ARETHA FRANKLIN: THE QUEEN OF SOUL’S INDOMITABLE LEGACY
In recognition of Black History Month, VOCAL GIRLS honours the undying cultural and political legacy of the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin.
In the year 1967, amidst a landscape of struggle for the Civil Rights, black power and feminist movements, Aretha Franklin was declared the Queen of Soul. The Memphis-born, Detroit-raised singer is widely regarded as one of the most talented artists of all time. Over sixty years of music-making, Franklin released thirty eight studio albums (eleven of which during the period of 1967 to 1969 alone), six live albums, 62 compilation albums and 131 singles! Alongside her musical career, which has been firmly carved into popular culture, Franklin was a lifelong political activist whose songs, for many, went on to become a pillar of hope in times of darkness.
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Aretha Franklin was born to Barbara Siggers and C. L. Franklin, preacher and Baptist minister, known nationally as ‘the man with the million-dollar voice’. Due to the nature of her father’s work, Franklin was raised in 1950s Detroit surrounded by political activists and esteemed members of the church. C.L. Franklin was a well-respected civil rights activist, organising the 1963 Detroit Walk to Freedom, the largest-ever protest for civil rights in the US until the March on Washington later that year, when Martin Luther King Jr. would deliver his ‘I have a dream’ speech. Her father’s position also meant that Franklin grew up immersed in the rich musical culture of the church, being mentored by the likes of gospel powerhouses Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward, stars Franklin would later cite as crucial musical influences.
Following in the footsteps of Bessie Smith, Mahalia Jackson and Billie Holiday, Columbia Records executive John Hammond signed Franklin at the age of eighteen, just as the golden age of gospel was coming to its apparent end. Transitioning from gospel to secular music was not an entirely commercially driven move, however, as Franklin revealed to the New York Amsterdam News: “The blues is a music born out of the slavery day sufferings of my people. Every song in the blues vein has a story to tell of love, frustrations and heartaches. I think that because true democracy hasn’t overtaken us here that we as people find the original blues songs still have meaning to us”. Franklin remained strongly connected to her faith throughout her career, perhaps most explicitly through her 1972 album Amazing Grace, recorded live at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, Los Angeles.
Leaving Columbia Records in her mid-20s to sign with Atlantic Records, the Queen of Soul has hundreds of genre-defiant records under her belt: smash hits ‘Respect’, ‘Think’, ‘I Say a Little Prayer’, dreamy love-laced anthems ‘Day Dreaming’, ‘Angel’, ‘Ain’t No Way’, ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’, gospel blues ‘O Happy Day’, ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand’, and tracks veering far from Franklin's gospel beginnings, such as ‘Rocksteady’, ‘Who’s Zoomin’ Who?’, and ‘Holdin’ On’. Along the way, Franklin collaborated with a seemingly endless list of artists including James Brown, Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige and Mariah Carey to name but a few. The soul star meandered through numerous genres over the course of her career, including jazz, alt-rock, disco and opera - but the songstress is best remembered for her mighty gospel voice rooted in her church upbringing, and her contributions to the soul scene underpinning the civil rights movement.
With recordings of ‘Young Gifted and Black’, ‘People Get Ready’, Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ and Sly & the Family Stone’s ‘Everyday People’, Franklin was explicit in her use of music as a vehicle for the political. Aretha’s dramatically altered cover of Otis Redding’s ‘Respect’ became an anthem for the feminist movement in the 1970s, and has since been dissected in academic papers and cultural discourse as a groundbreaking song documenting the struggle for equality at the time (‘All I’m askin’ is for a little respect when you come home’). As an incredibly accomplished musician and activist, Franklin is both political within her music, and beyond her music.
During the Civil Rights movement, Franklin engaged in on-the-ground grassroots activism, helping with fundraising efforts, housing activists and holding free concerts. The Reverend Jesse Jackson - lifelong friend of Franklin’s and Civil Rights activist - disclosed that Franklin funded numerous civil rights tours and campaigns whilst Martin Luther King Jr. was alive. Perhaps lesser known, however, is her loyalty to fellow female activists, including revolutionary activist and scholar Angela Davis, a member of the Communist Party, who found herself accused of assisting in a courtroom takeover that ended in four deaths in 1970, to which it was Franklin herself who offered to post bail.
Up until her death in 2018, Franklin remained a potent political activist and ambassador. She was invited to perform at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, the first African American President of the United States, in 2009. Striking up a long-lasting friendship and political partnership with the Obamas, just three years before her death in 2018, Franklin famously brought then-President Obama to tears with her rendition of ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’ at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honours, in tribute to Carole King. Following the performance, Obama told The New Yorker: “American history wells up when Aretha sings. 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”. Little did they know, the famous faces of the civil rights movement that Franklin grew up around would later be using her songs to soundtrack their fight for freedom.
There is no doubt that the Queen of Soul’s musical career is nothing short of remarkable, receiving 44 Grammy Award nominations (winning 18), and becoming the first woman to ever be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Beyond musical prestige, however, is an artist who sits amongst an assemblage of soul and jazz musicians who metamorphosed their sound into something deeply symbolic.
Even in Franklin’s earliest recordings, her powerhouse voice can be recognised almost instantly by listeners far and wide, with her signature gospel inflections and vocal range which effortlessly surpasses three octaves. For the Queen of Soul, it seems that her musical voice and her political voice were very much one and the same, with one just as thunderous as the other, and both quite literally amplifying and resonating the sentiments of the Civil Rights, Black Power and feminist movements.
In the words of the Queen of Soul herself: “I’m not a politician or political theorist. I don’t make it a practice to put my politics into my music or social commentary. But the fact that ‘Respect’ naturally became a battle cry and an anthem for a nation shows me something.” And, as the African American activist and jazz singer Sherley Anne Williams would later aptly respond, ‘Aretha was right on time. May she rest in power.
