Aretha Franklin

Aretha Louise Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1942 and raised in Detroit, where her father, the renowned preacher C. L. Franklin, led the New Bethel Baptist Church. She began singing gospel in his services as a child, recording her first album at fourteen. Signed to Columbia Records at eighteen, she spent the early 1960s searching for a sound worthy of her extraordinary gifts.

That sound arrived when she joined Atlantic Records in 1966. Her 1967 recording of Respect became a number-one hit and an anthem of both the civil rights and women's movements, and a run of masterpieces followed, including Chain of Fools, Think, and the gospel album Amazing Grace, one of the best-selling live albums ever recorded. In 1987 she became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Franklin earned eighteen Grammy Awards, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, and moved a nation singing at President Obama's 2009 inauguration. She died of pancreatic cancer at her home in Detroit in August 2018, aged 76, mourned across the world. Her voice, majestic, precise, and overflowing with feeling, remains the standard by which soul singing is measured, and her title of Queen has never been contested.