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Diva tantrums, an insatiable appetite for sex, spending and fried chicken – and an orgy-loving preacher for a father: The secret life of Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul, laid bare
New book, Respect, details the tantrums and addictions of singer who became soul's biggest star
Father who made her a star was preacher at gospel church where gay and straight orgies were commonplace, shocked witness Ray Charles revealed
Her first affair was aged just 12 and there were false rumors a baby she had that year was her father's, so notorious was his reputation
She was furious at rivals including Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand - and threw a tantrum when Beyonce described Tina Turner as 'The Queen'
Author wrote her authorized biography 15 years ago but now wants world to know the full story
She is the Queen of Soul, whose hits Respect and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman define the sound of an era.
Aretha Franklin has won 18 Grammies, topped chart after chart and was the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But behind the Queen of Soul’s public façade lies an ice queen and grand diva hiding ferocious insecurities, a new book discloses.
Throughout her life, she tortured her sisters, her brother, producers and managers with her tantrums, rage and jealousies.
She fabricated stories about mystery lovers and released those stories to the press just to keep her name in print.
And perhaps most complicatedly of all, she came from a home where her father was a promiscuous gospel preacher whose church was a front for orgies which Ray Charles was to describe as a ‘sex circus’.
So questionable was his behavior that when Franklin became pregnant at the age of just 12 – her sexuality apparently awakened by the scene her father promoted - that rumors swirled around Detroit that the preacher was the father to her child.
In fact, he was not, but it was a reflection of his reputation rather than his daughter's that the rumors even surfaced.
Writer David Ritz, co-author of Aretha’s white-washed autobiography fifteen years ago, decided that it was time the truth be told about the Queen’s life and work in RESPECT, by David Ritz, published by Little, Brown and Company, October 28.
It details the rise of the girl born in 1942 in Memphis to C.L. Franklin and his wife Barbara, and who moved when she was four to Detroit with her parents, two sisters and brother.
He set up shop at the New Bethel Baptist Church, at 4210 Hastings Street, and his daughter became a child prodigy in the gospel church.
By age seven, she could play big chords on the piano, church chords, and play a song perfectly after hearing it once.
Hastings Street is ground zero for the Aretha Franklin story, David Ritz writes.
‘It was the point where Saturday night merged into Sunday morning and sin met salvation at the crossroads of African American musical culture. High on the Holy Ghost, dancing in the aisles of New Bethel, the saints celebrated the love of Christ.
'High on wine and weed, the party people celebrated the love of the flesh’.
It was saintly blues at night and bluesy gospel in the morning –the churches and the clubs were next to each other.
Ray Charles, who began on the R&B circuit in the early fifties, ran into the gospel groups on the road.
‘When it came to pure heart singing, they were mother*****s,’ he said.
‘When it came to pure sex, they were wilder than me – and that’s saying something. In those days I had a thing for orgies, but I had to be the only cat in the room with two or three chicks.
‘The gospel people didn't think that way. The cats liked it with the cats and the chicks liked it with the chicks and no one minded mixing it up this way or that.
‘I got a kick outta seeing how God's people were going for it hard and heavy every which way. I was just surprised to see how loose they were’.
Musician and R&B, rock, soul and gospel singer, Billy Preston who backed Ray Charles, witnessed the scene.
‘It was the church crowd where the vibe was wide open,’ Preston stated.
‘It was anything goes. In the community outside the church, gay men were called sissies. But inside the church, a lot of the music was created by gay men.
‘In the church you were almost proud to be part of the gay elite of musicians.’
Detroit was the urban center in the forties and fifties that was the destination of southern blacks migrating in hopes of moving up economically as well as finding social mobility.
Preacher man C.L. Franklin was an established star in the ministry and daughter Aretha became his partner, joining his traveling ministry at age twelve.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given her father’s scene, she was sexually precocious - and thrilled to jump right into adulthood – with a passion for sex equaled by one for food.
She was ecstatic about bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches and the great singer-songwriter Sam Cooke who crooned his way into her heart with ‘You Send Me’.
She was so crazy about Sam she joined him in his motel room in Atlanta when she was twelve years old and he was twenty-three.
Sam later said he enjoyed a lot more than Aretha’s voice.
Two months before turning thirteen, she gave birth to a baby boy she named Clarence, after her dad.
Rumors swirled that her own father was the father of her first child but it was Donald Burk, a guy she knew from school.
Aretha had a second child before she was fifteen by Edward Jordan, described by her brother as just a player. Both children would take the last name of Franklin and be raised in the Franklin home.
Aretha was driven into the arms of multiple lovers not only by the Holy Ghost music making/sex scene but also by her insecurities after her own mother, Barbara Siggers left C.L. because of his promiscuity and moved back to Memphis in 1948.
The poignancy of that event, as well as C.L.’s many women who followed Siggers' exit, impacted Aretha more than it did her sisters, Erma and Carolyn.
She never accepted the loss of her mother and mother figures and began idealizing the relationship of her own father and mother as being perfect.
She was the only child in the family to drop out of school – introducing more insecurity into her feelings.
‘She wanted to make it as a pop singer in the worst way…and lose her identification as a church singer’, her brother Cecil told Ritz.
Her ambition drove her into the arms of the slickest pimp in Detroit, Ted White, who had women as lovers, whores and singers.
He viewed her as his ticket to a bigger bank account and became her husband and manager. He introduced her to reefer and wine while molding her into a lady.
One of White’s working girls told Ritz that White used her earnings to finance Aretha’s early career.
White got Aretha a record deal but the relationship was only based on using each other.
C.L. Franklin had been a rock, always protecting his little girl, but not White, who was a scary character.
Aretha had a baby boy with White but that didn’t change the relationship. When things were really bad, she went home to Daddy.
Her big hit, ‘Respect’ topped the pop charts in April 1967 but her fairy tale dream that her father had promised her imploded. She was miserable with White and they both started drinking heavily.
Aretha was smoking up to three packs of Kool cigarettes a days and getting loaded before performing – ‘using booze to numb the pain of her lousy marriage’, longtime booking agent and friend Ruth Bowen stated; ‘Liquor was just making her sloppy.’
At a gig in Columbus, Georgia, in May 1967 she fell off the stage and broke her arm saying she had been blinded by the stage lights. Bowen knew it was caused by alcohol.
Now, not showing up for studio recording dates became her standard operating procedure.
‘Everyone knew that Ted White was a brutal man’,sister-in-law Earline – married to her brother Cecil - told Ritz.
‘But Aretha…she’s always clung to this fairy-tale story line. She wanted the world to think she had a storybook marriage. She was having all those hits and making all that money. She was scared of rocking the boat, until one day the boat capsized and she nearly drowned’.
‘She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown,’ her sister Carolyn said. She showed up at the studio looking like she had been beaten.
She was locked in an abusive marriage and thought her husband could ruin her career. She finally kicked White to the curb but didn’t quit eating compulsively or drinking.
By the end of 1968, it was out of control. Airplane landings after throwing back the booze until she was drunk as a skunk traumatized her. She had to be taken off the plane by the rear exit to avoid reporters.
Men saw her as high maintenance with big demands.
‘She was the Queen of Soul – and I think at times she saw her boyfriends like her servants,’ tenor and lead singer of the Temptations, Dennis Edwards – one of her lovers - stated.
She got her drinking under control in the seventies with the help of her road manager, Ken Cunningham and was pregnant again.
After moving in with Cunningham, she continued to see Dennis Edwards.
Now under the wing of uber-producer Jerry Wexler, she still lacked fundamental business sense. She didn’t show up for concert dates and had to pay the venues.
The pressure got to her and her brother Cecil hospitalized her ‘in a hospital somewhere in remote Connecticut’ – for nervous exhaustion.
She’d rest up and be out there recording and singing again and then back in the hospital.
‘She was afraid she wasn’t good enough as a singer, pretty enough as a woman, or devoted enough as a mother. I don’t know what to call it but deep, deep insecurity.’ her sister Carolyn said.
‘Her style was to either drink away the anxiety or, when that stopped working, disappear for a while, find her bearings, and go right back onstage and wear the crown of the impervious diva.’
The 1970s introduced her fear of flying as well as her outrageous gowns.
She tried to bury rumors about going crazy and having breakdowns by using Jet Magazine to clean up her image, something she had done for decades.
oonnoo goo read da rest iff oonnoo waan
New book, Respect, details the tantrums and addictions of singer who became soul's biggest star
Father who made her a star was preacher at gospel church where gay and straight orgies were commonplace, shocked witness Ray Charles revealed
Her first affair was aged just 12 and there were false rumors a baby she had that year was her father's, so notorious was his reputation
She was furious at rivals including Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand - and threw a tantrum when Beyonce described Tina Turner as 'The Queen'
Author wrote her authorized biography 15 years ago but now wants world to know the full story
She is the Queen of Soul, whose hits Respect and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman define the sound of an era.
Aretha Franklin has won 18 Grammies, topped chart after chart and was the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But behind the Queen of Soul’s public façade lies an ice queen and grand diva hiding ferocious insecurities, a new book discloses.
Throughout her life, she tortured her sisters, her brother, producers and managers with her tantrums, rage and jealousies.
She fabricated stories about mystery lovers and released those stories to the press just to keep her name in print.
And perhaps most complicatedly of all, she came from a home where her father was a promiscuous gospel preacher whose church was a front for orgies which Ray Charles was to describe as a ‘sex circus’.
So questionable was his behavior that when Franklin became pregnant at the age of just 12 – her sexuality apparently awakened by the scene her father promoted - that rumors swirled around Detroit that the preacher was the father to her child.
In fact, he was not, but it was a reflection of his reputation rather than his daughter's that the rumors even surfaced.
Writer David Ritz, co-author of Aretha’s white-washed autobiography fifteen years ago, decided that it was time the truth be told about the Queen’s life and work in RESPECT, by David Ritz, published by Little, Brown and Company, October 28.
It details the rise of the girl born in 1942 in Memphis to C.L. Franklin and his wife Barbara, and who moved when she was four to Detroit with her parents, two sisters and brother.
He set up shop at the New Bethel Baptist Church, at 4210 Hastings Street, and his daughter became a child prodigy in the gospel church.
By age seven, she could play big chords on the piano, church chords, and play a song perfectly after hearing it once.
Hastings Street is ground zero for the Aretha Franklin story, David Ritz writes.
‘It was the point where Saturday night merged into Sunday morning and sin met salvation at the crossroads of African American musical culture. High on the Holy Ghost, dancing in the aisles of New Bethel, the saints celebrated the love of Christ.
'High on wine and weed, the party people celebrated the love of the flesh’.
It was saintly blues at night and bluesy gospel in the morning –the churches and the clubs were next to each other.
Ray Charles, who began on the R&B circuit in the early fifties, ran into the gospel groups on the road.
‘When it came to pure heart singing, they were mother*****s,’ he said.
‘When it came to pure sex, they were wilder than me – and that’s saying something. In those days I had a thing for orgies, but I had to be the only cat in the room with two or three chicks.
‘The gospel people didn't think that way. The cats liked it with the cats and the chicks liked it with the chicks and no one minded mixing it up this way or that.
‘I got a kick outta seeing how God's people were going for it hard and heavy every which way. I was just surprised to see how loose they were’.
Musician and R&B, rock, soul and gospel singer, Billy Preston who backed Ray Charles, witnessed the scene.
‘It was the church crowd where the vibe was wide open,’ Preston stated.
‘It was anything goes. In the community outside the church, gay men were called sissies. But inside the church, a lot of the music was created by gay men.
‘In the church you were almost proud to be part of the gay elite of musicians.’
Detroit was the urban center in the forties and fifties that was the destination of southern blacks migrating in hopes of moving up economically as well as finding social mobility.
Preacher man C.L. Franklin was an established star in the ministry and daughter Aretha became his partner, joining his traveling ministry at age twelve.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given her father’s scene, she was sexually precocious - and thrilled to jump right into adulthood – with a passion for sex equaled by one for food.
She was ecstatic about bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches and the great singer-songwriter Sam Cooke who crooned his way into her heart with ‘You Send Me’.
She was so crazy about Sam she joined him in his motel room in Atlanta when she was twelve years old and he was twenty-three.
Sam later said he enjoyed a lot more than Aretha’s voice.
Two months before turning thirteen, she gave birth to a baby boy she named Clarence, after her dad.
Rumors swirled that her own father was the father of her first child but it was Donald Burk, a guy she knew from school.
Aretha had a second child before she was fifteen by Edward Jordan, described by her brother as just a player. Both children would take the last name of Franklin and be raised in the Franklin home.
Aretha was driven into the arms of multiple lovers not only by the Holy Ghost music making/sex scene but also by her insecurities after her own mother, Barbara Siggers left C.L. because of his promiscuity and moved back to Memphis in 1948.
The poignancy of that event, as well as C.L.’s many women who followed Siggers' exit, impacted Aretha more than it did her sisters, Erma and Carolyn.
She never accepted the loss of her mother and mother figures and began idealizing the relationship of her own father and mother as being perfect.
She was the only child in the family to drop out of school – introducing more insecurity into her feelings.
‘She wanted to make it as a pop singer in the worst way…and lose her identification as a church singer’, her brother Cecil told Ritz.
Her ambition drove her into the arms of the slickest pimp in Detroit, Ted White, who had women as lovers, whores and singers.
He viewed her as his ticket to a bigger bank account and became her husband and manager. He introduced her to reefer and wine while molding her into a lady.
One of White’s working girls told Ritz that White used her earnings to finance Aretha’s early career.
White got Aretha a record deal but the relationship was only based on using each other.
C.L. Franklin had been a rock, always protecting his little girl, but not White, who was a scary character.
Aretha had a baby boy with White but that didn’t change the relationship. When things were really bad, she went home to Daddy.
Her big hit, ‘Respect’ topped the pop charts in April 1967 but her fairy tale dream that her father had promised her imploded. She was miserable with White and they both started drinking heavily.
Aretha was smoking up to three packs of Kool cigarettes a days and getting loaded before performing – ‘using booze to numb the pain of her lousy marriage’, longtime booking agent and friend Ruth Bowen stated; ‘Liquor was just making her sloppy.’
At a gig in Columbus, Georgia, in May 1967 she fell off the stage and broke her arm saying she had been blinded by the stage lights. Bowen knew it was caused by alcohol.
Now, not showing up for studio recording dates became her standard operating procedure.
‘Everyone knew that Ted White was a brutal man’,sister-in-law Earline – married to her brother Cecil - told Ritz.
‘But Aretha…she’s always clung to this fairy-tale story line. She wanted the world to think she had a storybook marriage. She was having all those hits and making all that money. She was scared of rocking the boat, until one day the boat capsized and she nearly drowned’.
‘She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown,’ her sister Carolyn said. She showed up at the studio looking like she had been beaten.
She was locked in an abusive marriage and thought her husband could ruin her career. She finally kicked White to the curb but didn’t quit eating compulsively or drinking.
By the end of 1968, it was out of control. Airplane landings after throwing back the booze until she was drunk as a skunk traumatized her. She had to be taken off the plane by the rear exit to avoid reporters.
Men saw her as high maintenance with big demands.
‘She was the Queen of Soul – and I think at times she saw her boyfriends like her servants,’ tenor and lead singer of the Temptations, Dennis Edwards – one of her lovers - stated.
She got her drinking under control in the seventies with the help of her road manager, Ken Cunningham and was pregnant again.
After moving in with Cunningham, she continued to see Dennis Edwards.
Now under the wing of uber-producer Jerry Wexler, she still lacked fundamental business sense. She didn’t show up for concert dates and had to pay the venues.
The pressure got to her and her brother Cecil hospitalized her ‘in a hospital somewhere in remote Connecticut’ – for nervous exhaustion.
She’d rest up and be out there recording and singing again and then back in the hospital.
‘She was afraid she wasn’t good enough as a singer, pretty enough as a woman, or devoted enough as a mother. I don’t know what to call it but deep, deep insecurity.’ her sister Carolyn said.
‘Her style was to either drink away the anxiety or, when that stopped working, disappear for a while, find her bearings, and go right back onstage and wear the crown of the impervious diva.’
The 1970s introduced her fear of flying as well as her outrageous gowns.
She tried to bury rumors about going crazy and having breakdowns by using Jet Magazine to clean up her image, something she had done for decades.
oonnoo goo read da rest iff oonnoo waan
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