Sunday, May 9, 2004

Brandy Baker / The Detroit News Aretha Franklin

2OO3 Michiganians of the Year

Aretha Franklin: Queen of soul continues to bring respect to her adopted state

By Susan Whitall / The Detroit News

Aretha Franklin Age: 62 Residence: Bloomfield Township Occupation: Singer Why honored: For being Detroit's musical ambassador for four decades Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

Because she lives here, it’s easy to get used to having Aretha Franklin as a neighbor. There she is, singing in church or visiting a local nursing home or hospital during the holidays. There she is, onstage at the Music Hall doing her annual Valentine’s Day show.

We even see her shopping at Kroger, so it’s instructive to recall from time to time: not every city has a Queen of Soul.

And while some other Detroit artists who made it big moved away, Franklin has continued to make her home here, boosting Michigan’s music profile and enriching our local culture. In 1985, then-Gov. James Blanchard declared her voice “a natural resource” during a ceremony that marked her 25 years in show business.

When that lush, buttery voice opens up, it has a resonance and allure beyond all earthly possibilities. Lyrics are not just sung, but uttered at a soul-deep level. It was Franklin who successfully imported the passion and joy of the church into the grooves of popular music, creating the genre called soul.

She has influenced generations with her soulful sound, which has garnered her 16 Grammys (and a Legend Grammy as well as a Lifetime Achievement Grammy). But she has remained centered on her family, which includes four sons, and her community.

“The thing about Aretha is that she hasn’t forgotten her base, the people of the city of Detroit,” said the Rev. Jim Holley, pastor of Little Rock Baptist Church in Detroit. “She hasn’t forgotten what produced her. She’s always giving, and that’s unusual for people who have reached the pinnacle of success she has. She’s given our church $50,000 to $60,000 to help with the homeless.”

This past year Franklin arranged a music-filled prayer vigil for Luther Vandross at Little Rock Baptist Church that was heard around the world, and provided dinner afterward. During the holidays, she sang Christmas carols and brought cake and snacks to residents of a Southfield assisted living home for seniors with Alzheimer’s and dementia-type diseases.

Born in Memphis, Tenn., Franklin grew up in Detroit immersed in music from an early age. Her father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin of the New Bethel Baptist Church, was a fiery orator and a leader of the civil rights movement, and his daughter grew up singing gospel in his church.

Franklin picked up piano at the age of 8 just from watching her older sister Erma’s lessons. The singer’s instinctive, jazz-inflected piano playing is at the heart of almost every one of her songs.

During her Atlantic Records years, she would play songs on the piano at home and work out the arrangements that way. She’s also written many of her songs, such as “Daydreaming,” with its rippling, descending melody. She doesn’t see it as extra work.

“If I’m writing and I’m producing and singing too, you get more of me that way, rather than having four or five different people working on one song,” Franklin said.

Some of her stellar work, some of which she also wrote, includes “I’ve Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” “Respect,” “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” “Angel,” “Dr. Feelgood,” “Chain of Fools,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Call Me,” “Baby I Love You,” “Since You’ve Been Gone,” “Think,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “The House that Jack Built,” “Don’t Play That Song,” “You’re All I Need to Get By,” “Spanish Harlem,” “Rock Steady,” and “‘Til You Come Back to Me.”

A common thread in Franklin’s music is a lively, assertive femininity. There is the way she turned Otis Redding’s “Respect” into a female empowerment anthem; but even in “Chain of Fools,” with its more traditional storyline of a cheating man, you know that payback day will come for that man sooner than later.

Franklin herself doesn’t see it as feminist or racial pride, but something much more universal.

“We all have to have it,” she said. “We all would like respect and we all have to have pride. If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”