Aretha .. the untold story
| Published date | 12 September 2021 |
| Publication title | People, The |
Growing up in Detroit in the 40s and 50s, Aretha had given birth to two of her four sons by the age of 15.
Pulpit Her father Clarence - or CL Franklin, as he preferred - was a Baptist minister known as "the man with the million-dollar voice" because of his style both in the pulpit and on radio shows across the US.
But biographer David Ritz tells of the "promiscuous" preacher's highly charged sermons at New Bethel Baptist Church and the orgies said to have sometimes taken place there.
The church was once branded a "sex circus" by singer Ray Charles.
By the time Franklin married Aretha's mother, Barbara Siggers, he had a daughter allegedly conceived when he raped a 12-yearold member of his congregation.
The marriage was dogged by tales of his womanising, and Aretha's parents separated when she was six. Four years later, when Aretha was just nine, her mother died of a heart attack at the age of 34.
By then her father was a celebrity on the church circuit, with famous friends including civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr and singers Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke.
But while he was busy preaching and entertaining other women, it left the young Aretha vulnerable.
At age 12 she became pregnant by a school friend, giving birth just two months shy of her 13th birthday. She called the boy Clarence, after her father.
An eight-part National Geographic series, Genius: Aretha, which premiered earlier this and the humanity year, portrayed her sobbing as she tries to comprehend being pregnant as a child.
It shows her grandmother trying to find the boy responsible, while her father shrugs it off, saying they should accept it as "a part of the mission God has for her".
Her second son was born five months after her 15th birthday. She named him Edward after his father.
In a will written later in life, she claims both boys had the same dad.
But Aretha, who had been a gospel singer at her father's church, did not let motherhood dull her ambitions to become a star.
She dropped out of school, leaving her grandmother Rachel and sister Erma to raise her children and set off at 16 on a civil rights tour with Dr King. Just 10 years later, in 1968, she sang at his funeral after he was assassinated.
It is in her teenage years that jazz singer Dinah Washington -...
To continue reading
Request your trial