Aretha Franklin’s secret life: From her ‘orgy-loving father’ to ‘alcoholism, addiction and abuse’

She’s the the Queen of Soul, known around the world for her powerful voice and iconic hits.

Aretha Franklin passed away on Thursday 16 August at her home in Detroit after a reported eight-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

However, behind the glamour, the 76-year-old singer has lived a dramatic life, from her teenage pregnancies to an ‘orgy-loving’ father, alcoholism and abuse, according to David Ritz’ 2014 book, RESPECT.

Dad Clarence LaVaughan ‘CL’ Franklin was a prominent Baptist minister, whose church allegedly played host to wild orgies – the likes of which even promiscuous singer Ray Charles was surprised by.

“When it came to pure sex, they were wilder than me – and that’s saying something. In those days I had a thing for orgies, but I had to be the only cat in the room with two or three chicks,” he told Ritz.

“The gospel people didn’t think that way. The cats liked it with the cats and the chicks liked it with the chicks and no one minded mixing it up this way or that.”

Ray’s claims were backed up by R&B and gospel singer Billy Preston, who said: “It was the church crowd where the vibe was wide open.

“It was anything goes. In the community outside the church, gay men were called sissies. But inside the church, a lot of the music was created by gay men.”

With her parents divorcing during her formative years and her mother dying when she was just 10, Aretha was close to her father C.L. and was introduced to adulthood early, perhaps unsurprisingly given his controversial lifestyle.

She was said to have spent time in a hotel room with late soul singer Sam Cooke when she was just 12, and fell pregnant with her first child with school friend Donald Burk that same year.

She had a second son named Edward just two years later.

Still relatively a child herself, Aretha handed over a lot of the childcare responsibility for her sons to her grandmother Rachel and older sister Erma while she pursued her music career.

By 19, Aretha married her manager, Ted White Snr, who allegedly introduced the singer to weed and alcohol.

While Aretha has previously denied reports of alcoholism, she has spoken openly about her smoking habit, which she kicked in the 1990s.

Despite welcoming a son, Ted Jnr, in 1964, rumours of domestic abuse flew and her booking agent and friend.

“Everyone knew that Ted White was a brutal man,” her sister-in-law Earline told Ritz.

“But Aretha… she’s always clung to this fairy-tale story line. She wanted the world to think she had a storybook marriage. She was having all those hits and making all that money. She was scared of rocking the boat, until one day the boat capsized and she nearly drowned.”

And her friend Ruth Bowen claimed Aretha was so unhappy that she turned to alcohol, food and cigarettes for comfort.

“Aretha was using booze to numb the pain of her lousy marriage. Liquor was just making her sloppy,” Ruth said of the star, whose hit Respect topped the charts in 1968, just as her personal life was imploding.

In May 1967 she fell off stage in Columbus, Georgia, and broke her arm, with Ruth claiming it was because she was drunk.

The pair split in 1968 and after apparently regaining control of her drinking, Aretha fell pregnant again, this time by her road manager Ken Cunningham, with their son Kecalf arriving in March 1970.

While living with Ken, she allegedly enjoyed an affair with The Temptations frontman Dennis Edwards, who later accused the legend of “treating her boyfriends like her servants”.

Meanwhile, plagued by cripplingly low self-esteem, her insecurity prompted Aretha’s jealously of other female singers, including Roberta Flack, Barbra Streisand, Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross and Natalie Cole.

“She was afraid she wasn’t good enough as a singer, pretty enough as a woman, or devoted enough as a mother. I don’t know what to call it but deep, deep insecurity,” her sister Carolyn said.

After duetting with Whitney Houston on It Isn’t, It Wasn’t, It Ain’t Never Gonna Be in 1989, Aretha declared: “Whitney lacked (my) wisdom and maturity as a recording artist.”

Even in her later years, Aretha was determined to remain the Queen of Soul.

She didn’t hold back with her opinion when Beyonce introduced Tina Turner as ‘the Queen’ at the 2008 Grammy Awards: “I am not sure of whose toes I may have stepped on or whose ego I may have bruised between the Grammy writers and Beyonce. However, I dismissed it as a cheap shot for controversy.”

Her sister Erma, who died in 2002, summarised: “Aretha’s always had problems with her female contemporaries. Her fantasy is that they would all disappear and she and she alone would be the only singer. Her fantasy is to eliminate the competition.”

By the late 1970s, Aretha appeared to be happier after finding love with second husband, actor Glynn Turman, and left Atlantic Records for a new deal with Clive Davis’ Arista Records.

However, their coupling and didn’t last long and they split in 1982 with Aretha fleeing back to Detroit.

It wasn’t long before Aretha suffered further heartbreak when her beloved father C.L was shot twice at his Detroit home in 1979. He remained in a coma for five years before eventually dying in July 1984.

Professionally, things were good at Arista as she enjoyed a series of hits, including I Can’t Turn You Loose, Jump To It, Who’s Zoomin’ Who? and Freeway Of Love.

Although her singing talent is undeniable, Aretha’s business sense was lacking and she ended up in trouble after frequently failing to turn up for gigs or forgetting to pay bills.

Ten years ago, authorities threatened to foreclose on her Detroit mansion over a overdue tax bill, which the singer speedily resolved.

In 2015, she faced a similar threat in Oakland, California, over her $700,000 home due to late bills.

Over 20 years ago, Aretha had to settle out of court after she was sued by the Saks Fifth Avenue department store over $262,851 in credit card bills.

One addiction Aretha wasn’t able to hide over the years was her love of food as her weight ballooned.

However, after a health scare in 2010, Aretha overhauled her lifestyle and lost 85lbs.

Reflecting on her weight loss, the singer said: “I have diabetes, really, from years ago when I was really badly and grossly overweight. Now, I’m back to my natural size and thrilled about it.”

After losing even more weight in 2017, Aretha admitted: “I’ve lost a lot of weight due to side effects of medicine, it affects your weight.”

The lid on Aretha’s private life was lifted four years ago when her official biographer Ritz decided to write his own tell-all book about the diva, entitled Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin.

Ritz co-wrote the star’s 1999 autobiography Aretha: From These Roots, but in later years claimed the book was a “failure” and full of “enormous gaps and oversights” because all the juicy details were “off-limits” by the singer herself.