Aretha Franklin's bass player has described her as a generous and kind person who was an "icon" in her hometown of Detroit.

Ralphe Armstrong played the bass for Franklin for 30 years and spoke to Sky News following the announcement that she had died on Thursday after suffering from pancreatic cancer.

Franklin, known as the Queen of Soul, was 76.

Armstrong said: "I'm very sad because I'm going to miss her.

"I'm going to miss her calling me up on Friday nights and saying 'What are you doing?' and 'What's new? What are you playing?'."


He likened her to jazz musician Miles Davis, saying she was "always striving for new things".

But he also remembered a woman of generosity, saying she had given money to "poor people, to organisations to help homeless people", adding: "She was a great person".

"When she hired orchestras she would pay their pensions.

"She would file their contracts and she would pay over scale to performers and she was very generous and she cared about people."

Image: Ralphe Armstrong is considered one of the word's great bass players

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Three Degrees singer Sheila Ferguson told Sky News: "Aretha was mother earth. We have all lost a member of our family with Aretha.

"Having Aretha, and hearing that voice that went into your chest and rumbled around and rearranged everything... we had never heard anything like it before.

"She epitomised everything we were going through in the late 60s with the civil rights movement, with female liberation, with Martin Luther King, with family, and God and religion.

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"She crossed over from black and gospel into white and she showed us there was nothing we couldn't do. But you can't top the queen."

She recounted a story of crossing paths with her at LAX airport, singing one of her songs, and being recognised by the soul singer.

She added: "It warms my heart to know she reached so many people.

"She went from generation to generation and strength to strength. Even all the personal things she went through, she kept it to herself and kept on keeping on.

"There are no shortcuts, she will be around when none of us are doing this anymore."

Aretha was 'Mother Earth'

Franklin was born on 25 March, 1942, in Memphis, Tennessee, but it was Detroit that became her home.

She began her singing career there, as a child singing gospel at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father was minister.

And it was in Detroit that she played one of her final shows - in June last year, visibly unwell but still able to summon the magical voice that had made her famous.

She had ended the performance with what were seen as cryptic words at the time: "Please keep me in your prayers."

Armstrong, 62, said Franklin had been a "champion" and an "icon" for the city of Detroit.

He described the city as having been "kicked and spat on", adding that "people forget that this city helped save the free world in 1941 with munitions and arms production".

Franklin announced her partial retirement last year, most recently performing in November at Sir Elton John's Aids Foundation's 25th anniversary gala in New York.

Tributes to soul legend Aretha Franklin

She recorded hundreds of tracks during her legendary career, including hits such as Respect, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, I Say A Little Prayer and Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves.

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She sang at Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009, and the former president - who was brought to tears by another of her performances in Washington in 2015 - was quick to issue a powerful tribute with his wife.

Also among those sharing tributes to the singer were Sir Elton John, Barbra Streisand, Sir Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox, Lionel Richie and Carole King.

Franklin's family described her as "the matriarch and rock of our family", saying that her death was "one of the darkest moments of our lives".

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Armstrong had his own tribute: "One thing I'm going to tell you about Aretha…she wasn't about no bull.

"If you didn't play her music right you would be beheaded.

"I learned from Aretha how to be a hard-playing guy.

"You got to give 100% and when I played with her I gave 100%."