People PEOPLE Aretha Franklin

“IT’S A LOVE FOR ME. IT WAS MY FIRST LOVE, AND IT IS A CONSTANT, IT’S ALWAYS THERE”—ARETHA FRANKLIN ON THE JOY OF SINGING, TO THE TODAY SHOW, 1990. A SHOW OF RESPECT REMEMBERING ARETHA FRANKLIN The voice, as at home in a spiritual as in a pop hit or an aria, could evoke love, lust, heartache, triumph, rage and indignation—often in a single song. A talent as celestial as Aretha Franklin’s comes along so rarely that, three years after her death, people are still trying to understand its origins. That may explain the renewed interest in the Queen of Soul, the subject of both a recent TV miniseries and now a feature film, Respect. This special edition of People looks at Franklin’s life and remarkable career, from singing at her preacher father’s…

“BEING A SINGER IS A NATURAL GIFT. IT MEANS I’M USING TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE POSSIBLE THE GIFT THAT GOD GAVE ME TO USE. I’M HAPPY WITH THAT”—ARETHA FRANKLIN“PEOPLE IN THE CHECKOUT LINES SAID THEY PRAYED FOR ME. IT’S AMAZING HOW BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE CAN BE”—ARETHA FRANKIN, TO PEOPLE IN 2011…

THERE IS MUCH we don’t know about Aretha Franklin’s formative years; the Queen was not often inclined to share. She was guarded with reporters and even with the biographer, David Ritz, she selected to help write her 1999 memoir Aretha: From These Roots, in which she recounts a happy childhood. “[Aretha] fashioned the book according to her fantasy of an idyllic life,” Ritz wrote in Rolling Stone. “That was her right. We’re all free to mythologize ourselves any way we please.” Fifteen years after the first book, Ritz penned a second to set the record straight. Based on scores of interviews with Franklin’s family and friends, Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin depicts a tumultuous childhood that Ritz argues caused enduring trauma for the star. Respect is regarded as a definitive…

WHAT TO DO WITH A VOICE as singularly glorious as Aretha’s? Translating her gifts to record sales would seem a matter of simply exposing her to the biggest audience possible. Veteran singers saw her potential—Dinah Washington had dubbed her “the next one” when Aretha was just 12. So why, after Franklin signed a record deal that would lead to nine albums, fine reviews and plenty of promotional appearances, did major success elude her in the early stage of her career? After five years of gospel tours with her father, Aretha, 18, felt ready for the mainstream. “I knew I could sing pop but wanted to find out if I could make a go of it,” she said in an early interview. Family friend Sam Cooke made that crossover and was thriving.…

IT WAS MAY OF 1968, and Aretha Franklin was on her thrilling first European tour in support of the album Lady Soul—the one with “Chain of Fools,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Ain’t No Way,” and the first of two releases that year to sell more than a million copies. But when she took the stage in front of a sold-out crowd in Amsterdam, Franklin opened not with one of those hot singles but with her explosive rhythm and blues workout of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” The crowd went wild with joy and began pelting the singer with flowers. Eventually fans rushed the stage in a frenzy that caused the emcee to halt the show until calm could be restored. Like practically…

THE WALLS INSIDE Los Angeles’s New Temple Missionary Baptist church beaded with sweat. So did the faces of the choir members, their brows shining as if in competition with their matching silver vests. (Does the heat deter Aretha Franklin from arriving in a fur coat? It does not.) Franklin had come to her friend Rev. James Cleveland’s Watts church to record a gospel album live before a congregation and neither the heat nor the perspiration nor the documentary cameras trained on her to capture the historic two-night session would deter her. Her eyes closed as her voice soared past the rafters, the sweat running down her cheeks. At one point when she is at the piano her father steps from a front pew and, with a handkerchief, lovingly dabs his…