Aretha Franklin, 1942-2018 Rob Beschizza 7:47 am Thu, Aug 16, 2018 Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul, died in Detroit today at the age of 76. She scored at least 112 singles on the Billboard charts, with 20 number ones. Sir Elton John: “she was one of my favourite pianists.” Photo: Wikimedia (CC0 1.0)