Aretha Franklin From troubled child to the Queen of Soul

As a new movie about her life is released, we remember one of the world’s most respected singers

She was the iconic musical feminist who ordered her man to show her some respect way back in 1965 – and after that, no one messed with Aretha Franklin, the ordained Queen of Soul.

Even Beyonce found out the hard way after mistakenly introducing Tina Turner as “the queen” at the 2008 Grammys. Aretha would respond in a statement, “I am not sure of whose toes I may have stepped on or whose ego I may have bruised between the Grammy writers and Beyonce, however I dismissed it as a cheap shot for controversy.”

Oops! But Aretha had a point. Rolling Stone crowned her “The Greatest Singer of All Time” in 2010 with her four-octave speaker-blasting voice that dominated the charts for nearly 60 years, with epic hits including Respect, I Say A Little Prayer and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.

But for all her diva antics – dropping fur coats on the floor and tearing her wig off midperformance – Aretha came from great tragedy, including losing her mother to a heart attack when she was nine and finding herself pregnant with her first son Clarence at age 12 to local playboy Edward Jordan.