Aretha Franklin dead; celebrities remember ‘Queen of Soul’

Sign up for our amNewYork email newsletter to get news, updates, and local insights delivered straight to your inbox!

Aretha Franklin, who became known as “The Queen of Soul” over the course of a several-decades-long musical career, died on Thursday, Aug. 16, 2018. The “Respect” singer was 76.

Franklin, who had been battling advanced pancreatic cancer, died at her home in Detroit, according to one of her publicists. She became the first woman voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and won 18 Grammys throughout her career.

In the early 1970s, she dominated the music charts with “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” “Baby, I Love You,” “Chain of Fools,” “Think,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Do-Right Woman” and “Respect,” a cover of a Redding tune that became a song of empowerment during the civil rights era.

Her last large-scale performance took place at Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City during the November 2017 Elton John AIDS Foundation concert. In an interview with the Detroit Free Press on Aug. 16, 2017, Franklin said she had wanted to open a nightclub in her hometown of Detroit called “Aretha’s,” where she planned to sing occasionally.

With Reuters