Reports say the icon of music died due to an advanced pancreatic examination at his home in Detroit, surrounded by his family. Here is a look at her iconic career that spans generations in American music and history. USA TODAY
Aretha Franklin at the beginning of her career (Photo: Atlantic Records)
Aretha Franklin, whose passionate and compelling voice made her a titan of American music, died of pancreatic cancer on Thursday, her niece, Sabrina Owens confirmed, was 76.
She died at 9:50 ET ET surrounded from family to his home in Detroit.
A family statement issued by his press officer Gwendolyn Quinn said that "the official cause of Franklin's death due to the advancing of pancreatic cancer of the neuroendocrine type, which was confirmed by Franklin on the cologist, Dr. Philip Phillips of the Karmanos Cancer Institute "in Detroit.
The family added: "In one of the darkest moments of our lives, we can not find the appropriate words to express the pain in our hearts, we have lost the matriarch and rock of our family." [19659008] Franklin was one of the twentieth century's transcendent cultural figures, growing up in an eclectic gospel, R & B, classical and jazz musical diet, blossomed from his father's Detroit church to become the most distinguished female black artist of all times, crossing borders and placing nearly 100 hits on the Billboard R & B chart – 20 reaching number 1.
The Queen of Soul, while it was crowned in the '60s, leaves a sprawling heritage of classic songs that includes "Respect", "You make me feel like a natural woman", "Chain of Fools", "Baby I Love You", "Angel", "Think", "Rock Steady," "Bridge Over Troubled Water "and" Freeway of Love ", along with a bestseller gospel catalog.
His death follows several years of carefully hidden medical problems, which led to regular cancellations of performances and prolonged absences from public opinion [19659008] In March, Franklin canceled two concerts scheduled in New Jersey. According to a statement by his management team, he was following the doctors' orders to stay out of the way and rest completely for two months, and that he was "extremely disappointed that he could not perform as he expected and hoped."
Franklin's most recent performance was November 2, 2017, for the Elton John AIDS Foundation in New York. The previous June, visibly weak but still evoking the magic of his voice, Franklin played his last show in Detroit, a concert full of emotions for an open-air festival downtown.
He ended the performance with an appeal then cryptic to her, the crowd of the hometown: "Please hold me in your prayers."
"My roots are there, the church is there, my family is there," he told the Detroit Free Press in 2011. "I like the camaraderie in Detroit, as we gather behind something that is really worthy and we we will help one another. "
Franklin's voice was a singular force, earning a multitude of laurels over the decades, including 18 Grammy Awards, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and honorary doctorates from a series of institutions. In 1987, she became the first female artist in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and seven years later, at age 52, the youngest recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor.
Franklin has surpassed the 100 best singers of all Rolling Stone magazines List of the time, and his signature hit, "Respect", ranked n. 4 in "Songs of the Century", a 1999 project of the National Endowment for the Arts. She performed at the inaugurations of US Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, gaining global attention on this last for her big fur hat with her crystal-studded bow – a piece of wardrobe now in the Smithsonian Institution.
Franklin's influence is vast and indelible. It is especially evident in the myriad of voices that followed her, from Mary J. Blige to Adele, and even male singers like Luther Vandross.
But equally important is Franklin's broader social impact: he embodied American black culture, emphatically and without excuse and through the sheer power of talent, he pushed him to the global stage.
Franklin revolutionized black music and the way it was absorbed and perceived, helping to create a world in which we assume that a Beyoncé can reign over dominant popular culture.
Franklin was emotionally complex, a woman who loved her diva status but whose vulnerabilities and insecurities always seemed to lurk just below. His public success masked a private life of turbulence and loss, creating an intriguing character driven by conflicting forces: Franklin was impertinent but naturally shy, shrewd but introverted, confident but reckless.
That deep and complicated humanity imbued his music with authenticity. Franklin's song, soaked in sentiment and performed with virtuosic abilities, has moved seamlessly between styles: gospel, soul, pop, blues, R & B, jazz, even opera. She girded, purred, seduced, testified. Although the propulsive power left his voice in later years, he remained more expressive than ever, and his live performances continued to gain critical acclaim.
"I have to do what is real in me in all ways," he told the magazine Ebony in 1967, the year in which a series of single hits – "Respect", "Baby I Love You", "Chain of Fools" – gave Franklin his first big crossover success.
Franklin & # 39; s early life
Born in Memphis in March 25, 1942, Franklin moved to the age of 4 in Detroit when his father, Rev. CL Franklin, assumed the duties to New Bethel Baptist Church.
Early agitation: his mother left Detroit for Buffalo, New York, when Aretha was 6 and died four years later.
Again, Franklin grew up in an ideal environment to cultivate his skills. His charismatic father was a preacher and a singer with a national reputation, with sermons that became the best-selling records and a gospel magazine on tour in the country. This led to important musical figures in the orbit of the young singer, including domestic guests such as James Cleveland, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King and Sam Cooke. Raised on the northwest side of Detroit, he was a teenage friend of Smokey Robinson.
He became a singer prodigy at New Bethel, and his sisters, Carolyn and Erma, also refined their gospel skills. But it was Aretha who emerged stably as a person out of the ordinary, and at the age of 14 accompanied her father on her gospel journeys.
The main focus was on Gospel, but the Franklin family was teeming with all kinds of music.
"I've heard classical music since the beginning, it was always at home," he told Free Press in 2011. "As a teenager I've brought more to R & B, but I've always loved classical music . "
R & B music, disapproved of by many in the traditional world of the Gospel, was also welcome at home. Rev. Franklin, progressive in politics and availability, opposed little resistance to the secular sounds exemplified by artists like Cooke.
The young Aretha absorbed the emotional power of music in its many forms, either in the grip of an ecstatic congregation or the intimacy of close listening.
"(My older sister) Erma was a big fan of" Be My Love "by Mario Lanza," he recalled. "How many times have we felt at home?! Smokey's sister Sylvia Robinson visited Erma and plays" Be My Love ", pressing her ears against the speakers, crying.
" At the time I was very young and I thought it was very funny that these girls were crying with their ears against those who spoke: I did not do with the artists I listened to (then) – Frankie Lymon, the Clovers, LaVern Baker , Ray Charles. As an adult I started to understand it perfectly. He threw me out, I thought, "OK, so this is what it was." "
In 1960, at the age of 18, Franklin refused the city's offer from the newborn label Motown of Berry Gordy and opted to sign with Columbia Records in New York, where his demo captured the ear of the iconic talent scout John Hammond, a year later – shortly after Franklin married his manager, Ted White – his Columbia debut was released.
That record set the tone at the age of five, a ten-year tenor at Columbia, where she was prepared as an interpreter of jazz and pop standards, presented as a piano chanteuse.
Franklin was silently masterful at the keyboard. Skills obscured by his voice – even though he played the piano on most of the work for which he is now remembered.
The Columbia period was fruitful but frustrating for the young singer, helping to expand her bridle talent on the item smoothed by the Gospel behind it. Although his critical reputation and live draw have grown, he has managed only a handful of minor hits.
"It's a fast track to the top if you're really successful, but I like the way I came in the industry," he told Free Press in 2014. "It was not too fast. during the night, but (rather) little by little.And gradually I grew up in the industry.I like more of the night feeling, as you might say.I was able to learn along the way and grow at a very, very nice pace My passage indeed, I was not involved in something for which I was not ready. "
The real success flourished in 1967, when Franklin, 24, refused to renew the contract with Columbia and signed with Atlantic Records, where executives Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler saw the opportunity to unleash the raw power of Frankli's voice n. His first single from the Atlantic – "I Never Loved a Man" – was interrupted in the nascent outbreak of soul music FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala.
In a few weeks, he was the first number 1 of Franklin's Billboard R & B chart, which also broke the Top 10. He was on the road to mainstream success.
As with all his upcoming work, the performance of "I Never Loved a Man" was fueled by a deep intensity but with an intimate and welcoming atmosphere that helped Franklin connect with his listeners [19659008] "He never learned to be so pretentious to build a fake picture and identifies himself deeply with people of all levels," wrote Ebony that year, citing Franklin:
"All those who are living has problems and desires just like me, "he told the magazine. "When the guy at the corner has something that annoys him, he feels the same way … When we cry, we cry all, and when we laugh, we all have to smile."
"Respect" and ascent to fame
Franklin's career quickly rose to the skies: with Wexler overseeing the sessions and many of the Shoalist Muscles recruited in the Atlantic studio in New York, Franklin recorded a series of successes in the following months, all for decades as fixed points in his repertoire: "Respect", "Baby I Love You", "You Make Me Feel Like") A Natural Woman, "" Chain of Fools, "Is not No Way." She was supported by many sisters Carolyn and Erma, who enjoyed modest solo success.
Franklin was not the puppet of anyone in the studio: Even in his early years, he was assertive during the recording sessions, the work arrangements and dictating the commands to the expert musicians for many decades.
In & # 39; 68, Franklin was an iconic figure in the African American community – "The Queen of Soul," as she was baptized by the black press. Now it was ineluctably important: Franklin's summer had been indulged in traditional America when he adorned the cover of Time magazine.
While Franklin was not often explicitly political in public, he embraced his greased role just as the movement of black pride was blossoming. "Respect", in particular, has assumed a stature similar to a hymn, hailed as a bold feminist and civil rights statement – though Franklin has long insisted that he did not have big plans when he recorded Otis Redding's piece on the reports family.
. 16, 1968 – declared "Aretha Franklin Day" by the Mayor of Detroit Jerome P. Cavanaugh – she performed a celebratory Christmas show for 12,000. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was present, two months before his assassination, and took the stage to present Franklin with a prize on behalf of his Southern Christian Leadership Council.
As would be typical of Franklin's story, exterior success masked drama behind the scenes. The marriage with White, in particular, had become fraught, marked by domestic violence. In 1969 they were divorced. He will marry the actor Glynn Turman in 1978, a marriage that lasted six years.
Successes continued to accumulate. At the end of the 60s he had composed 28 songs in the R & B Top 40, a mix of original material and eclectic covers, including the work of the Beatles ("Eleanor Rigby") and the Band ("The Weight") . The momentum brought in the following decade, with a series of hits and a 1972 gospel album, "Amazing Grace", which became one of the best sellers of all genres.
Success on the R & B side continued in the 70s even though pop hits decreased, even though the 1976 Sparkle soundtrack produced one of Franklin's classic crossover classics, Curtis' film Mayfield "Something He Can Feel." A stage appearance in the 1980 comedy "The Blues Brothers", where Franklin performed as a waitress chirping "Think", was a colorful presentation for a younger generation.
In the same year, looking for a new musical direction, Franklin signed with Arista Records, where the mogul Clive Davis helped to prepare a new career path for the singer, who is now approaching at 40.
After several attempts, the 1985 album "Who & # 39; s Zoomin" Who "became the great success they sought, producing the hit" Freeway of Love "and putting Franklin in front of the MTV: A duet with George Michael, "The Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)", surpassed the global charts two years later
Franklin, who had spent most of the '70's in Los Angeles, he was now permanently resettled in the Detroit subway, with several properties in the area including the Bloomfield Hills residence which would remain his main residence for the next three decades, his father revered dead in 1984 after a five-year-old coma; during a temptation of robbery in his home in Detroit.
The '90s saw Franklin grow into the role of senior statesman, pleased with his status as a great pop story and to have played the role of diva that had become an integral aspect of his person. While the pace of the studio slowed – he only released five albums from 1998 until his death – his music of the last days was generally well received, with a Grammy nomination for "A Rose Is Still a Rose" (1998) and "So Damn Happy "(2003)
" I feel comfortable with my skin and my six-inch heels, "he told Free Press in 2011.
Although Franklin performs regularly over the years & # 90; and & # 39; 00, his traveling work was hampered by his fear of flying, which had begun after a frightful journey of a small plane in the early years & # 80; 80. He insisted on traveling by bus, trekking through the United States and playing for adoring crowds in theaters and summer amphitheaters.
"I have definitely evolved into greater maturity on the stage, a savoir faire, I think," he told Free Press. "It's just about relaxing more, really, and having fun with this, which comes with time, to evolve at that level and to find out that it's really very simple … that it's really about having fun and communicating with the audience . " [19659008] Franklin has long been stubborn by weight problems and has struggled with alcohol abuse in the late 60s. But the first sign of health problems came in 2010, when he canceled six months of commitments for the concert, while he was hospitalized for unknown reasons.
The next summer became visibly leaner and apparently in good health, returning with a luminous show at the Chicago Theater: "Six months after the world was weighted for the worst, Aretha Franklin gave the best of herself", as reported from Free Press to the era.
"His voice was velvety and powerful as he entered his set, still finding new curves and angles in the notes of songs like" Pensa "," Sparkle "and" Baby I Love You "," read the review.
However, Franklin's concert activity became unmissable during his later years and showed cancellations became the norm for the course, often attributed to nameless health problems. He talked more and more about things to be done, showing fewer shows within the year, and in February 2017 he finally lifted the prospect of retirement, saying he was recording a final album.
Two missions appeared great during the last decade of Franklin's life, and both were still working when she died: she was in talks to produce a biopic about her life, often talking to potential actresses like Jennifer Hudson, Halle Berry and Audra McDonald. And she was enchanted by the idea of opening a soul-food restaurant in downtown Detroit.
Reclusive by nature, Franklin liked to stay home and enjoy "the little things", as he said in 2011 – polish the silver, buy a tea set, wash and iron. He was a reader attracted to biographies and an avid consumer of the media who could not read his newspapers
"I really like the comfort of home," he said. "I'm very home when I'm home, I can stay in the house for the longest time and do not go out."
From Obama to Pavarotti, always great
It was always BIG with Aretha Franklin. Public situations were directed towards the greatest of life, the oversized, the majestic. It was an immense presence, physically and psychologically, and could occupy the rooms by simply sweeping them inside.
He had the ability to be at the center of great moments, whether he stole the show at the inauguration of Obama or that he replaced the suffering Luciano Pavarotti with an impromptu "Nessun Dorma" at the Grammys of 1998. [19659086] President Barack Obama gets angry with Aretha Franklin ” width=”540″ data-mycapture-src=”” data-mycapture-sm-src=””/>
President Barack Obama gets angry with Aretha Franklin, who sings during a farewell ceremony for Attorney General Eric Holder at the Department of Justice in February 2015 in Washington, A.D. (Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images)
"He could get a US president on the phone with two calls," said Brian Pastoria, who co-engineered some of Franklin's studio work.
In fact, it was the little stuff that seemed to annoy Franklin more. He has struggled with personal finances, and has often been forced to travel to small-scale courts by family operations around the Detroit Metro – limousine services, catering, contractors. His house was often cluttered and untidy, and while creative genius experts could tell that he was coming with the territory, it was quite frustrating the neighbors and leaving the visitors perplexed about why he had so little help around her.
For years Franklin spoke of plans to deal with his flying phobia, but never followed. He continued to take root in the last 35 years of his life, earning millions of dollars in tour revenue.
Franklin was scrupulously private; his private life was protected by a small group of family and friends. When writer Mark Bego started writing the first licensed biography of Aretha Franklin, "The Queen of Soul" in 1989, he was struck by the series of unknowns that still surrounded her – basic details of her two marriages and divorces, her education, even on her musical inspirations.
"I felt like I had just met one of the great unresolved mysteries of the entertainment world," he wrote.
Franklin cautiously dragged on some of these topics with his 1999 autobiography, "Aretha: From These Roots." But it remained elusive enough that his co-author, David Ritz, was forced to write his biography uninhibited by Franklin 15 years later.
That book provoked the singer's wrath – the kind of eruption familiar to those in the world of Aretha. Franklin kept churning out support staff, hiring and firing lawyers, publicists and producers. He did arias with other singers and knew how to nurture resentment, including a beef with Dionne Warwick who became public only when Franklin alerted the press from nothing – five years later it happened.
But when it came to music, few were more disciplined than Franklin. He was serious about his voice and his concert conditions: big on honey and hot tea before a show and insistent in rooms without air conditioning, aware that he could wipe his throat.
Many who have worked closely with her have also glimpsed humanity in the heart of the superstar singer who came to church.
"He was (very) compassionate," said the late Darryl Houston in 2010. Houston was the pianist who accompanied Franklin for over two decades. "When I was dealing with the disease and the possible death of my father in Mississippi, it was very encouraging in his thoughts and actions." I recall that sometimes I received a call from a travel agent saying, "When Do you want to go see your father? Mrs. Franklin took care of the ticket. " "
Brian Pastoria was part of a study group that worked with Franklin in the years" 90 and & # 39; 000, including recording sessions at his home.
"Before the vocal sessions, it would be been in the kitchen to prepare the chili. a couple of hours, she said, "OK, it's time to eat!" "She recalled Pastoria." Although she was the greatest of all time, Muhammad Ali of the voice, it was always her business phone call, not her lawyer. You would have heard, "Hello, honey, how are you!" It was nice, it was real, you never had the feeling of dealing with an important superstar. "
For all public clothes, the references of glory and diva – it was famous in Snickers advertising as a grumpy prima donna – Franklin was a homegirl in the heart.It was a food connoisseur of the south soul of the old school, proud of her skills with home-made dishes such as fried chicken and black-eyed peas ham.
"I think I can best classify myself when it comes to cooking," she told Free Press in 1996
That sort of organic reality has gone through his work.
"He paints an image with a song," said Houston. "Outside of vocal intelligence, you can hear what is going on. singing, you can say when someone sings only one song and when the song is part of their inner being … With Aretha, what leaves the heart reaches the heart. "[19659103] Aretha Franklin attends the Elton John AIDS Foundation ” width=”540″ data-mycapture-src=”” data-mycapture-sm-src=””/>
Aretha Franklin attends the Gala 25th Anniversary of the Elton John AIDS Foundation Tuesday, November 7, 2017, in New York. (Photo: Andy Kropa / Invision / AP)
"It seems that he never, never forgot those roots of the church, and really believed that we need to look over the things of this world, on a more spiritual level level, "said Rocky Twyman social activist. "You felt like you wanted to bless humanity with its music."
Franklin made his last appearance in Detroit on June 10, 2017, underlining the Detroit Music Weekend festival for thousands of people gathered in the streets. Down the block two days earlier, tears flowed down his face as he was honored by the city with the presentation of Aretha Franklin Way.
For nearly two hours on the festival stage that weekend, he performed in a lively, exuberant set while clearly struggling with pain, at one point singing from a luxurious chair.
Franklin did so his way that night, giving up many of his biggest hits for a deeper dive into his catalog and an exciting 11-minute workout of "Precious Memories."
Perhaps the old slender power it was missing, but the passion was intact. For the last time in front of his hometown, there was Aretha Franklin, and there was that voice.
That voice – still captivating, but now comforting in its decades of familiarity. A sound that still fuses urban vitality with the warmth of the southern soul. Still joy, pain, ecstasy, liberation. Still strength and femininity. And yet it offers, as always, the promise of transcendence.
Contact Detroit Free Press writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or [email protected]
Read or share this story: https: // usat.ly/2OIcvhE