Celebrating a QUEEN | Happy Birthday Aretha
Today March 25th, would have been the 78th Birthday of Aretha Franklin.
A 18X GRAMMY®-winner and the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. The “Queen Of Soul” is one of popular music’s most enduring legends—and is widely regarded as the most important female vocalist of her era. Passionate, eloquent, and timeless, her fabulously expressive voice marries urban sophistication with the heartfelt depths of the blues and the fervent highs of gospel.
Aretha Franklin is peerless. A 2005 recipient of a Presidential Medal Of Freedom honor (the U.S.A.’s highest honor), a GRAMMY® Lifetime Achievement Award and a Grammy Living Legend Award. She has received countless international and national awards and accolades.
Aretha has achieved global recognition on an unprecedented scale. She has influenced generations of singers from Chaka Khan, Natalie Cole and Mary J. Blige to American Idol winner Fantasia Burrino and Oscar & Grammy-winning Jennifer Hudson. Who will portray the legend in the upcoming biopic.
Aretha‘s ever-distinctive soulful, to-the-bone vocal style graced the music charts for over four decades and while her ‘live‘ performances have touched the hearts of literally millions since she began her musical journey as a gospel-singing child prodigy, it is her rich legacy of recordings that are a testament to the power, majesty and genius of this one-of-a-kind artist of the first order.
Beyond the timeless classic hits such as “Respect,” “A Natural Woman,” “Chain Of Fools,” “Think,” “Daydreaming” and “Freeway Of Love” among the dozens of chart-topping records that have established her as a cultural icon, Aretha Franklin‘s catalog of over forty albums in forms listeners of her unmatched, unparalleled artistry as an interpreter of song, bar none.
Her elevation to ‘royal‘ status is indeed not just a function of her hit making ability but of her unique inventiveness as a musician who fuses art and soul seamlessly. Indeed, it was often said that Aretha could take ‘happy birthday‘ and turn it into a veritable opus and while those who know her will testify to her culinary skills in the kitchen, it is her mastery as a musical chef that is evident on each and every one of those forty-plus albums, many of which have achieved gold and platinum status.
Jennifer Hudson is playing the Queen of Soul on the biopic “Aretha”, in theaters October 9th, 2020. She recently posted in her Instagram after wrapping the film. “Too overwhelmed to get into it right now but words can’t express how grateful I am to be chosen by the queen herself and to live out yet another dream! It was my honor, to honor the Queen’s request! The one and only Queen of Soul.”
Aretha Franklin died of pancreatic cancer at age 76 in August 2018. During her prolific career, she received 18 Grammy Awards and was nominated a total of 44 times.
