The world of music mourns today as icon Aretha Franklin has succumb to her illness and passed away peacefully at 9:50am on Thursday 16th August, surrounded by family and friends at her home in Detroit, Michigan.
Aretha Franklin’s representative, Gwendolyn Quinn announced that Franklin passed away after a battle with advanced pancreatic cancer.
Former President of the United States, Barack Obama, paid tribute to Franklin in an official statement released yesterday;
“Aretha helped define the American experience.” He said. “In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade—our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the ‘Queen of Soul’ rest in eternal peace.”
In an unbelievable career that spanned more than half a century, Aretha Franklin touched the lives of countless people all over the world. Throughout her career, she was nominated for a total of 34 Grammy Awards, winning 20 of them, including best female R&B performance for eight straight years, and three “Grammy Special Awards” – The Legend Award in 1991, a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994 and a Person of the Year award in 2008.
She also had 88 Billboard Chart hits and, during the peak of her career, she accumulated more than two dozen Top 40 hits that spent a combined total of 97 weeks in the Top 40.
On top of all this, Aretha Franklin also holds the distinction of being the first woman ever to be admitted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Rest in peace, Aretha Franklin – while you may be gone, the legacy you leave behind will echo through the ages.
