Some songs you hear. Others you feel in your spine. When that horn line kicks in and Aretha Franklin starts spelling out a single word, letter by letter, it is almost impossible to sit still. Ask anyone who had a transistor radio in the summer of 1967, and they will tell you: “Respect” was everywhere.
In this Artist Spotlight, we tell the story of the Queen of Soul through the song that made her a household name. We look at the church pews of Detroit where her voice was formed, the lean years before her breakthrough, the Valentine’s Day session that changed everything, and where to start listening today. The official video is waiting at the end.
▶️ Want to hear the Queen of Soul first? Scroll down. The official video is at the end of the article.
A Preacher’s Daughter From Detroit
Aretha Louise Franklin was born on March 25, 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee. By the time she was five, her family had settled in Detroit, where her father, the Rev. C. L. Franklin, led the New Bethel Baptist Church. He was a famous preacher, known as the man with the “million-dollar voice,” and his home drew visitors like Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke and Martin Luther King Jr.
Aretha lost her mother when she was not yet ten. Soon afterward she began singing solos at New Bethel, and as a girl she toured the gospel circuit with her father. She taught herself piano by ear. Her first recordings were gospel songs, made when she was only 14.
The Long Road to “Respect”
At 18, Aretha told her father she wanted to follow Sam Cooke into popular music. She moved to New York and signed with Columbia Records in 1960. The label tried her in jazz, standards, blues and pop. She had some hits, and a Chicago DJ even crowned her “the Queen of Soul” on stage at the Regal Theater, but the big breakthrough never quite came.
Then, in November 1966, her Columbia contract ran out. Producer Jerry Wexler signed her to Atlantic Records with a simple idea: stop dressing her up and let that gospel fire come through. It worked almost immediately.
Taking a Song From Otis Redding
“Respect” was not Aretha’s song to begin with. Otis Redding recorded it first, on his 1965 album Otis Blue. In his version, a hard-working man comes home and asks for a little respect. It was a hit on the R&B chart and reached No. 35 on the pop chart.
Aretha had already been singing it in her live shows for a few years, and she had her own ideas. Working with her sisters Erma and Carolyn, she flipped the point of view. Now it was a confident woman doing the asking, and she was not asking politely.
The Valentine’s Day Session
Aretha’s first Atlantic session took place in January 1967 at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where she cut “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You).” That session ended early after an argument involving her husband and manager, Ted White. The work moved to New York with the same Southern musicians, and “Respect” was recorded there on February 14, 1967.
Nearly everything we love about the record came from that room. The famous R-E-S-P-E-C-T spelling was Carolyn Franklin’s idea, according to engineer Tom Dowd. Aretha and Carolyn worked out the “sock it to me” backing line together. Aretha played the piano herself, and King Curtis took the saxophone solo. Co-producer Arif Mardin later said he had never seen a day like it: “It was like a festival. Everything worked just right.”
The Summer of ‘Retha
Atlantic released “Respect” as a single on April 10, 1967. It spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart and eight weeks on top of the R&B chart. It also reached No. 10 in the United Kingdom, turning Aretha into an international star.
Remember what America felt like that year? The civil rights movement was pressing forward, and the women’s movement was finding its voice. “Respect” landed right in the middle of it. Some fans called it “the summer of ‘Retha, Rap, and Revolt.” Aretha herself stayed modest about it. “I think it’s quite natural that we all want respect,” she told the Detroit Free Press, “and should get it.”
Otis Redding took it in good humor. At the Monterey Pop Festival that summer, he introduced the song as one “that a girl took away from me.” In February 1968, “Respect” earned Aretha her first two Grammy Awards.
About the Official Video
Like most singles of 1967, “Respect” never had a proper music video. The official video you will find on Aretha’s YouTube channel came much later. In 2014, an online contest on the creative platform Genero.tv invited filmmakers to make one, and the winner was an animated short by American director Brendan Huza.
His playful cartoon imagines a world where the usual roles of men and women are switched, which is a fun nod to the way Aretha turned Otis Redding’s song inside out. It is short, cheerful and very much in the spirit of the record.
A Queen for Five Decades
“Respect” was only the start. Over the next few years came “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Chain of Fools,” “Think” and “I Say a Little Prayer.” In 1972 she went back to church for Amazing Grace, a live gospel album that sold more than two million copies. A whole new generation met her in 1980, when she sang “Think” in The Blues Brothers, and in the mid-1980s MTV helped “Freeway of Love” find younger fans.
She won 18 Grammy Awards. In 1987 she became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She sang at Dr. King’s funeral in 1968 and at President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, in a gray hat that people still talk about. Like her “honorary niece” Whitney Houston, whose 1991 Super Bowl anthem we have written about, she could take a familiar song and make it feel brand new.
Aretha Franklin died at her home in Detroit on August 16, 2018, at age 76. In 2021, Rolling Stone named her “Respect” the greatest song of all time, and that same year Jennifer Hudson played her in the biopic Respect.
Where to Start: An Aretha Listening Guide
- The essential album: I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967), with “Respect,” the title track and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.”
- Keep going: Lady Soul (1968), home of “Chain of Fools” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”
- For Sunday morning: Amazing Grace (1972), recorded live in a Los Angeles church.
- Compare the versions: play Otis Redding’s 1965 original right before Aretha’s. You will hear exactly what she changed.
- A goosebump moment: look up her 2015 Kennedy Center Honors performance of “A Natural Woman” for Carole King.
- More from the era: browse our 60s Classics and Soul & R&B collections, starting with the story of “Good Vibrations”.
Fun Facts About Aretha and “Respect”
- “TCB” in the lyric means “taking care of business.” Elvis Presley later made “TCB” his personal motto.
- Otis Redding liked Aretha’s changes so much that he worked her ideas into his own later performances.
- Her father helped her sign her very first record deal, and he managed her when she was a young teenager.
- In 1985, the state of Michigan declared her voice a “natural resource.”
- The Library of Congress added her “Respect” to the National Recording Registry in 2002.
Aretha Franklin and “Respect” Quick Facts
| Born | March 25, 1942, Memphis, Tennessee |
| Died | August 16, 2018, Detroit, Michigan |
| Song | “Respect,” written by Otis Redding (1965) |
| Recorded | February 14, 1967, New York |
| Producer | Jerry Wexler |
| Album | I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967) |
| Single released | April 10, 1967 (Atlantic Records) |
| Billboard Hot 100 | No. 1 for two weeks |
| Grammys for “Respect” | Two, in 1968 |
| Official video | Animated, by Brendan Huza (2014) |
Sources
- “Respect” (song) on Wikipedia (with its cited sources, including NPR, Rolling Stone and the Detroit Free Press)
- Aretha Franklin on Wikipedia
- Rolling Stone: The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (2021)
- Aretha Franklin at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
- Warner Music Japan: announcement of the 2014 “Respect” video contest winner
Photo Credits
- Featured image: Aretha Franklin at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C., 1997 by Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Featured image: New Bethel Baptist Church, Detroit, 2019 by Andrew Jameson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Featured image: FAME Recording Studios, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, 2010 by Carol M. Highsmith (Library of Congress), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- Featured image: Aretha Franklin singing at the presidential inauguration, January 20, 2009 by Cecilio Ricardo, U.S. Air Force, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- In-article image: Statue of Aretha Franklin by Marco Zeno, Montreux, Switzerland by Llez, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- In-article image: Aretha Franklin at “The Gospel Tradition: In Performance at the White House,” April 14, 2015 by Pete Souza, The White House, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- In-article image: Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre, Detroit, 2025 by Chris Woodrich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
