We Still Can't Comprehend The Power Of Aretha Franklin's Voice

Aretha Franklin is dead and we still, 50 years after she made her artistic and commercial breakthrough, can scarcely comprehend the still-shocking power of her singing.

Aretha Franklin must have understood early on what fame was like, as the daughter of the immensely popular Detroit preacher C.L. Franklin, whose a recording star. Aretha Franklin was raised singing gospel, was enraptured by the romanticism of the Great American Songbook, and felt the power of rhythm & blues in her bones — she always had ambition. She was a feminist by example: Once she took hold of her career at Atlantic Records in 1967, she allowed no lyric to overrule her interpretation, no producer to shape a performance in a way she did not intend.