She is known as “The Queen Of Soul”…The One and Only Aretha Franklin……
Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee to Reverend C. L. Franklin, a famous Baptist minister, and Barbara Siggers Franklin, a singer and pianist. In addition to Aretha the couple had four more children, Erma, Cecil and Carolyn as well as Vaughn (Barbara Franklin’s son by a previous relationship, whom C.L. adopted). Aretha’s parents had a troubled relationship and separated for the final time when Aretha was six, leaving her and her siblings to be raised by their paternal grandmother, Rachel Franklin (known as ‘Big Momma’), as well as numerous female family friends who regularly visited the home, including Clara Ward and Mahalia Jackson. Aretha’s mother died when she was 10 years old.
Aretha was a self-taught piano prodigy and her extraordinary vocal gifts were manifest by the time she entered her teens. At the age of fourteen, she recorded her first album for JVB/Battle Records, where her father recorded his sermons and gospel vocal recordings and she issued Songs of Faith in 1956. Her earliest influences included Clara Ward and Mahalia Jackson, and Aretha has noted in her autobiography that her early gospel singing was patterned after Albertina Walker’s Caravans, as she worked under the direction of gospel legend and Franklin family friend James Cleveland.
Early motherhood derailed Franklin’s gospel career, and when she returned to singing, she decided to secure herself a deal as a pop artist. After being offered contracts from Motown and RCA, Franklin was signed to Columbia Records by the late John Hammond in the spring of 1960. Her recordings during that time reflected a jazz influence and moved away from her gospel roots. Franklin initially scored a few hits on Columbia including her version of “Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody”, which peaked at number 37 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart in 1961, and the Top 10 R&B hits, “Today I Sing The Blues”, “Won’t Be Long” and “Operation Heartbreak.” However, by the end of 1966, with little commercial success in six years with Columbia, and desperate for a sound of her own, she accepted an offer to sign with Atlantic Records and work with the late producer Jerry Wexler. According to Franklin years later, “they made me sit down on the piano and the hits came.”
