Aretha Franklin

Birth name: Aretha Louise Franklin
Date of birth: 25 March 1942
Place of birth: Memphis, Tennessee
Career highlights: 19-time Grammy Award winner, including Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994
Highest charting single: Respect, Number 1, 1967, and I Knew You Were Waiting (with George Michael), Number 1, 1987

Aretha Franklin, nicknamed The Queen Of Soul, needs little introduction. She has been gracing our radio stations since 1964 with her arresting voice, and throughout her career has scaled heights that no other female singer ever has. A formidable woman, with a huge back catalogue of classic girl-power anthems and tear-jerking ballads, her style blurs the boundaries between soul, gospel, R&B and pop.

Never a stranger to the demands of womanhood – she had two children by the time she was 16 – Aretha always used her position to sanction sisterhood. And even today her rendition of Respect is the most requested song at hen parties up and down the country!

Recording since she was fourteen, she famously wrested control of her career from music moguls in the mid-60s, and is credited with saying to her first producers at Columbia, “If you're here to record me, then let's record me…and not you”.

She appeared in cinema smash The Blues Brothers in 1980, in which she acted and performed hit single Think. Other memorable songs include; I Say A Little Prayer, Chain Of Fools, Spanish Harlem and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.