Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin

In 1999, Grammy-winner and composer Ritz teamed with Franklin to pen her memoir, Aretha: From These Roots. Here he candidly provides a chronicle of the Queen of Soul’s rapid climb to fame. Franklin was four when the family moved to Detroit where her famous father, the pastor C.L. Franklin, who became a national gospel and preaching star at New Bethel Baptist Church. Moving year by year through Franklin’s life, Ritz traces her journey from her days as a teenage mother with two children and her early marriage in her 20s to her first record deal at Columbia, her towering success at Atlantic (where she recorded “Respect”), and her efforts to reestablish herself in the disco era. In Ritz’s admiring portrait, Franklin emerges as a woman who, though overwhelmed by fear and obsessed by control, is nevertheless the “ultimate survivor,” who continues to move forward with steely determination. (Nov.)