Aretha Franklin, the longtime singer, is reportedly gravely ill in a Detroit hospital, according to a representative.
“I am so saddened to report that the Queen of Soul and my good friend, Aretha Franklin is gravely ill. I spoke with her family members this morning. She is asking for your prayers at this time. I’ll have more details as I’m allowed to release,” wrote Evrod Cassidy, a WDIV reporter, on Twitter.
Franklin last year told WDIV that she had plans to retire after releasing her new album. “I must tell you, I am retiring this year,” Franklin said. “This will be my last year,” she added. “I will be recording, but this will be my last year in concert. This is it.”
“Spoke with close friend of Aretha Franklin and family. Iconic singer not doing well,” wrote NBC investigative reporter Harry Hairston.
She spent 56 years as a singer-songwriter, winning a number of Grammy Awards over her career.
In March, Franklin canceled two concerts in New Jersey, and at the time, according to a statement from her management team, she was following her doctors’ orders to stay off the road and rest for two months. Franklin is “extremely disappointed she cannot perform as she had expected and hoped to,” according to USA Today.
Her most recent performance was Nov. 2, 2017, for the Elton John AIDS Foundation in New York.Showbiz411’s Roger Friedman, a longtime entertainment reporter and columnist, first broke the story, which was linked via the Drudge Report. The report noted that she was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, but she “bravely battled back and refused to be knocked out by illness.”
‘Respect’
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Franklin moved to Detroit at the age of 4 and spent her entire life there.
In 1968, Franklin spoke about her most iconic song, “Respect.”
“To tell the truth, I never expected that song to be a hit. I was surprised. I could see more potential in Respect ... in fact, I can say I knew that would be a hit song. Sometimes I can’t get a song right in the recording studio, though. We usually work things out beforehand, not like the Memphis studio where they don’t plan things like that, but can end up with a master. We usually know what we’re going to do. I sing and the musicians kind of fit things around me. Two of my favorite songs incidentally are ‘Rock-a-Bye,’ which was on Columbia, and ‘Chain of Fools,’” she told The Guardian at the time.
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