Aretha Taught Me Agency
Musical parables from The Queen of Soul
You know when you’re super depressed and the windows of your apartment feel more like protective shields than a connection to the outside world? Once there, escaping that mentality can sometimes take an emotional earthquake. Sometimes it takes Aretha Franklin.
On May 3, 2014, Aretha played the Chicago Theater. Looking online the morning of the show, tickets were not yet sold out, but it was getting close. Just because I only had 62 dog-walking dollars in my bank account and a broken heart to get me through the next week, that was no reason to stop checking Ticketmaster for a miracle ticket in my price range, right?
Okay, if normal people said yes to that, it’s actually completely understandable. Aretha wouldn’t have given up, though. She could have stopped so many times when the odds were against her throughout her lifetime, but she refused to quit. I had faced some of my own personal, expensive challenges that led me to self-isolate for most of the preceding weeks, and I knew getting out to see one of the best American singers of all-time was the right thing to do.
If Aretha had taught me anything, it was to show up, use my voice and never quit. I decided I had to keep trying and figure it out. After many website refreshes, a single back corner balcony ticket popped up that I could (barely) put in my cart without overdrawing, and I bought it on instinct. Riding the red line train down to the show, I reflected on all the twists and turns that brought Aretha to that moment to be able to perform on stage for us that evening.
Channeling pain through her music, she turned lifelong hardship on its head, singing stories of her tragedy so beautifully she became one of the most successful, household names throughout all music history. Aretha’s music has advised women for decades to advocate for ourselves, and demand respect from others, well before feminism was mainstream. She never taught these lessons in a condescending manner, and even made it sound fun. She showed us that you could sing and dance about it, or sometimes scream along with your girls, with her real sisters as her backup singers.
To no fault of her own, Aretha struggled to stand up to men in her own early life. Perhaps the sound of her early music was so characterized by authentic emotion, because it was her truth she always wished she could have spoken against what we know to be abusers in her own life, today.
Feeling that anger burn, and for good reason, she belted out chart-topping hits to share her truth, all the while wanting to activate personal agency in women, even if it was not always the action she actually felt she could safely take herself. Growing up around abuse, then marrying into domestic violence, and later turning to drugs, alcohol and food for solace, Aretha fought to love herself her entire life. She didn’t become the benchmark of soul music because she had it easy. She knew she was human, with her own struggles standing up for herself, and even talked about these internal conflicts in her early music.
In the song, “Never Loved a Man,” (1967) she sings about a no-good cheater who her friends tell her is bad news, but Aretha loves him. She knows it’s wrong, but she can’t stop, and asks him to “kiss me once again.” A few years later, she placed her cover of Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me,” on her hits album, Aretha’s Gold (1969). Cooke wrote the track for Aretha as his love interest when she was only 12, and he was in his early-20’s. This connection was not lost on people close to her.
Her friends and family often said she was shy growing up, even bashful, and in opposite demeanor of her public stage persona. All-around complicated, Aretha’s troublesome upbringing stemmed from a lack of parental support or protection. Even though on the surface, the Franklins were an ideal, wholesome family, the truth resolved a much grainier development than that painted picture.
Aretha’s Baptist minister father and her gospel-singing pianist mother first connected with children from previous relationships, then together, had four children of their own. With so many responsibilities, and after dealing with the sadness, stress and fallout from her father’s multiple infidelities, her parents divorced. Her mother, Barbara, left Franklin’s home in Detroit, and moved home to family in Buffalo. Aretha still visited with her mother in the summers and kept in close contact. However, about four years later, Barbara suffered a heart attack and died just before Aretha’s 10th birthday.
Franklin’s father, C.L. Franklin, started taking Aretha on the road to sing and perform faith-based songs on piano for what he called his “gospel caravan,” acting as her manager. Aretha was young and impressionable, and was raised to listen to her elders, especially the “pious” men around her.
Despite how he appeared to community outsiders, her father’s reputation among those in-the-know, was that of “the promiscuous preacher.” His congregation wasn’t the usual church crowd, either. Once called a “sex circus” by Aretha’s friend and famous soul singer, Ray Charles, her father’s church group met for orgies under the guise of religious prayer. Well-known for more than his talent on keys alone, Ray Charles was a noted womanizer who had a ton of sex, in groups and otherwise, and even he commented on how wild it could get at Mr. Franklin’s parties (citation 8 below).
Respect (2014) Biographer David Ritz claimed of their gatherings:
“It was to 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 (Baptist Church), the saints celebrated the love of Christ. High on wine and weed, the party people celebrated the love of the flesh.”
Growing up around this secret, hypersexual environment was not without harm. It is likely that from before the time she hit puberty, Aretha was indoctrinated into the sexual acts of adults, even though she was very much still a child. By the time she did start menstruating, and due to her religious upbringing, lack of a mother figure and the general hush-hush/denial attitude about sex education back then, it’s likely she did not know that having sex, or being forced to give it to someone else, could leave her carrying the bulk of the consequences. Not just in that moment, but for the rest of her life.
Franklin became pregnant at age 12. Although it had widely been accepted that the father of this child was Aretha’s school friend, Donald Burk, people have speculated if there is actually a child of Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin walking around we’ve been hidden from due to … well, pedophilia. Yikes. It still gets potentially darker.
Despite best efforts, I have not been able to find further information about whether there has been a DNA test on Franklin’s first-born. Some could also relate this lack of information to a separate rumor that the child could have been her own father’s baby, after being on the road together. It’s important to note that the baby was both named after her father, Clarence LaVaughn (C.L.), and was born with “special needs that have never been publicly disclosed” (citation 2 below).
After Aretha passed (2018), her hand-written will stated that her first-born was not Burk’s baby, and that he had been fathered by the same man as her second-born, a “player” she did not keep contact with. While it makes sense it was not Donald Burk, who it seems there is little information about, the rumor that her father could have fathered Aretha’s eldest child is not completely out of the question, and that’s incredibly sad and disturbing.
As soon as she was legally able, Franklin and her aspirations to record pop music followed Cooke to New York City where she was signed to Columbia at just 18 years old. That might sound young to get signed to a prominent label, but she was already a mother of two who had been through more than many adults. She soon married her Columbia manager Ted White, who treated her horribly, but with what we know today, she had unfortunately been used to this type of treatment growing up. It probably felt comfortable for her at first. Friends close to her worried for her safety, saying she turned to drugs, alcohol and food to numb the pain throughout the marriage. They were relieved when after eight years of explosive fights and domestic violence, Aretha and Ted divorced.
Franklin’s mother and sister cared for her children as she pursued a career in singing, not only for financial stability, but also as an outlet for deep pain. Though she rose to greater fame down the road under the Atlantic label through the guidance of producer Jerry Wexler, these early, formative years with Columbia elevated her name through hits including “Respect,” “Chain of Fools,” “I Never Loved a Man,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” and many more that led to her crowning as the Queen of Soul in her mid-to-late-twenties.
For someone who has written some of the most heart-wrenching songs about sorrow and pain, known as the actual Queen of Soul, finding out later in her life that Aretha had a complicated past should have been no surprise. After growing up thinking of her on a pedestal, learning more about her past taught me about her humanity, and the real pain and tragedy that created her music. Her songs were the beautifully sung parables that turned out to be, quite possibly, all the things she wished she could have said growing up, or to her partners, in the face of abusive bullshit.
Her voice was the first one to scream in my ears that you can tell a man to “Think,” which I’ve found is sometimes novel, regarding logic, for a whole gender guided mostly by genitals. The irony that her abusive manager ex-husband Ted helped her co-write that one will never fade, but it just proves there is always more to the story. She did call someone RIGHT out in “Chain of Fools,” saying she was not about to get played. She most famously told everyone you better “Respect” her and do right by her or she is gone. This was not lost on biographer Diaz, who noted that “self-awareness was not Aretha’s strength,” (citation 4 below) since she often suffered abuse throughout her relationships.
Franklin’s famous rendition of Otis Redding’s “Respect” was culturally important to the late 60’s, not only as a feminist anthem, but in the fight for racial equality. As the song’s release came in the height of the civil rights movement, it also represented the voice of a generation of young Black people, and all American people, banding together for human rights.
Let’s face it, even if you don’t know much about music, you’ve heard Aretha’s songs. Maybe you can sing along to a few hits, or have danced to one of her 112 Billboard singles at a wedding or bat mitzvah. If you enjoy music, you enjoy Aretha, or some song she’s made along the way. It’s just the way it is. You probably know her most famous songs by heart (at least the chorus), and own some of her offerings on cd, tape, vinyl or digital. Now, if you love music, as in, your brain is made up of lyrics you’ve known for 20+ years, you can list the top five sit-in guitarists across five decades off the top of your head, or you choose March Madness teams based on which mascots could be more likely members of Funkadelic, well then you probably already worship at Aretha Franklin’s alter.
With uncontested talent, music itself was forever imprinted by Aretha’s mark. She went through some serious shit throughout her lifetime, but as she said best, “A Rose is Still a Rose.”
When she passed away from pancreatic cancer in August, 2018, she had sold more than 75 million records worldwide, making Aretha Franklin one of the best-selling music artists of all-time. Not women artists. Not Black artists. Not Black women artists. One of the best-selling music artists of all-time, after coming up as a “Young, Gifted and Black” woman in a white-dominated, Jim Crow America. She believed in herself and never gave up, and that means something.
In celebration of what would have been her 79th birthday yesterday(3.25.21), I want to express infinite gratitude to Aretha Franklin for carrying herself with such fortitude and personal agency that it has transcended time, and been used as a guide for humanity across generations. Through her pain, she shared her gifts.
Aretha taught me agency, to believe in my own capacity and to stand firm in that knowledge against contrarians. She has reminded me that you can help others by helping yourself, and kind of, most importantly, that you can always sing a song. She’s shown that even if you don’t think you have the strength, and all the chips seem to have been stacked against you, you might just make something amazing if you can get the courage to try.
Aretha’s infamous entanglements, her controversial pregnancies (12, 14) and all the haters you know were slinging gossip around her, all would have kept a lesser person down. But not Aretha Franklin. No matter how hard, she fought against abuse her whole life. She took power back through song, fueling her talent into blades she used to cut herself free from patriarchal structures that tried to control her. She did look damn good in a strapless gown, after all.
After learning more about Aretha’s true, shy personality, from those close to her, and then more about her traumatic history, it does beg to question if her impassioned songs come from a place of passion at what she wishes she could have done, or said. In those moments when she screams a chorus directly into my soul, there is almost a conflict in guilt to feel empowered, knowing her path. I know she’d never want that, though, and that was not why I was there. That’s not why Aretha did what she did. As I entered the Chicago Theater, I felt the excitement and the musical community surrounding this legend, and knew I had made the right choice.
With a few bucks left to my name, I silenced multiple calls from my then-boyfriend as I climbed the golden staircase of red carpeted stairs all the way to the top. I wheezed out of breath, smiling in kinship with other poors as we ascended to the balconies. As I got in line for my turn to buy Jujyfruits, I read messages from my boyfriend saying he was outside the theater. He knew I would be there, and was asking me to come outside and see him. I had been avoiding him for weeks, but for some reason this seemed just psychotic enough to be romantic, and I actually considered it. I then got called up to place my order, snapped out of it and put my silenced phone in my jeans.
I took deep breaths and tried to channel Aretha’s lessons of self-respect as I got my candy and went to my seat. Usually I would have been pounding drinks, but this was one of my first forays into sober shows, and my very first show going it alone when not on assignment.
A nice older woman sat patiently like an expanding dot as I approached, climbing past her as the only other person in our section. A box of Spree hard candy sat in her lap that I think I’ve only ever seen in theaters. When showtime neared, and the lights flickered in warning, she was just a few rows ahead of me. Turning around, she smiled and used the Sprees to flag me down to come sit in her row’s empty seats. I obliged, and chose a seat with a few open ones between us. As I sat, my phone fell from my pocket. Missed calls and messages lit up my exposed phone screen with roughly 24 million messages from my boyfriend. I tried to hide it, but she saw.
“Oh dear,” she said, “Is everything okay?”
Without hesitation, I turned my phone off and smiled toward her, closing it inside my purse.
“I think it’s going to be,” I said back.
She offered an understanding smile, and introduced herself as Joanne. We traded candies to start the show: freshly opened Jujyfruits for freshly opened Spree, and it was the most wholesome concert experience I had exchanged in a long while.
Joanne shared that she had lost her daughter recently, who was a huge Aretha fan, and she was apparently close to my age. I didn’t tell her that just last week I had made a decision all women dread, and would never be the same again for losing a child in a completely different way. I wished my deepest condolences, and we agreed to enjoy the show for those who couldn’t be with us.
We both felt lucky to be there. Joanne had probably been struggling, and likely had to convince herself to come tonight, and just not be sad. In a way, it felt like some kind of gesture from the universe that we were both in the right place to be part of something bigger than our problems, if just for a few hours.
Throughout the entire show, Joanne graciously let me share her opera glasses. I didn’t ask for them, respectfully, but when she felt I should have a better view, she’d pass them down and say something like, “would you look at those beads!” or “are you kidding me with those shoes!?” When Aretha took short breaks, it became exciting to see what she would come out wearing next.
The queen diva she was, Aretha made a few costume changes, including her jewelry. At the end of the show, she came out in a gorgeous sparkly gown to do “Respect” wearing mammoth-sized, dangly diamond earrings that could not properly be appreciated from our seats with the naked eye. Joanne handed me the glasses with a nod, then giggled as I gasped seeing them for the first time “up close” through the magnified lenses. They were the shiniest, most elegant and unreal rich people accessories I’d ever seen in my life, and it showed.
“There’s always a way to make it look better from where you are,” Joanne whispered wisely.
Isn’t that just what Aretha did? For Aretha’s fortitude and her teachings in personal agency; for all the women, and people around the world she has touched and guided with the words in her songs, and to know all she went through to be able to share those lessons. She had courage and put her vulnerability out there, if even as a means to an end.
To this day I think of Joanne when I see opera glasses. I think about how Aretha’s life was like that, that when you zoomed in, and looked close, you just might gasp. Aretha didn’t skip a beat. She did not let anything stop her and for that, we got to hear her music. Thank you to Aretha Franklin, and through her music, may she and her lessons live on forever.
Sources:
- Biography: Aretha Franklin (Last updated January 2021)
2. Aretha Franklin’s Handwritten Wills, If Real, Shed Light on a Titanic and Complicated Life (Johnson, Alex. May 21, 2019)
3. Seeking the Queen’s Soul (Just a Little Bit)| (Maslin, Janet. New York Times; October 14, 2014)
4.Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (Ritz, David. 2014)
5. Inside Aretha Franklin’s Love Life (UK Daily Mirror. August 16, 2018)
6. Orgies, Attitudes and Anxieties (Wells, Veronica. Madamenoire; October 30, 2014)
7. Aretha Franklin Wikipedia (including sourced links within)
8. Aretha Franklin’s Secret Life (Sheridan, Emily & Kindon, Frances; (UK Daily Mirror. August 16, 2018)
