Aretha Franklin

Residence 1

📍4452 Selden Avenue, Detroit, MI 48214, USA

“I grew up in Detroit, Michigan — on the east side of the city, in a family that was deeply rooted in the church. My father C.L. Franklin was one of the most famous Baptist preachers in America, and New Bethel Baptist Church was the centre of our world. I sang in the choir before I could read properly, and by the time I was fourteen I was recording gospel for Chess Records. Detroit in the nineteen-fifties was a city at the height of its industrial power — the auto plants were running three shifts, the Black community was building something real on Eight Mile and beyond, and the music that would become Motown was already forming in the clubs and churches. The church gave me my voice in every sense: the technique, the emotion, the understanding that music was not entertainment but testimony.”

Sources: Franklin, A. & Ritz, D. Aretha: From These Roots (1999), Villard Books; Ritz, D. Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (2014), Little, Brown; Werner, C. Higher Ground (2004), Crown Publishers

Residence 2

📍16200 LaSalle Avenue, Detroit, Michigan, United States

“I grew up in this house on LaSalle Avenue with my father, Reverend C.L. Franklin, and it was not a quiet house. My father was one of the most famous preachers in America and people came from everywhere — Martin Luther King came, Mahalia Jackson came, Sam Cooke came, Dinah Washington. The piano was always open and I was always at it. My father let me sing in church when I was still a small girl, and the congregation's response taught me what music was supposed to do to a person. This neighbourhood, the North End of Detroit, was the centre of Black professional life in the city and our house sat at the middle of it. I left Detroit to record in New York and later in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where I made Respect and everything changed. But Detroit was always the foundation. The church, my father's voice, the piano in this house — that is where the Queen of Soul came from.”

Sources: Aretha Franklin's LaSalle Avenue home and Detroit upbringing are documented in David Ritz's biography Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin (2014) and in Franklin's own memoir Aretha: From These Roots (1999).