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They called her the Queen of Soul...

..but Aretha Franklin was far
more than that.

Singer, civil rights icon,
inspiration to millions.

The dozens of million-selling
records and countless awards

were nothing compared to her stature

as a woman of mesmerising
musical grandeur and vocal elegance.

She soared above all others

and made it look
seemingly effortless.

Aretha Franklin's death
at the age of 76

leaves the world an emptier place.

But she leaves behind a legacy
that will always command respect.

You couldn't get
any better than Aretha Franklin.

I remember when I first heard
her on the radio,

1967, I think it was

and I was driving from the
north of England

and it played this girl singing.

I'd never heard a voice
like it before

and then they back announced it.

They said, "Aretha Franklin."

Her arrival felt like
a musical meteor.

She struck
and everything changed.

Permanently.

The sound of the record, Ain't Never
Loved A Man The Way That I Love You,

there was a gospel feel to it

that you didn't hear on pop radio.

You know what I mean?
It didn't SOUND like a pop record.

Great records change
the world, or seem to.

That was like Good Vibrations
or Strawberry Fields Forever

or The Four Tops'
Reach Out I'll Be There.

It was one that seemed to make
the world tilt on its axis

because that record brought gospel
into pop music front and centre.

And all of us, you know,
every last one of us who has

opened our mouths to sing,
has done so learning at her feet.

I'd never heard a person on record

sound like Aretha Franklin.

A lot of people come from
the church, you know,

and then they get into pop music,
but then they change slightly.

There's flavours of it with singers.

You can hear where
they've come from,

but she brought the church with her.

She didn't compromise.

She sang...

I think every song she ever sang

was like she could have sang that
in church.

In hearing her voice,

you're hearing the history of
African-American music

and you're hearing how important
the gospel music is on influencing,

the African-American music, on
influencing all popular music today.

# And it starts with me. #

Aretha wasn't just ANY
church singer.

Her father was the
Reverend CL Franklin,

one of the most prominent
Baptist preachers in America

and a key figure in the civil
rights movement.

The cloud will be lifted!

Yes, it will!

Ooww!

Ooww, yeah!

Her mother died when she was nine.

By that age, Aretha was already
performing and touring with

her father's church choir.

She was pregnant at the age
of 12 and again at 14.

She'd lived a life
before she got to record.

You know, I mean, she had a child
when she was very young.

Well, two when she was a teenager,

and I think she learned
about life quickly.

So, erm,
that showed in the way she sang.

I don't think you can sing
with that kind of feeling

if you haven't lived.

We knew she had gone
through adversity.

She had children,
very, very young.

She lost her mother
very young

and that was always
in the arc

of what Aretha didn't have to say
but what was in the sound.

So, in many ways, especially for
women of my generation, those

of us who came through the '70s and
the late '60s, she invented us.

As a black woman, it has to be said,
as a woman who came from church

the same as me, she just spoke
so directly to me.

I think she's had more influence
on other female singers

than maybe any singer, I think.

That's the way I feel about it.

She is royalty

especially when I think about black
culture and what she means

for a lot of the young black women

and singers of my
generation and before.

She was the first,
the first ultimate songstress.

The teenage mother with the golden
voice was signed to a major label

in 1960 at the age of 18,

but six years at Columbia Records

failed to give her
a single top 20 hit.

In 1966, she made the magic move
to a new label, Atlantic.

When she recorded for Columbia
she did some great recordings,

but they hadn't clicked.

Because she was so versatile that
she sang a lot of different things.

You know, she did things on
Columbia that were...

There was jazz there and all kinds
of influences she had taken onboard,

but when she got with Atlantic,
she went back to church.

No other singer did this to me.

You just heard her sing
and it was like...

It WAS like church,
even if she was doing a pop song.

It was just like, "I own you."

She may have come from the church,
but her next single Respect was

a vocal hand grenade that defined
the subversive spirit of the 1960s.

Respect was the one that made
it clear that she was talking

about more than just relationships
or even just about God.

She was talking about the world, and
about the way society was evolving.

She was talking about
civil rights and feminism.

She made her statements
through the music.

She sang R-E-S-P-E-C-T at a time
when African Americans

were getting none, you know.

That was her statement,

and it was a statement that
reverberated around the world.

And people heard what she was
saying loud and clear.

That song became a kind of
shout of protest

and a shout of triumph
at the same time.

There was a sense within it
of...

..of exaltation in a triumph
that hasn't happened yet

but you knew was going to happen.

And partly was going to happen
because she was singing that way.

It was so powerful.

I feel she didn't have to kind
of stand on a soapbox and,

you know, pontificate because
everything she was doing was

through the power of that voice,
in song.

And what a voice!

And what a performer!

You know, not dance moves
and things like that,

just she sang with her very fibre of
her being.

Everything sang with her.

And that was statement enough,
I think.

And whereas Detroit is proud of
its native daughter

and whereas she's everybody's
soul sister,

therefore I, Jerome P Cavanagh,
Mayor of the city of Detroit,

do hereby proclaim
Friday February 16th

as Aretha Franklin Day.

Respect made Aretha the most
globally recognised female

face of the civil rights movement.

But what was perhaps most remarkable
about the woman behind this

giant voice was her shy, quiet and
subdued demeanour off the stage.

Black women,
especially of Aretha's generation,

and mine to a lesser extent but
certainly of hers,

we're taught to be quiet because
your life was unprotected.

It was unprotected at home,
it was unprotected outside.

You were unprotected in
society in general.

So there is a kind of quietness.

She does enough, for me,
just with her voice.

And I know a lot of her fans
may think, "What do you mean?

"How do you know
she wasn't a good..."

I don't know what she was like,

because she never allowed us
in really, did she?

With Aretha, I mean,
it surprised me how quiet she was.

Singing the way she sang.

But I think she put it all in there.

She realised that for her
to communicate, I think,

cos I know the feeling...

You know, in order to communicate,
sing, if you can.

So she'd come along the stage
and she'd sing about loss,

she'd sing about love,

she'd sing about joyousness,
she'd sing about,

you know, a guy who turned her on.

She'd sing about all these things.

She could take other people's music
and turn it into her music,

and so she gave us a bridge by which
we could function in a society

that was always basically trying
to keep us quiet, keep us down.

And she actually gave the
landscape for the feelings,

our feelings to be expressed.

Aretha became that voice.

She embodied how so many black women
were feeling at the time.

That's why she's so often quoted,

"You better give me some
R-E-S-P-E-C-T!"

You know, people quote those
lyrics all the time.

She empowered people to speak out.

In that voice, you're hearing all
of that humanity and love

and experience coming out.

And I think that's the reason

that her voice communicated
with so many people.

She was doing all of that
with her voice,

and that was easy for people
to digest and relate to,

you know, in three and a half
minutes of a record.

She's telling this guy, she's not
pleading with him and saying,

you know, "You never loved me."

No, when she sang it she's
telling him,

"You'd better get this because
I know what I'm talking about."

So... But she was like the
dominant person.

She wasn't asking, she was telling.

And I think...

Yeah, that's a big difference.
She was telling.

I'd just like to add that so much
of what informed the way she sang,

as opposed to other astonishing
singers, was the way she played.

Her touch was so rhythmical
and melodic...

..and, you know, free-flowing.

# Oh, darling... #

It was like she was ad libbing
as she was playing,

as well as the vocals.

It was only certain things that,
you know, signatures.

Don't Play That Song For Me,
you've got that signature riff,

and then outside of that there's
so much intricate stuff going on.

She used the piano both as a writing
tool - she wrote this very

beautiful song called
Without The One That You Love,

which I'd recommend people look up -

and you can hear it's like,
kind of...

It's like Church piano playing,

which has clearly led to the song,
you know,

and then you hear her playing
on all those songs, piano playing,

and it kind of rocks along or it has
great soul and spirituality

and love to it because it comes
out of the Church.

And it was the perfect accompaniment
for her,

so she was at one with the piano,
and I would say

she's probably one of the piano
players that's most influenced me.

As Aretha neared the peak of her
commercial appeal, one of her

many TV appearances put her
alongside our very own Tom Jones.

So, I think it was, like,
1970 when she came on the show.

She seemed like she was a shy
person until she sang.

It was like, my God! This sound
that's coming from this woman is...

..is unbelievable for somebody
so quiet before she starts to sing!

You know, I've got a big voice
and I project, you know...

..but I didn't have
to hold back or anything.

But with her, you didn't have
to hold back. She wanted...

You know, you had to give it
as much as you could

in order to stay with her.

She was putting it all out there.
Boom.

She was a joy to work with.

Aretha had enjoyed a five-year
period where she couldn't put

a foot wrong musically.

But in the 1970s, Aretha's career
would take a commercial nosedive.

Right after Rock Steady in 1971,
the hits became few and far between.

Soul music, you know,

in general sort of changed when it
got into the '70s.

Those records in the '60s were raw.

You know, they were...

You could hear everything
and it was right in your face.

But then in the '70s
it became more mechanical,

you know, recording-wise.

Sounds changed.
She did some of the records.

She had some success
with later sounds,

but they didn't sound as good,
vocally, as before.

She was still sounding great,
but the sound of the records, no.

It's a shame.

I think the attempt to move
with a trend as opposed to

in spite of it is probably what made
things kind of fall to the wayside.

She didn't need to move
with where the trend was.

But, you know,
I think labels sometimes...

Artists sometimes don't always
understand that,

and feel the need to stay current

without realising that exactly
as they are is perfect.

Oi, shut up, woman!
# You better think

# Think about what you're trying
to do to me

In 1980, she made a comeback thanks
to a glorious cameo in a movie

paying homage to '60s soul.

But it didn't resurrect
her chart career.

Chart salvation was awaiting Aretha
from an unlikely source - Britain.

In the 1980s, a new generation
of pop stars inspired by Aretha

invited her to duet with them,
and they put her back on top.

It began with the
Eurythmics in 1985...

..and culminated in 1987 when a duet
with George Michael became

Aretha's first number one
chart hit for 16 years.

It was the last she would ever
have in her lifetime.

Pop artists of the '80s were
throwaway to me, honestly.

A lot of them were throwaway.
Some of the songs were...

But Aretha still managed to add
a little bit of that Church
in her pop songs.

She still did.
And I didn't begrudge her...

Anyone who begrudged her
her period in the '80s

and who tried to wipe the
'80s as if it didn't happen,

I thought she was really important
for R&B, for pop and for soul music.

Aretha became a stranger to the
pop charts in the 1990s,

but her stature rose in ways

that made commercial success
seem irrelevant.

Once again,
she was the Queen Of Soul.

President Obama's inauguration
was obviously being streamed

around the world, and it was already
the biggest moment, you know,

politically, that I had witnessed,
and we just watched the whole thing.

And then the great lady
opens her mouth.

Aretha Franklin represented the
triumph of African American culture.

All the things that those hundreds
of thousands

of slaves went through...

..and what happened to them,
and what happened to their

descendants and what
they made of it...

..and the astonishing gift
that they presented to the world

as a result of it, which changed...

..changed the lives of many of us.

It was so clear that...

..being there to sing for such a
wonderful point in world history

meant everything to her, and it all
just came out in the voice.

Ah, actually got quite
choked up there!

In my lifetime, I never, ever
thought I'd see a black president.

Erm, I did think I'd see
Aretha Franklin there, though.

It was like, "This is what
I was born to do." You know?

There's a new president, you know,

he's a black guy and I'm here and
they've called on me
and it was right,

and I don't think anyone
could begrudge her that moment.

She stole the show.

In 2015, she produced
one last defining moment.

Some of her later performances,

the last one that was trending
around the world,

you know, hashtag Aretha,
was at the Kennedy Center.

In the presence of the Obamas
and Carole King...

It was just extraordinary.

Starts at the piano
and midway through is up,

coat gets shrugged off
and she's gone, like...

..like a supernova.

Even when I start to think about
this performance, my eyes well up.

We all knew what was happening.

We probably can't describe it
in words but everybody felt it,

it's a universal thing.

We're experiencing
something of the divine,

to the point where the
most powerful man in the world

is reduced to tears, like a baby.

And we're sharing it with him.

And that is the Aretha
that will stand through the ages.

Like Shakespeare, you know, like
other great artists - van Gogh...

Aretha will be exactly that.

Immortality is hers.

She may be gone now, but Aretha's
legacy will never leave us.

There'll be no other
Aretha Franklin.

She's the essence of soul.

If you like anybody
with a soulful voice,

you will acknowledge
she is the best, the greatest.

The greatest. The greatest!

Here lies the greatest singer
that ever lived.

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