{"id":908,"date":"2024-06-18T02:25:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T06:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/2018\/08\/26\/aretha-franklin-the-queen-of-soul\/"},"modified":"2024-10-23T01:09:27","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T05:09:27","slug":"aretha-franklin-the-queen-of-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=908","title":{"rendered":"Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 145px; height: 175px; float: left;\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/FamousDeaths\/franklin2.jpg\" alt=\"aretha franklin\" \/>As one of the most versatile American singers of all time, Aretha Franklin was best known for singing soul music and gospel and popular songs, but with less than two hours notice, she was able to use her powerful mezzo-soprano voice to sing a great opera aria when she stepped in to replace Luciano Pavarotti at the 1998 Grammy Awards. She was so talented and respected that she won honorary degrees from five Ivy League schools: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown and Penn.\u00a0 On August 16, 2018, she died after an eight-year battle with pancreatic cancer.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Now a new movie about her life, <em>RESPECT<\/em> (starring Jennifer Hudson), is being praised by critics and gives us a chance once again to enjoy her amazing voice.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">In 2010 at age 68, she cancelled concerts to have tumor surgery, but denied rumors that the surgery was for pancreatic cancer.\u00a0 \u00a0A year later she was giving concerts, but in 2013 she was again cancelling concert tours for several months.\u00a0 She resumed her concert tour on Christmas of that year.\u00a0 In 2017, seven years after her surgery, she again had to cancel concerts and when she resumed performing in July she appeared to have lost more than a hundred pounds.\u00a0 She gave her last concert on November 7, 2017.\u00a0 In August 2018 her family announced that she was in a hospice, surrounded by family and friends including Stevie Wonder, Jesse Jackson, and ex-husband Glynn Turman.\u00a0 She died on August 16, 2018 at age 76.\u00a0 This formerly robust lady weighed about 85 pounds at the time of her death.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5sjHY-zB0VU\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><strong>Early Life and Career<\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee to a father who was an itinerant preacher and a mother who sang and played the piano professionally.\u00a0 When she was five, her family moved to Detroit where her father became the pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church.\u00a0 When she was six, her parents separated and her mother moved to Buffalo, N.Y.\u00a0 Just before her 10th birthday, her mother died from a heart attack and Franklin was looked after by her grandmother and Mahalia Jackson.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">She learned how to play the piano and sang solos at New Bethel Church.\u00a0 Her father became a celebrity media preacher and she met Martin Luther King, Jr., and gospel musicians Clara Ward and James Cleveland. When she was 12, her father began to feature her as a singer on his gospel tours throughout the country.\u00a0 At age 14 she made her first recording and at 16, she toured with Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.\u00a0 \u00a0She dropped out of high school in her sophomore year.\u00a0 At 18, she moved to New York and signed with Columbia Records, where she became a star and the rest is history.\u00a0 She was the most charted female singer ever, with 112 charted singles on Billboard, 100 R&amp;B entries and 20 number-one R&amp;B singles.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">The director of the two cult-classic <em>Blues Brothers<\/em> movies, John Lloyd, said, &#8220;I knew she would be a wonderful actress.&#8221;\u00a0 Her performance of &#8220;Think&#8221; in the first <em>Blues Brothers<\/em> film, with John Belushi and Dan Akroyd, is one of the greatest movie scenes ever.\u00a0 She never appeared in any other films.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WY66elCQkYk\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><strong>Filling In for Luciano Pavarotti<\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">In 1998, Grammy Awards Producer Ken Ehrlich had scheduled the great Luciano Pavarotti to sing \u201cNessun Dorma\u201d.\u00a0 Ten minutes after the show had already started, his assistant rushed up to him and told him Pavarotti had lost his voice.\u00a0 The show was already on the air and Pavarotti was scheduled to perform in the show in less than two hours.\u00a0 The 50-piece orchestra and 30-member chorus had already assembled for their performance and the producer had to decide how to fill the four-and-a-half minute segment of the show.\u00a0 He knew that Aretha Franklin was on the program, so he ran up two flights of stairs to her dressing room and told her about Pavarotti&#8217;s cancellation. She replied, \u201cOK, Ken, I can do that.\u201d\u00a0 Realize the problems: the orchestra had the music prepared for Pavarotti so she had to sing in the same key and word sequence that he would have used.\u00a0 She went onstage to sing her own portion of the show and then went back to her dressing room to work with the producer and practice some more.\u00a0 Then the Queen of Soul came on stage and gave an amazing performance, followed by thunderous applause.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hwtNrtHblZ8\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><strong>Risk Factors for Pancreatic Cancer<\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">Pancreatic cancer is among the most lethal of all cancers, with only about four percent of patients surviving five years after their initial diagnosis.\u00a0 Franklin had a more rare type of malignancy called a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, which often has a somewhat longer survival rate.\u00a0 Genetic mutations are known to trigger about ten percent of pancreatic cancers <mirkin>(<em>Journal of Cellular Biochemistry<\/em>, April 22, 2005)<\/mirkin> but many of the risk factors for pancreatic cancer involve lifestyle choices.\u00a0 Factors you cannot change include:<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Age. Pancreatic cancer risk increases with age.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Gender. Men are more likely to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer than women.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Race. African-Americans and Ashkenazi Jews are at increased risk<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><strong>Franklin&#8217;s Modifiable Risk Factors<\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Former Chain Smoker. Smoking triples risk. She smoked most of her early life until she finally gave it up at age 50, which was followed by extensive weight gain; 30 percent of pancreatic cancer sufferers have been smokers.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Overweight. She spent most of her life being overweight. At age 34, a crash diet helped her lose 40 pounds very rapidly, but she gradually regained far more than that until her fifties when she started to yo-yo with alternating weight loss and gain.\u00a0 Having excess fat is a major risk factor for pancreatic cancer and many other cancers.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Former Alcoholic. Alcohol itself is a potent cause of many cancers.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Diet. A diet high in red meat and processed meats and low in fruits and vegetables is associated with increased risk for pancreatic cancer. She changed her diet after surgery and cut out fatty foods and anything she would typically eat with hot sauce.\u00a0 She started to measure her food and weigh herself daily, and eat nuts, greens and fresh produce, but she never gave up some of her old indulgences.\u00a0 She said, &#8220;I have a cup of ice cream, but I don\u2019t go hog wild.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Exercise. After a lifetime of not exercising, she had started exercising regularly, with 1.5 mile walks three days a week.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Diabetes. I have no proof that she was diabetic, but her excess weight put her at high risk for that disease. Suddenly developing diabetes in later life is a major risk factor for pancreatic cancer.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8cF0tf35Mbo\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><strong>Other Risk Factors<\/strong><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Chronic pancreatitis<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Cirrhosis (liver damage)<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Exposure to chemicals such as pesticides, benzene, certain dyes and petrochemicals<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 The common bacteria, Helicobacter pylori, increases risk for stomach ulcers, stomach cancer and pancreatic cancer<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">\u2022 Hepatitis viruses that infect the liver increase risk for pancreatic cancer<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\">All of the lifestyle factors that increase risk for pancreatic cancer are also associated with increased risk for other cancers and heart attacks.<\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aretha_Franklin\">Aretha Louise Franklin\u00a0<\/a><\/div>\n<div id=\"cke_pastebin\"><mirkin>March 25, 1942 \u2013 August 16, 2018<\/mirkin><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As one of the most versatile American singers of all time, Aretha Franklin was best known for singing soul music and popular and gospel songs, but with less than two hours\u2019 notice, she was able to use her powerful mezzo-soprano voice to sing a great opera aria when she stepped in to replace Luciano Pavaroti at the 1998 Grammy Awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1013],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-histories-and-mysteries","tag-pancreatic-cancer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8618,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908\/revisions\/8618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}