Michael Hill

Aretha Franklin was only twenty-five when she clinched the title of Lady Soul with her unforgettably proud, sexy, candid and confident 1967 version of Otis Redding’s ‘‘Respect.”

Franklin had already given notice of the sound of things to come with her first Jerry Wexler-produced single for Atlantic Records, “I Never Loved a Man (the Way l Love You),” cut at Rick Hall’s Fame Recording Studios, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

That legendary one-day session marked not only the emergence of a prodigious talent but the start of a new era of fresh, forthright soul music.