Born on March 25, 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee, Aretha Franklin was one of the five children of Reverend Clarence L. Franklin and Barbara Siggers, who died when Franklin was 10 years old. By then she was teaching herself piano and singing gospel at local churches. While attending high school in Detroit, she toured as the featured singer with her father╒s evangelist group. Her first solo recordings with Chess Records were hymns she sang at her father╒s church.
In 1960, with the help of a friend of the family, jazz bass player Major Holley, Franklin moved to New York City to try pop music. She studied dancing and voice and hired a manager. In 1961 she signed a five-year contract with Columbia Records, recorded ten albums in six years, including The Electrifying Aretha Franklin, Laughing on the Outside, Runnin╒ Out of Fools, and Unforgettable, a tribute to her mentor Dinah Washington.
When she signed with Atlantic Records in 1966, she reframed her popular style to include gospel and blues, and her first single for that label, ╥I Never Loved a Man The Way I Loved You,╙ soon sold a million copies. Her number-one hit single ╥Respect,╙ 1967, topped both the rhythm-and-blues chart and the pop chart, and it was heralded at the time as an unofficial black national anthem.
With Lady Soul, 1968, Franklin acquired the moniker ╥Queen of Soul.╙ That year she also recorded Aretha Now and Aretha in Paris, opened the Democratic national convention in Chicago with her version of ╥The Star Spangled Banner,╙ and appeared on the cover of the June 21, 1968, issue of Time magazine. Between 1967 and 1969, she also won four Grammy awards.
During the 1970s Franklin recorded Spanish Harlem, 1971, Amazing Grace, 1972, Young, Gifted and Black, 1972, Hey Now Hey, 1973, and Something He Can Feel, 1976. In 1980 she signed with Arista, releasing Aretha in 1981. She appeared in the Universal film The Blues Brothers in 1980 and collaborated with rock artists George Michael and Annie Lennox on the album Who╒s Zoomin╒ Who?, 1985. The feminist overtones of her earlier hit single, ╥Respect,╙ were invoked anew in her collaboration with Lennox on ╥Sisters Are Doin╒ It for Themselves,╙ which also incorporated an interracial theme. By the mid-1990s she had won a total of 10 Grammy awards and 21 gold records.
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