Respect
The Life of Aretha Franklin
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
This "comprehensive and illuminating" biography of the Queen of Soul (USA Today) was hailed by Rolling Stone as "a remarkably complex portrait of Aretha Franklin's music and her tumultuous life."
Aretha Franklin began life as the golden daughter of a progressive and promiscuous Baptist preacher. Raised without her mother, she was a gospel prodigy who gave birth to two sons in her teens and left them and her native Detroit for New York, where she struggled to find her true voice. It was not until 1967, when a white Jewish producer insisted she return to her gospel-soul roots, that fame and fortune finally came via "Respect" and a rapidfire string of hits. She continued to evolve for decades, amidst personal tragedy, surprise Grammy performances, and career reinventions.
Again and again, Aretha stubbornly found a way to triumph over troubles, even as they continued to build. Her hold on the crown was tenacious, and in Respect, David Ritz gives us the definitive life of one of the greatest talents in all American culture.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1999, Grammy-winner and composer Ritz teamed with Franklin to pen her memoir, Aretha: From These Roots. Here he candidly provides a chronicle of the Queen of Soul's rapid climb to fame. Franklin was four when the family moved to Detroit where her famous father, the pastor C.L. Franklin, who became a national gospel and preaching star at New Bethel Baptist Church. Moving year by year through Franklin's life, Ritz traces her journey from her days as a teenage mother with two children and her early marriage in her 20s to her first record deal at Columbia, her towering success at Atlantic (where she recorded "Respect"), and her efforts to reestablish herself in the disco era. In Ritz's admiring portrait, Franklin emerges as a woman who, though overwhelmed by fear and obsessed by control, is nevertheless the "ultimate survivor," who continues to move forward with steely determination.
Customer Reviews
Well worth a read.
I am loving this book. I have been a fan of Aretha's music for many years. Her autobiography was so boring, and while the other biography written by a Mr. Bego was good, this is better. We all know Aretha is a diva, and this book is made up from interviews with her family, friends and people in the music industry, and it does not paint her in a nice light.
On a recent interview on Wall Street Journal she dismissed this book, saying it was all lies, lies, lies, and then more lies on top.
Aretha is a singer, nothing more, she has not discovered a cure for cancer or AIDS, she has now stopped wars, she just sings songs, and yet she seems to think she is the Queen of Sheba.
She may be the Queen of Soul, but if she continues making albums as bad as her latest then it may be time for an abdication.
Great book, no matter what Aretha says.