The representative for the influential singer, Gwendolyn Quinn, confirmed the news that she passed away at her home in Detroit. <\/p>\n
Franklin, who was suffering from pancreatic cancer, was recently reported to be “gravely ill”. <\/p>\n
An influential cultural figure, often described as “the voice of black America”, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, and performed at Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009. <\/p>\n
The singer, who performed in a gospel choir in childhood and later graduated to master other genres such as pop and soul music, rose to worldwide prominence in the 1960s. <\/p>\n
Several celebrities took to social media networks to pay tribute to the late queen of soul. <\/p>\n
Elton John wrote a lengthy thread on Twitter, reminiscing working with Franklin, where he called her death “a blow for everybody who loves real music”. <\/p>\n
“Her voice was unique, her piano playing underrated – she was one of my favourite pianists… She sang and played magnificently, and we all wept. We were witnessing the greatest soul artist of all time. <\/p>\n
Streisand shared a photo from 2012 when she performed with Franklin at a tribute celebration for their friend, Marvin Hamlisch. <\/p>\n
Franklin was more than just a titanic vocalist who could effortlessly move through pop, jazz, R&B, gospel and disco. Known to her fans simply as \u201cAretha,\u201d Franklin was an inordinately complex pop star \u2014 \u201cOur Lady of Mysterious Sorrows,\u201d wrote Wexler in his memoir. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Aretha Franklin, the teenage gospel singer who rose to become the Queen of Soul, selling 75 million records and inspiring generations, passed away yesterday, at the age of 76.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[75],"byline":[300],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-38020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-homenews","byline-agencies"],"bylines":[{"id":300,"name":"Agencies","slug":"agencies","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":300,"name":"Agencies","slug":"agencies","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38020"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=38020"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=38020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}