Aretha franklin unauthorized biography frank

As C. L. Franklin’s fame grew, Salvatore writes, so did his penchant for drinking, womanizing, and worse. In 1940, he had fathered a child with a twelve-year-old girl, and he remained unrepentant. He could also be abusive to the women in his life. In 1948, when Aretha was six, her mother left Detroit to live in Buffalo. The children saw her occasionally, but there was always a looming and powerful sadness in the house. As Mahalia Jackson, a close friend of the Franklins, put it, “The whole family wanted for love.” C. L. Franklin’s mother helped care for the children, as did a string of friends, secretaries, and lovers, including Clara Ward, of the Ward Singers, one of the great gospel vocalists of her time. Barbara Siggers died in 1952.

In the mid-fifties, Franklin started the C. L. Franklin Gospel Caravan and toured the country for weeks at a time, preaching his greatest hits: “The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest,” “Dry Bones in the Valley,” “The Man at the Pool.” Little Sammy Bryant, a d

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Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul,” died on August 16, 2018 at the age of 76. This is her story. If you think know Aretha, you probably don’t. Read on. 

I think that, to make sense of Aretha – “Ree” to her friends and family – you have to understand her relationship with her parents, especially her father. Her father was not nobody. His name was Clarence LaVaughn Franklin, a preacher known as  the man with the “Million-Dollar Voice.” Intimates called him C.L. or Frank.

He became a preacher in 1931, at the age of 16, two years into the Great Depression. Initially he traveled around working the Black itinerant circuit, landing in Memphis and Buffalo before being lured to Detroit. A fiery preacher, you could say (at the very least) that he was charismatic. As a consequence, this most worldly of preachers had a hard time staying faithful. And at $4,000 per speaking engagement ($43,000 in today’s dollars), he was quite w

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New York, Nov 25 (EFE).New York, Nov 25 (EFE). —  The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, issued a statement blasting her unauthorized biography written by David Ritz and entitled “Respect,” calling it “trashy.”

Ritz, who had been the one to write the authorized biography of the veteran singer in 1999, had differences with Franklin at the time regarding whether or not to include certain passages, and now he has come out with the book he said he’s always wanted to write.

However, “Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin” has enraged the singer of “Freedom” at a time when her most recent album, “Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics,” has once again placed her on the hit list.

“As many of you are aware, there is a very trashy book out there full of lies and more lies about me. … (Ritz’s) actions are uppenbart vindictive because I edited out some crazy statements he had the gall to