‘WE ALL REQUIRE AND WANT RESPECT'

RECOGNISED AS THE GREATEST SINGER OF HER GENERATION ARETHA FRANKLIN LED A TROUBLED AND TURBULENT LIFE

- ANGELA HAGAN

Pregnant at 12 and married to an abusive pimp by the age of 19, Aretha Franklin had a far from easy life before she was crowned the Queen of Soul. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, one of five children, her meteoric rise to fame is the subject of a major new film released in the UK next month – Respect, starring Jennifer Hudson.

Aretha’s early life was troubled right from the beginning. Her parents – the Rev. Clarence LaVaughn Franklin (known as CL and a serial adulterer) and Barbara Siggers (a gifted church pianist and gospel singer) – had a stormy relationship.

By the time Aretha was six, her mother had left the family home, taking her eldest child, a son from a previous relationship, and leaving Aretha and her remaining siblings with their volatile father.

A close friend of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr, CL drove a Cadillac and wore sharp suits with alligator-skin shoes. In 1946, he became the pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, where a precociously talented Aretha would perform for the congregation.