two top ten hits, the ballad "Daydreamin'" and the funk-oriented "Rocksteady". In 1972, she released her first gospel album in nearly two decades with Amazing Grace. The album eventually became her biggest-selling release ever, selling over two million copies and becoming the best-selling gospel album of all time.
[edit]Decline and fallout with Atlantic: 1973–1979
Aretha had another number-one R&B hit in 1973 with the Carolyn Franklin and William "Sonny" Sanders-composed "Angel", however its parent album, Hey Now Hey (The Other Side of the Sky), failed to repeat the success of Franklin's other albums. By 1974, after four years performing in Afrocentric-styled clothing, the singer glammed up her look and styled red hair releasing Let Me In Your Life. The album yielded the smash single, "Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do)".[citation needed] While several singles would later find success on the R&B charts, Franklin was losing favor with pop audiences as soul music was starting to be overtaken by the emerging disco genre. Atlantic Records had also by this point given priority attention to Roberta Flack, leading to relations between Franklin and the company becoming estranged as a result. Franklin turned down a number of tracks giving to her by Marvin Yancy and Chuck Jackson (though eventually they would contribute to her 1975 album, You). Several of the songs including "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)" was later recorded by Natalie Cole. After the arrivals of Cole and Chaka Khan, Franklin's star ebbed.[citation needed]
She briefly returned to the top 40 in 1976 with the Curtis Mayfield production, Sparkle, which spawned the number-one R&B hit, "Giving Him Something He Can Feel". Despite this, Franklin struggled to find success with subsequent releases. After the release of 1979's La Diva, an attempt for Franklin to find a disco audience that flopped, selling less than 50,000 copies, Franklin's contract with Atlantic expired. Neither Atlantic nor Aretha had any interest in renewing it. While she was performing in Las Vegas on June 10, 1979, Franklin's father, C.L., was shot during an attempted robbery at his LaSalle Street home in Detroit. The incident left C.L. in a coma for the next five years. Aretha moved back to the Detroit area in late 1982 from Los Angeles (where she had lived since 1976) to help care for her father.
[edit]Comeback: 1980–1989
In 1980, Franklin among other prominent rhythm and blues and soul artists including Ray Charles and James Brown appeared on the film, The Blues Brothers. Franklin appeared as the wife of musician Matt "Guitar" Murphy, who engages in a brief war of words with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi before going into "Think". Following that performance, Clive Davis signed Franklin to his Arista Records imprint. The singles "United Together" and the George Benson-featured "Love All the Hurt Away" returned Franklin to the R&B top ten while 1982's Jump to It, featuring a contemporary R&B production style by Luther Vandross, became a comeback of sorts for Franklin on the pop music chart. The album stayed at No. 1 on the R&B Albums chart for seven weeks and crossed to No. 23 on the Billboard 200 album chart, selling over 600,000 units and becoming Aretha's first gold-certified album since the Sparkle soundtrack. The title track became Franklin's first number-one R&B hit in five years while also hitting No. 24 on the Hot 100. After the relative failure of her 1983 follow-up, Get It Right, also produced by Vandross, Franklin took some personal time off. Following the July 1984 death of her father, she entered the United Sound Studios in Detroit to record a new album for Arista in October of that year. Inspired by the recent success of fellow artist Tina Turner and Arista's emerging star Whitney Houston, Arista paired Franklin with Narada Michael Walden.[citation needed]
The album released in July 1985, Who's Zoomin' Who?, featured R&B, pop, dance, synthpop and rock elements and became Franklin's first platinum-certified success. The album launched several major hits including the title track and the Motown-inspired "Freeway of Love". The rock-influenced Annie Lennox duet, "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" also became a hit for Franklin on the pop charts though it failed to climb higher than No.66 on the R&B chart due to its more pop rock-leaning sound. Music Videos for each of the singles became prominent fixtures on MTV, BET and VH-1 among other video channels. In 1986, Franklin released her self-titled follow-up to Who's Zoomin' Who. The album sold almost a million copies, and featured the number-one hit, "I Knew You Were Waiting for Me", a duet with George Michael. In April 1987, the song became Franklin's first single since "Respect" to hit No. 1 on the Hot 100.[citation needed]
Other hits from the album included a cover of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and another Motown-inspired hit, "Jimmy Lee". In 1987 she returned to her gospel roots with the album, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, which failed to repeat the success of Amazing Grace despite a powerful rendition of "Oh Happy Day", featuring Mavis Staples, but did reach the Top 10 of Billboard's gospel chart. In 1986, she sang the theme song ("Together") for the ABC television network.[citation needed]
[edit]Later work: 1989–2003
In 1989, Franklin returned with her first pop album in three years with Through the Storm but despite scoring a Top 20 hit with the title track featuring Elton John and the presence of Whitney Houston in their duet single, "It Isn't, It Wasn't, It Ain't Ever Gonna Be", the album tanked, as did a follow-up, 1991's new jack swing effort, What You See Is What You Sweat. After singing Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All Be Free" on the Malcolm X soundtrack in 1992 and singing at then-President Bill Clinton's inauguration ceremony in 1993, Franklin returned to favor with pop audiences later in 1993 with the release of the dance single, "Deeper Love", which was featured on the soundtrack of Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. The following year, Franklin issued her Arista hits album and with Babyface released two hit singles, "Honey" and the top 40 pop ballad "Willing to Forgive". In 1995, her song "It Hurts Like Hell" appeared on the soundtrack for the movie Waiting to Exhale. Four years passed until Franklin released another album. 1998's A Rose Is Still a Rose reintroduced Franklin to a new R&B audience and featured elements of neo soul and hip hop soul with production from Lauryn Hill, Jermaine Dupri and Sean "Puffy" Combs. The title track, written and produced by Hill, became Franklin's biggest hit in years reaching number 26 on the Hot 100 and reaching the R&B top five.
She later reprised her role as Matt "Guitar" Murphy's wife in the Blues Brothers remake, Blues Brothers 2000 singing "Respect". She struggled to record a succes
No comments:
Post a Comment