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R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Aretha’s call to arms

Posted on the December 4th, 2007

The song that launched Aretha Franklin into the rock music stratosphere 40 years ago was much more than a pop music hit, according to a multimedia celebration of “RESPECT” on the website of the daily newspaper the Detroit Free Press. The year of the song’s release was 1967, and the civil rights movement in the U.S., was fully in motion. Aretha’s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” arrived just at the right time.

“It gave an anthem to the civil rights movement and, ultimately, it served as a call to arms for women everywhere,” the text of the presentation states.

The video below (“Forty Years of ‘RESPECT’,” Detroit Free Press) is a music-filled, narrative history of the singer, the song and the times. A text version is here.

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