Jennifer Hudson discusses her upcoming role as Aretha Franklin in a new behind-the-scenes featurette forRespect, the upcoming MGM biopic on Franklin’s life. Through interview segments and clips from the movie, as well as rehearsal videos, the featurette documents Hudson’s journey to embodying the Queen of Soul, beginning from when Franklin …
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Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years, if not decades. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their …
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In January 1972, Aretha Franklin went back to where it all started. Over two days at Los Angeles’ New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, she gave audiences – which included Clara Ward and Mick Jagger – a glimpse of what she learned in the Detroit church of her father, Reverend C.L. …
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Stevie Wonder closed out Aretha Franklin‘s funeral Friday with a powerful rendition of “The Lord’s Prayer” and “As” at Detroit’s Greater Grace Temple. The singer opened his performance with a mournful harmonica version of “The Lord’s Prayer” before delivering a brief eulogy for Franklin, saying that without “God’s goodness,” “We …
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On a cold day in February, Martin Luther King Jr. surprised Aretha in Detroit to present her with a special award on behalf of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference while she was in town to be honored with her own day, “Aretha Franklin Day”, by the mayor. Too sick to …
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