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Prayers for Aretha: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”


Singer Aretha Franklin takes a bow at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Gala at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine on November 7, 2017, in New York City.

Aretha Franklin is in hospice care –

Update: Aretha Franklin Dead at 76

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  • lpdbw August 15, 2018, 1:30 PM

    The thumbnail for your second video shows Matt Guitar Murphy. We just lost him a few weeks ago.

  • ghostsniper August 15, 2018, 2:43 PM

    Never made a red centavo off’n my ass.
    Nor used up more’n about 3 seconds worth of my eyeballz.
    All that screamin’ and yellin’ and shit.
    Make me git up an lay rubbah…..

  • CCW August 15, 2018, 7:14 PM
  • Madonna Seefeldt August 16, 2018, 8:43 AM

    God bless her. May her soul rest in peace. Growing up in the sixties/seventies, I loved her sound. It reached into my being and I felt its warmth/strength. I will pray for her soul even though I know she was a very religious woman. Prayers cannot help one to reach the eternal Paradise.

  • Hangtown Bob August 16, 2018, 5:27 PM

    Gerard,

    Thank you for this beautiful remembrance of the Queen of Soul. She passed today. I never had any idea about her excellence with the piano. My wife guessed that she learned the piano by playing for her Pastor father at his church.

  • Casey Klahn August 16, 2018, 7:02 PM

    When the voice and the talent matched the fame: Aretha.

    That era is over.

  • Nancy Moss August 16, 2018, 11:14 PM

    A great clip, and leave it to Gerard VanderLeun to find something that hasn’t been played everywhere else. A thought though, in looking at the picture from 2017, she looks like she lost a lot of weight. In hearing that pancreatic cancer was what took her, that is no surprise, since pancreatic CA causes wasting (not meaning to take away anything from the greatness we remember Aretha for). Giant talent. Growing up, her voice just got people up and dancing and singing. I’m afraid Casey Klahn is right. The era of pure talent is over, or sure seems to be.

  • Quent August 17, 2018, 1:01 PM

    I join the Old Fart Brigade with GS on this one. I never was able to force myself to like that wailing type of black music. After they massage it and ‘make it their own’, every song sounds the same.