Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin grew up singing in her father’s Baptist church in Detroit and taught herself piano by ear. She made a gospel record at 14 and signed with Columbia at 18. The hits took years to come.

They came at Atlantic. In January 1967 she went to FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, sat at the piano and recorded I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You). The session lasted one day, because a fight broke out between her husband and manager Ted White, the studio owner and a horn player. The song still reached number one on the R&B chart. In April came Respect. It was Otis Redding’s song, but she spelled out the title letter by letter and added the “sock it to me” backing line. Redding’s verdict: “That little girl done took my song away from me.” The civil rights and women’s movements adopted it as an anthem.

In 1972 she went back to gospel with Amazing Grace, recorded over two nights in a Los Angeles church. It sold more than two million copies. She died in Detroit in 2018 with 18 Grammys. In 1987 she had become the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Start with Respect, then play the whole I Never Loved a Man album. Then look up the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors: at 73 she sings A Natural Woman for its co-writer Carole King and drops her fur coat mid-song. The audience stands up before she has finished.