Aretha Franklin

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<h1 class="name post-title entry-title">BREAKING: Queen Of Soul Aretha Franklin Dies At 76</h1>
<span class="tie-date">August 16, 2018</span> <span class="post-cats">Entertainment, Pop Music</span>

<span style="font-size: 14pt;">TMZ reports:</span>

<blockquote>
Aretha Franklin, known for having one of the greatest voices in music history, and for hits like “Respect,” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” … died Thursday after a long battle with cancer … TMZ has learned.

Sources close to the singer tell us … Aretha passed away in her Detroit home where she was under hospice care. She’d been in failing health for many months and she was down to 86 pounds. One source told us he was informed more than a week ago that Aretha could go at any time.

She was surrounded by friends and family when she passed. She had appeared incredibly frail in recent years, and rarely performed live. Her most recent appearance was last November for Elton John’s AMFAR event.

</blockquote>

 
Lord, I can’t imagine the Queen Of Soul weighing only 86 pounds. She had a robust figure in her prime and was downright large-and-in-charge by the 1990’s. What a voice and style she had! Hopefully more people will discover her posthumously and become fans. The Queen may be gone, but her music is always with us.
 
Eugine,

I know. Cancer is nasty like that. I had tow aunts who were never overweight and had pancreatic cancer also. It just doesn't discriminate. They were both 89 though, but Patrick Swayzie was way younger. So was Michael Landon. Liver, bile duct, pancreas, all related.
Aretha had also been diabetic since at least the 80's, and had lost weight.
When you have to take medications for many years, the renal, and hepatic systems can only process those for so long as well.
 
May Aretha rest in peace. She brought so much joy to the world and she will be greatly missed.

When I first worked as an Eligibility Worker, one of my coworkers wanted to pipe Aretha singing “Respect” into all the interview rooms on a continuously playing loop! Of course, the county wouldn’t even entertain this suggestion, LOL.

There certainly seems to be an epidemic of Pancratic cancer in our country. Two years ago, one of my cousins died from this, just 6 weeks after being diagnosed with it. And a friend of mine has a daughter who is barely 40 years old, never been a sick person, and she has it too, a slow progessing form, but it will nevertheless be fatal. Her tumor is located in an area that makes it impossible to surgically remove it. And even so, surgery, seldom cures this cancer.

Mike is right, its best to take as little prescription medication as possible, its all hard on the liver and pancreas.
Eddie
 
Sad to hear of her passing. She was a very talented lady.

"Down to 86 lbs." I don't doubt that. My mom died of pancreatic cancer at age 72 in May '95, and while she wasn't really overweight, she wasn't skinny until she was sick. By March she was very frail looking. A couple years ago I came across a picture of her and a couple of her friends that was taken about that time, and at first I mistook her for one of her friends that was in her 90's!
 
Spirit in the Dark

One of the reasons I loved the Seventies was that it seemed that at least twice a year during that decade there was a superb Aretha Franklin hit that graced the airwaves and, eventually, made it to my LP collection. Even though it isn't talked about a lot, Aretha's cover of "You're all I need to Get by" is a masterpiece. But there were, of course, many masterpieces including her short but stole the show performance in the Blues Brothers movie.
 
Hopefully more people will discover her

Oh, I'm certain they will. 

 

The local jazz station here, KCSM, has been playing Aretha all day.  That's a testament to how much of her work is out there on vinyl, CD, and MP3, and that it will be available for generations to come.  I'm amazed at how much she recorded that falls under the jazz umbrella.  Most of it was from her younger days, but she also teamed up with jazz musicians as late as within the last several years.  KCSM streams live, if anyone would like to "tune" in.

 

I think about the grandkids who are 11 and almost 8, and that while they may have heard Franklin in passing, they don't know who she is or anything about the profound contributions to and effects The Queen of Soul had on the music scene starting in the mid 20th century and continuing well into the 21st.  But they will, eventually.

 

 
 
There have been numerous sightings of her, being a Detroit-loyalist, she'd still had a home, or homes here in the area...

As for her singing, she was original enough that--Heck, all those imitators who admired and idolized her, although trying to sing just like her, could only screech and caterwaul, and be too ghastly to even sound like BEN Franklin...

In short, NOBODY could sing like Aretha Franklin, EXCEPT Aretha Franklin...

Here is about all of Aretha's works I have--covering Bobby Goldsboro's "With Pen In Hand", no less:

-- Dave

daveamkrayoguy-2018081710350705503_1.jpg

daveamkrayoguy-2018081710350705503_2.jpg
 
Dave,

Her fathers home was in the Boston-Edison-Chicago boulevard neighborhood where she grew up. Aretha kept ownership until last December when she sold it to a young couple who are restoring it and preserving it's originality.
Her primary residence has been in Bloomfield Hills for many years.
 

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