Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul - A YouTube Playlist (link)
After Wednesday's Daily Playlist full of songs of thanks and gratitude for frontline healthcare workers and others giving their all through this ongoing crisis, a reader left a welcome Facebook comment describing it as "a bright spark in the day." For some reason, my jukebox brain was reminded of the inspirational song Spirit in the Dark by the late Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, and then a short while later a Twitter post told me that Wednesday would have been the R&B icon's 78th birthday.
So this may be a day late, but if there was ever an artist whose music could provide a spark right now, it's Aretha, so here's a list of seven tracks, starting with the studio recording of Spirit in the Dark and ending with an incredible live performance of the same song, from her legendary series of concerts at San Francisco's Fillmore West in 1971.
In between come a few of her biggest hits, a couple of personal favourites, a rare duet with James Brown from the 1980s and a live version of a song she transformed like nobody else, Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water.
