{"id":448,"date":"2019-04-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/china.chinaacheru.com\/wp\/2019\/04\/08\/aretha-franklin-the-queen-of-soul-and-greatest-singer-of-all-time-dies-at-76\/"},"modified":"2019-04-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T00:00:00","slug":"aretha-franklin-the-queen-of-soul-and-greatest-singer-of-all-time-dies-at-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/aretha-franklin-the-queen-of-soul-and-greatest-singer-of-all-time-dies-at-76\/","title":{"rendered":"Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul and ‘greatest singer of all time,’ dies at 76"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a><\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul and ‘greatest singer of all time,’ dies at 76<\/strong><\/font>
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<\/span>Lyndsey Parker<\/font>
<\/span>Editor-in-Chief, Music<\/font>
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<\/span>Aretha Franklin, the undisputed Queen of Soul, died Thursday at her Detroit home, the Associated Press reports, surrounded by family and friends. She had been battling various undisclosed illnesses for years, and, in recent weeks, was receiving hospice care. Franklin was 76.<\/font>
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<\/span>As news of her declining health spread over the past few days, visitors including Stevie Wonder and the Rev. Jesse Jackson reportedly paid their respects at her bedside. Beyonc\u00e9 and Jay-Z dedicated their Monday concert in the Motor City to Franklin, declaring the iconic singer. \u201cWe love you,\u201d Beyonc\u00e9 said, adding a word of thanks for \u201cthe beautiful music.\u201d<\/font>
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<\/span>Over the course of her nearly seven-decade career, Franklin established herself as one of the most important artists in music history, winning 18 Grammy Awards, selling more than 75 million records worldwide, becoming the first female performer to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and recording 112 charted singles on Billboard, thus setting the record for the most charted female artist in the trade magazine\u2019s history.<\/font>
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<\/span>Franklin\u2019s other accolades during her lifetime included three American Music Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, three NAACP Image Awards, one Golden Globe, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a Grammy Legend Award and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a Kennedy Center Honor, being named 2008\u2019s MusiCares Person of the Year, and honorary degrees from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, and the Berklee College of Music. She performed at Martin Luther King\u2019s memorial service and at the inaugurations of three presidents: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.<\/font>
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<\/span>In 2010, Franklin\u2019s commanding mezzo-soprano voice earned her the No. 1 spot on Rolling Stone\u2019s list of the \u201c100 Greatest Singers of All Time.\u201d Contributing to that issue, admirer Mary J. Blige wrote, \u201cYou know a force from heaven. You know something that God made. And Aretha is a gift from God. When it comes to expressing yourself through song, there is no one who can touch her. She is the reason why women want to sing. Aretha has everything \u2014 the power, the technique. She is honest with everything she says.\u201d<\/font>
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<\/span>Franklin was born in Memphis on March 25, 1942. Her family moved to Detroit when she was 5 years old, and her mother, Barbara, died shortly before Franklin\u2019s 10th birthday. Her father, Clarence LaVaughn \u201cC. L.\u201d Franklin, was a famous preacher at Detroit\u2019s New Bethel Baptist Church, and his home was subsequently frequented by celebrity guests like Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, and Mahalia Jackson, the latter of whom pitched in helping to raise Aretha and her siblings after Barbara\u2019s death. It was around that time that a young Franklin began singing solos at New Bethel.<\/font>
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<\/span>Franklin was a mother of two by the time she was 14 years old, giving birth to her first son, Clarence, when she was 12, and welcoming a second son, Edward, two years later. (She gave birth to two other sons, Teddy Richards and Kecalf Cunningham, in 1964 and 1970.) However, young motherhood did not stop Franklin from launching her professional career as a gospel singer at age 14. Managed by her father and signed to J.V.B. Records, she released her first album, Songs of Faith, in 1956. When she turned 18, she shifted to secular music, recording for Columbia Records and charting a few singles on the R&B and pop charts, but major mainstream success mostly eluded her.<\/font>
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<\/span>It was only after Franklin signed to Atlantic Records in 1967 that she had her big breakthrough. In February of that year, Atlantic released \u201cI Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),\u201d recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala.; the song became her first top 10 Billboard hit. Two months later, she followed up with her famous cover of Otis Redding\u2019s \u201cRespect,\u201d which went to No. 1 on both the R&B and pop charts. Her first album for Atlantic, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, soon went gold.<\/font>
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<\/span>She capped her amazing 1967 run with the September release of another signature song, her cover of Carole King and Gerry Goffin\u2019s \u201c(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,\u201d which became another Top 10 hit. By the following year, Franklin had won her first two Grammys and graced the cover of Time magazine.<\/font>
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<\/span>Franklin continued to chart during the early \u201970s with Spirit in the Dark, Young, Gifted and Black, and the double-platinum gospel LP Amazing Grace, the most successful album in her discography. Her career began to stall in the late \u201970s, but she experienced an upswing after delivering an iconic performance in The Blues Brothers movie and leaving Atlantic to sign with Clive Davis\u2019s Arista Records. She then made a successful crossover to MTV in the \u201980s. Her 1985 album, Who\u2019s Zoomin\u2019 Who?, went platinum on the strength of the hits \u201cFreeway of Love,\u201d the Eurythmics collaboration \u201cSisters Are Doin\u2019 It for Themselves,\u201d and the title track; her 1986 duet with George Michael, \u201cI Knew You Were Waiting for Me,\u201d went to No. 1 in eight countries.<\/font>
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<\/span>After keeping a lower chart profile in the early \u201990s. Franklin experienced another career comeback in 1998 with the gold-selling A Rose Is Still a Rose (the title track of which was produced by Lauryn Hill) and with her spectacular \u201cNessun Dorma\u201d performance at that year\u2019s Grammy Awards, filling in at the last minute for the ailing Luciano Pavarotti; that performance is still widely considered to be one of the greatest Grammy moments of all time. Franklin also participated in the first VH1 Divas special that year.<\/font>
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<\/span>Other historic TV performances Franklin delivered in more recent years included \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner\u201d with Aaron Neville and Dr. John at Super Bowl XL in 2006, \u201cMy Country \u2018Tis of Thee\u201d at President Barack Obama\u2019s inauguration ceremony in 2009, a medley of Adele\u2019s \u201cRolling in the Deep\u201d and \u201cAin\u2019t No Mountain High Enough\u201d on The Late Show With David Letterman in 2014, and \u201c(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,\u201d for honoree Carole King, at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2015.<\/font>
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<\/span>In 2010, Franklin canceled several concerts while recovering from an operation to remove a tumor. (Franklin denied reports that her \u201cunspecified illness\u201d was pancreatic cancer.) Over the years she returned to performing sporadically, but she still dropped out of many shows, including her birthday concert this year at the New Jerse
\ny Performing Arts Center and 2018 appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Toronto Jazz Festival.<\/font>
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<\/span>In February 2017, Franklin told Detroit TV station WDIV that she planned to make one more album, with several tracks produced by her old friend Stevie Wonder, before officially retiring to spend more time with her grandchildren \u2014 though she hoped to open a nightclub in Detroit where she could occasionally perform. That album has yet to materialize, though in November 2017 she released A Brand New Me, a collection of archival Atlantic Records vocal recordings set to new orchestral arrangements by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. (Another compilation from that era, The Atlantic Singles Collection 1967-1970, is due out Sept. 28.)<\/font>
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<\/span>Franklin gave her final performance on Nov. 7, 2017, at Elton John\u2019s 25th anniversary gala for the Elton John AIDS Foundation in New York City, at which John declared Franklin the \u201cgreatest singer of all time.\u201d However, Franklin\u2019s last public concert took place several months earlier, on Aug. 26, at the Mann Center in Philadelphia. A review of that show in the Philadelphia Inquirer said, \u201cRegardless of advancing years and medical setbacks, Franklin seemed largely undiminished in voice or spirit, even if her exclamations sometimes soared past the limits of her breath. \u2026 The extended coda of \u2018(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman\u2019 was a showstopper, reminding the enthralled audience that even if she couldn\u2019t quite ascend to the heights of her younger days, Franklin had a gift that was more about wringing profound emotion from a lyric than about vocal gymnastics.\u201d<\/font>
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<\/span>Still, perhaps it was Barack Obama who summed up Franklin\u2019s legacy best, when he beautifully stated in an email to The New Yorker in 2016: \u201cNobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R. & B., rock and roll \u2014 the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope. American history wells up when Aretha sings. That\u2019s why, when she sits down at a piano and sings \u2018A Natural Woman,\u2019 she can move me to tears. \u2026 because it captures the fullness of the American experience, the view from the bottom as well as the top, the good and the bad, and the possibility of synthesis, reconciliation, transcendence.\u201d<\/font>
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<\/span>Culled from www.yahoo.com<\/a> <\/strong><\/em><\/font>\u200b
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Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul and ‘greatest singer of all time,’ dies at 76 Lyndsey ParkerEditor-in-Chief, Music Aretha Franklin, the undisputed Queen of Soul, died Thursday at her Detroit home, the Associated Press reports, surrounded by family and friends. She had been battling various undisclosed illnesses for years, and, in recent weeks, was receiving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_surecart_dashboard_logo_width":"180px","_surecart_dashboard_show_logo":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_orders":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_invoices":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_subscriptions":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_downloads":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_billing":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_account":true,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"china","author_link":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/author\/china\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul and ‘greatest singer of all time,’ dies at 76 Lyndsey ParkerEditor-in-Chief, Music Aretha Franklin, the undisputed Queen of Soul, died Thursday at her Detroit home, the Associated Press reports, surrounded by family and friends. She had been battling various undisclosed illnesses for years, and, in recent weeks, was receiving…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinaacheru.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}