Stéphane Bern and Matthieu Noël 4:30 p.m., September 8, 2021

While "Respect", a biopic on Aretha Franklin, of which Europe 1 is a partner, comes out this Wednesday at the cinema, Stéphane Bern and Matthieu Noël returned to "Historically yours" on the life of the diva.

An existence made of passion, addictions and songs that have marked the history of music.

She is the "Queen of Soul", the one who forever commands "respect".

Aretha Franklin is one of the greatest singers of the 20th century.

Here she is now investing, three years after her death in August 2018, the cinema.

The director Liesl Tommy devotes a biopic to him,

Respect

, in which Europe 1 is a partner.

The opportunity to retrace the outlines of an existence full of songs, talent but also violence and addictions.

And which did not start, as Aretha Franklin's incredible performances might suggest, at the conservatory of music, but at the church.

And not just any: that of his own father.

A childhood in Detroit

Because it is with God that Aretha Franklin began to exercise her powerful and nuanced voice, capable of the most voluptuous and virtuoso modulations.

A voice covering almost 5 octaves, which manages to transmit with warmth the purest emotions.

Born in 1942 in Memphis, Tennessee, Aretha quickly moved with her family to the north of the country, like millions of African Americans who fled the racial segregation imposed in the southern states.

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It was in Detroit that the Franklin family finally settled and that the father, Clarence LaVaughn Franklin, pastor by state, took charge of the Baptist church in the city.

His frenzied preaching made Reverend Franklin a real star, to the point that his sermons were burned to disc and sold across the country to anyone who would listen.

And they are many !

Very early on, therefore, little Aretha and her siblings were immersed in a unique musical environment, that of the gospel that is sung during services and that their mother practices brilliantly.

First steps in the church choir

A mother who unfortunately will not have much time to teach them much since she leaves home early, tired by the escapades of a husband as fickle as he is famous, and dies shortly after. Aretha and her sisters joined the church choir at a very young age. Pastor Franklin detects something extraordinary in Aretha's voice and decides to make room for her. She will be a soloist and perfect herself by following her father on his preaching tours. "She started touring at the age of 14," recalls France Swimberge, director of the documentary

Aretha Franklin, Soul sister

. "His dad will be kind of a manager for years to come."

This magical voice therefore asserts itself through faith.

Gospel, inherited from the songs of its slave ancestors, allows the African-American community to sing its doubts, its revolt and its sufferings, transcended by divine love.

With her talent and encouraged by her father, Aretha recorded her first album,

S

ong of Faith

, in 1956, and made a name for herself in the gospel world.

Song and political conscience

At church, Aretha is also building a political conscience.

His father made the New Bethel Baptist Church, where he officiates, one of the centers of the struggle for the recognition of the civil rights of African Americans.

From her youth, Aretha saw the most ardent defenders of her community parade, including a certain Martin Luther King, whom she was close to since he stayed at the family home during her visits to the city.

It is therefore a young woman but of conviction - the faith, the love of singing and the fight against injustice anchored in her - who decides at 18 years of age to throw herself headlong into music.

She moved to New York and began a singing career, far from sermons and her altar boys.

Polite beginnings before finding his voice

The young woman then gave countless performances and recorded several albums with jazz and pop accents at Columbia. From the eloquent intensity of gospel, she slips gracefully into more rhythmic and sometimes more intimate music, especially with ballads that often sing of disappointed loves. She is making a name for herself but does not yet know the consecration, which will come like an explosion when she changes label to sign with Atlantic Records. Because at Columbia, "we want to make it the black Barbra Streisand", notes France Swimberge. "So the one who sings well, in a little dress, the bun, singing blueberries. And that doesn't suit her at all, Aretha is overflowing with the costume."

Atlantic Records, on the other hand, defends a more raw, engaged and feverish soul.

The musicians and witnesses of the first recording session all share the same feeling of admiration that seized them when they saw this little lady settle down at the piano - which she learned as an autodidact - and tackle a few chords with the assurance of great.

And this is probably what makes Aretha Franklin so strong.

If she composes little, she knows how to appropriate the pieces that she interprets with a particularly acute sense of musicality.

In the studio, she manages the arrangements and breaks down the melodic frame to adapt it to her taste or to the message she wants to convey.

The "Respect" shock

Aretha Franklin is also inspired in this by sermons given in the church. "All this dramaturgy, this way of keeping pace, the silences, all that there is theatrical" in the music of the singer "comes from the church", explains France Swimberge. "There is also what is called the

call and response

, which is to say that she sings and her choristers respond to her. And that too is inherited from the black church."

In March 1967, therefore, his first album was released on Atlantic Records.

The first track is a cover of a piece by Otis Redding, of which Aretha Franklin slightly modifies the lyrics.

What was a ballad evoking domestic setbacks becomes in Aretha Franklin's mouth a fiery protest song that demands

Respect

.

That due to women, that due to men ... whatever their skin color.

LISTEN -

The fights of Aretha

The song becomes, in the words of the singer, "a rallying cry of the civil rights movement" and finds a special echo in the summer of 1967 which sees her city of Detroit shaken by five days of race riots.

Aretha Franklin is transformed into an icon, a standard bearer in the fight for equality.

The following year, she also sang at the funeral of Martin Luther King, who had just been assassinated.

Juggle all styles of music

Aretha Franklin is now extremely famous in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

She won her first Grammy Award in 1968 - there were 18 in her career - and the same year made the cover of

Time

, a first for a black woman.

From then on, his aura will never fade.

Unlike other artists, she knows how to fully embrace the musical evolutions of her time, even interfering in hip-hop or R'n'B sounds of the 90s, collaborating throughout her career with the most varied artists, from Georges Michael to Lauryn Hill, from Luciano Pavarotti to Elton John, never ceasing to justify her status as "queen of soul".

A queen never dethroned despite the escapades of a life which could have made one forget the fervent beginnings on the pews of the church. 

Whims and addictions

Because if she has faith pinned to the body since she sang gospel in her childhood, and that she will remain "very pious" all her life according to France Swimberge, Aretha Franklin has all the same been able to allow herself some sprains. gospels. The one who was four times a mother and twice divorced has always opted for autonomy and freedom in the face of domestic violence that she suffers as well as boredom. And the pleasures of the flesh are far from being the only ones she has been able to enjoy, even if it means losing herself in addictions. 

Alcohol and tobacco have also certainly participated in forging her an image of an angry diva who went, according to some, to concerts clinging to her handbag filled with bundles of the evening seal that she demanded even before. to go on stage.

Sign for her detractors of an unhealthy taste for money, for others of a desire not to be deceived as were many black artists before her.

Her eccentric dresses, her wigs and precious jewels which she changed as quickly as lawyers have in any case seated the figure of a venal castafiore.

"She knows what she wants, what she wants", nuance France Swimberge.

"Maybe it shocks more because it's a woman ..."

"Reborn from the ashes"

Aretha Franklin's propensity to touch her audience, so often moved to tears, remains the most vivid memory she will have left. Going from gospel to soul, which some at the time considered licentious, singing the gospels as much as secular, innocuous or sulphurous themes ... the musical life of Aretha Franklin echoes the history of African-American music , made of transgressions and emancipation. In her thirst for freedom, the queen will never forget the gospel she sang in her childhood. She even made an album of it in 1972, 

Amazing Grace

, which sold over two million copies. A record for this kind of music. 

Yet, like a resurgence of her choirboy debut, even when she sings love in her hit

I say a little prayer for you

, it is indeed a prayer that she promises to be loved. Like a resurgence too, the city of Detroit will accompany all her life the one who, unlike the biggest, has never permanently joined a large city like New York or Los Angeles. "It's exceptional for a star of her stature," notes France Swimberge. "Aretha Franklin has something that has shaped her in this city: resilience. She has this ability to pick herself up which is what the people of Detroit say they have in them." The motto of Detroit could also have made an excellent subtitle to the biopic on the queen of soul: "We hope for the best.We will rise from our ashes. "