In 1967, promoter Pervis Spann placed a crown on Aretha Franklin’s head and recognized her as the Queen of Soul. The accolade is easily justified. She has 112 charting singles — more than any other female artist — 18 Grammy Awards, 42 albums, and has sold over 75 million records worldwide. In 1987, she became the first female to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2008, Rolling Stone named her the greatest female singer ever.
The awards and honors kept coming. In 2005, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which, along with the Congressional Gold Medal, is the highest civilian award. There exists a picture of her seated between fellow recipients Robert Conquest and Alan Greenspan, who look more suited for a funeral in their white shirts, ties and dark suits. Aretha sits in a fuchsia skirt and jacket, classy but expressive, wiping away a tear.
In 2015, she performed “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” at the Kennedy Center Honors and brought then-President Barack Obama to tears. After her performance, he said, “Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R&B, rock and roll — the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope.”
She refused to fly for more than 30 years. That’s one of the reasons why, when she came to the Fabulous Fox Theatre in Atlanta on Nov. 8, 2014, I had to go.
I found my seat, SLA Q 1. It was the last row in the next-to-last section, but there were no seats in front of me and it sat exactly in the center. The one section behind me was “heaven,” the segregated section and farthest from the stage. A short wall still separates it from the other sections, and it has its own bathrooms. An older, well-dressed gentleman seated to my left talked with me about having seen her back in the day at a club in Atlanta with only 300 people because “that’s the only place she could play.” That night, though, it was all about unity.
There was no opening act. It was all Aretha with a 21-piece band, one member of whom she told us was B.B. King’s cousin. Before she came to the stage, someone brought her purse and placed it next to the piano, a throwback to the days when Aretha held and collected her money upfront and in cash to avoid being ripped off by unscrupulous promoters.
Although 72 at the time, she looked, sounded and moved like a woman at least two decades younger. I can’t say how she compared to herself decades ago, but it was obvious she still had It. She paced herself, performing clusters of about three songs, going backstage while the band jammed for a bit, and returning in a new outfit.
One of her outfits was an elegant white dress. She came floating to us in a blizzard of sound, a cloud of regality — a diva in the best and truest sense of the word. She took us to church for about an hour and a half, running through her songbook of hits, classics, covers and surprises, singing and playing piano on tracks such as “Chain of Fools,” “Rolling in the Deep,” “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “You Send Me.” She played “Freeway of Love” and then closed with “Respect.”
In between songs, she told stories of her ties to Atlanta, her brother going to Morehouse College, and made vague reference to recent health problems that may have substantiated earlier reports that she had pancreatic cancer.
Just a couple of years later, she had announced her retirement from touring in 2017. Though she had said she will still sing live for select events, her last performance was in 2017.
We mourn her death, but remember that Asteroid 249516 Aretha was named in her honor in 2014. As her spirit makes its voyage, she’ll be on the other side of the sky with the strongest stars. Right where she has always been. Right where she has always belonged.
Shine on, bright star.
William Nesbitt is a professor of English at Beacon College in Leesburg, Florida. He wrote this for the Orlando Sentinel.
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