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Today we turn to a voice that has become a kind of measuring stick. A singer you can’t ignore, can’t casually imitate, and certainly can’t replace.

Aretha Louise Franklin.

You can line up all the adjectives: legendary, iconic, incomparable. But with Aretha, those words almost sound lazy. The real story is more interesting. It’s the story of how a shy, brilliant preacher’s daughter walked out of a Detroit church and, without surrendering where she came from, changed what mainstream American music could sound like — and what it could mean.

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