American soul singer Aretha Franklin, whose health has deteriorated in recent days, died on Thursday at the age of 76.
The queen of soul is no more. The famous American singer Aretha Franklin died Thursday, August 16, at the age of 76, announced US media. Diagnosed with cancer in 2010, she had been seriously ill for several days .
BREAKING: Publicist for Aretha Franklin says the Queen of Soul died Thursday at her home in Detroit.
— The Associated Press (@AP) 16 August 2018
18 Grammy awards
Her last concert was held in Philadelphia (East Coast) in August 2017. “It was a miraculous show as Aretha was already fighting exhaustion and dehydration,” says Roger Friedman on his website.
During her long career, the singer won 18 Grammy Awards, the American equivalent of Victoires de la Musique françaises.
Her main hits include “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”, “Day Dreaming”, “Jump to It”, “Freeway of Love” or “A Rose Is Still A Rose”.
Plenty of hits
Born on March 25, 1942 in Memphis, Tennessee, Aretha Louise Franklin is the daughter of a Baptist preacher and a gospel singer.
At 14, she records her first title and her voice, rich and powerful, is already that of an adult. His career is launched.
She signed in 1960 with the Columbia label but did not really know the glory with her first album for Atlantic in 1967, “I Never Loved a Man”.
The songs are linked: “Baby I Love You”, “(You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman”, “Chain of Fools” and especially “Respect”, dubbed fifth best song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine .
At Time magazine, in 1968, she told;
“If a song is about something that I have experienced or that could have happened to me, that’s fine. But if it is foreign to me, I can not lend it to him. Because that’s the soul, just live and manage to manage.”
That same year, she sang at the funeral of Martin Luther King , a personal friend of his father whose death overthrew America, and the convention of the Democratic Party.
In 1972 released “Amazing Grace”, a gospel album, and successes continue to accumulate over the years, even if critics consider his career less flamboyant.
From George Michael to Lauryn Hill
Aretha Franklin continues collaborations, with George Michael, Elton John, Charles Ray, Whitney Houston or with the new generation of black music stars: P. Diddy, Lauryn Hill and Mary J. Blige …. We see it in the movie poster “The Blues Brothers” in 1979.
While the star garners success, the woman is marked by hardships. “I learned a lot of things the hard way,” she confesses.
She loses her mother Barbara Franklin at the age of 10, gives birth to her first son at age 13, from the second to the fifteenth, and raises them alone, helped by her grandmother.
Her two marriages are chess and she has alcohol problems. His father, bullied by a burglar in 1979, fell into a coma and died several years later.
The voice resists, and Aretha continues to make music, surrounded by his four sons.
In 2005, she received from President George W. Bush the Liberty Medal, the highest honor for a civilian in the United States. In January 2009, she sang for the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, imperial under a gray hat, during an emotional ceremony.
In February 2017, despite serious health problems, she announced the recording of a last album before ending her studio career.
“I feel very happy when I see where my career started and where I am now,” she said.
“But I will not go away and just sit down and do nothing. It would not be desirable either.”
In November 2017, she was still singing at the Elton John Foundation’s AIDS Fellowship in New York, but appeared very thin.
She had cancelled a series of concerts in the spring, including one planned for her birthday, for health reasons.
