David Ritz reveals Aretha Franklin looked at Gladys and Diana as "rivals" in bio
I just go ahead and just get this out of the way: Aretha felt Diana and Gladys were her competition for her "Queen of Soul" throne, according to David Ritz, which just confirms what they have said about Aretha all along. She also saw Barbra Streisand as a threat when she was signed to Columbia.
In David Ritz's new book on Aretha titled "Respect: The Secret Life of Aretha Franklin", it pretty much reveals most of what was an open secret: that Aretha has had a rough life pretty much: her mother abandoned her according to the biography despite Aretha's claims she didn't, she had her first child at 12 to Donald Burk, a boy she knew at school, and a second at 14, to a man named Edward Jordan, called a "player" by Aretha's brother Cecil. Her father was very promiscuous and according to Ray Charles, he said C. L.'s church included both sinners and saints apparently saying they had sex and weed orgies.
What we also know: Aretha suffered an abusive "marriage" to Ted White, who Ritz confirms Betty Wright's account that he was a pimp. She tried pretending the marriage was going well until they divorced in 1968. Aretha's marriage caused her to drink heavily and binge on food. She was so stone faced drunk one night that she made the stage and tumbled down breaking her arm. This caused her to escape from the studio from months on end. Aretha calmed down her alcohol intake by the mid-1970s according to the book but continued to suffer from binging on food.
Aretha would cancel concerts at the last minute or wouldn't show up at all and would be forced to pay gigs. Aretha dismissed Whitney Houston after they recorded their duet in 1989. She also fell out with Mavis Staples. Aretha got into it heavily with Luther Vandross. Whenever she wanted to quiet down stories of her wild lifestyle, she would usually call JET to make up stories about her. If she wasn't available, JET would make up the stories themselves. The book also hints that Aretha and Sam Cooke might've had a sexual encounter or two with Sam revealing that he liked more than Aretha's voice.
I wonder who has the book, can you reveal what was also revealed in the book?