Aretha Franklin

Born on March 25, 1942 in Memphis, Tennessee, although she grew up in Detroit, Aretha Louise Franklin was the daughter of preacher Clarence LeVaughn Franklin and gospel singer Barbara Franklin. Her mother abandoned her family after discovering that her husband had been unfaithful to her when she was still a child, and she passed away shortly thereafter. As a child, she was surrounded by gospel artists friends of her father, such as Clara Ward, James Cleveland and Mahalia Jackson. She learned to sing and play the piano without taking classes, listening to recordings, and joining her sisters in the choir at her parent’s church. Her childhood did not last long, since at the age of twelve she became pregnant by a schoolmate, and two years later she had her second child with another man. At 19 she married Ted White, abuser from whom she divorced eight years later. Her union in 1978 with the actor Glynn Turman  (a biology teacher for the  Super 8 stars ) didn’t go well either, as they broke up in 1984.

Aretha Franklin  began recording albums with Columbia Records, but her greatest successes came when she signed for Atlantic, thanks to the tenacity of producer Jerry Wexler. Along with “Spanish Harlem” or “(You make me feel like) A Natural woman”, she highlights “Respect”, her great classic, an anthem of the movement for civil rights and feminism. She achieved great milestones, such as becoming the first black woman to appear on the cover of Time magazine in 1968 and the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. In 2008 she was chosen by Rolling Stone magazine as the best singer of all time. Throughout her professional career, she achieved an all-time record 20 Grammy Awards.

Fans of the cinema remember her memorable appearance in  Rogues at full speed , from 1980. She played Mrs. Murphy, a woman who demanded her husband’s freedom, and sang the song “Think”, in a cafeteria where the Blues Brothers entered , the duo consisting of  Dan Aykroyd  and  John Belushi . It was one of the best sequences of the cult film.

In addition, the late filmmaker  Sydney Pollack  composed a documentary,  Amazing Grace , for which he filmed more than twenty hours of the recording of the eponymous live album, the singer’s best-selling album. By mistake, the director forgot to use a clapperboard to synchronize the image with the recorded sound, which is why it is assumed that he shot the first musical documentary… silent! William Steinkamp, ​​editor, managed to compose a few minutes, despite the fact that it was “a real puzzle”, according to his own words. However, Aretha Franklin herself opposed the showing of the film, for unknown reasons (everything indicates that she demanded an exorbitant payment for the use of her image), so it was never released.

40 years later, when the author of  Out of Africa  was suffering from terminal cancer, producer Alan Elliott asked him for the negatives, and managed to buy the rights to them from Warner Bros. Apparently, with the help of digital technology, he managed to synchronize all the images , and it was announced to premiere at the Toronto and Telluride festivals. The diva’s lawyers sued him for misuse of her image, and the tape never saw the light.