Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin grew up in Detroit, the daughter of Reverend C.L. Franklin, a prominent pastor and civil rights organizer whose friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. placed Aretha close to the movement from an early age^[1]. Her father organized Detroit's 1963 Walk to Freedom, where King delivered an early version of the speech that would become "I Have a Dream" months before its famous Washington rendition, and Franklin had known King personally since her teenage years^[1]. In February 1968, King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference honored her with its Drum Beat Award, and just weeks later she sang at his funeral after his assassination^[1].

Franklin's breakthrough came after she left Columbia Records and signed with Atlantic, where producer Jerry Wexler brought her to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and then New York to record her 1967 debut for the label, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You^[8]. The album opened with her reworking of Otis Redding's "Respect," which reached number one and won two Grammys, and it established her as the Queen of Soul^[8].

Franklin married Ted White in 1961 at age nineteen; White also became her manager during the Atlantic Records years that produced her biggest hits. Their seven-year marriage was marked by serious conflict, including documented physical abuse, and the two separated in 1968 before divorcing in 1969^[2][3]. Franklin rarely discussed the marriage publicly, but she and White co-wrote several songs together during this period, including "Think," recorded for her 1968 album Aretha Now.

Franklin's career found a dramatic second act in 1980 when she appeared in the film The Blues Brothers, re-recording "Think" for a scene that director John Landis built directly into the script, with her sister Carolyn Franklin and cousin Brenda Corbett providing backing vocals^[4]. The role is widely credited with reintroducing her to a younger audience and reinvigorating her career going into the following decades^[4].

Franklin's signature recording of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” grew out of a chance encounter on a New York street in 1967, when Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler shouted an idea for a “natural woman” song across traffic to songwriter Carole King, who finished the composition with Gerry Goffin that same night^[5][6]. Franklin recorded it for her 1968 album Lady Soul, and the song later became the centerpiece of one of the most widely seen performances of her later career: a 2015 Kennedy Center Honors tribute to King, during which Franklin rose from the piano mid-song and dropped her fur coat to a standing ovation, moving President Barack Obama to tears^[7].