About dr. king and her father. watch this. i certainly saw the beginning of dr. king and what he was trying to do, bring people together and fighting for parity and to erase the discriminations and different things, and fighting for a number of things. yes, he was a civil rights activist. he and my dad were friends, and my dad brought him to detroit. there was a moment that after well, my dad organized and funded the movement in 1963, the walk to freedom here in detroit. when dr. king walked in to the hall, it sounded like the building was coming down. okay? i ve never heard such a rumbling
We were together all the time as kids and adults. it was like the franklin family was one of my other families. you know what i mean? and so when the first day i met her brother, a guy who lived next door to them named richard ross. we all played together. we were kids. and like i said, i was eight years old, and richard comes around and he s got this new guy with him who was cecil. they just moved to detroit from buffalo, new york. we went around to see their new house. we went in and we were in there, and aretha grew up on boston boulevard in detroit. there were two streets in the hood. i mean in the hood. boston boulevard and arden park. and it was like they were so out of place, because these two streets were right in the center
Delivered on august 28th, 1963, he delivered part of that speech. i ve been to that hall a few times, and he inspired the people there, and so hundreds and thousands of the people who had heard him in detroit made it to washington. her father was was a strong supporter of dr. king. and aretha herself was a supporter of the movement. she raised money for the student nonviolent committee. for dr. king. the last time i saw her with dr. king was in atlanta at the hayat regency hotel at a southern christian leadership conference. she performed and she kept singing. she wouldn t stop, and she got happy and just kept singing.
Would just go after it. but she was a perfectionist. what are you going to remember most? i have so many memories of her. her sister carolyn and i got very, very close because aretha wouldn t travel anywhere so when i was working for her at arista, i would have to go into detroit all of the time. so it just got to the point where she said, why don t you just stay here? because she had like five bedrooms. he you started staying at her house. there s a story, she was afraid of flying. did you enroll her in flight school? we enrolled her in delta s fearless flying classes. so she went through, she went through the whole thing. and graduated and then got on the plane to go on the tarmac and go down the runway. and she just said, you know, trace, i can t do this. and she took the seat belt off, got up and the pilot had to turn around and come back. yeah. if she didn t want to do it
yes. well, first of all, i m just it s kind of an out of body experience thinking about the fact that she s not here. it s just very strange. she meant so much to me. first, she was my home girl. i didn t hang out with her like she did with smokey and that gang because they were coming up kind of the same way, but she was very close to motown and its artists and they loved her. she loved us. and she had she came from the church, and you always knew that in her music. did that contribute to her level of artistry? talk to me about what she brought to her music.