“Columbia was a wonderful label for me. Wonderful. The records I made there garnered me an audience. I won a number of polls during the years that I was at Columbia. The Downbeat Jazz Poll. Leonard Feather, who was a huge critic back in the day, different polls that he had. The Playboy poll, a number of polls. So the music was great.”

American singer-songwriter and pianist

Aretha Franklin was an American singer-songwriter and pianist. Active in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, she was widely known as the “Queen of Soul.” Her voice made her one of the defining figures in popular music, and Rolling Stone twice named her the greatest singer of all time. She was also a pianist, and her work is closely associated with soul music and the performance style that made her famous.