Aretha Franklin biography
Franklin had a third son, Ted White, Jr. (sometimes referred to as Teddy Richards), with her manager and former family friend Ted White, Sr., born in 1964. Teddy is the musical director and guitarist of his mother's touring band. A relationship with road manager Ken Cunningham produced a fourth son, Kecalf, who was named after the first initials of their parents' names. Kecalf Franklin, Aretha's youngest son, is currently a rapper and produces gospel recordings.
Marriages
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Against her father's wishes, Franklin married her first husband, Ted White, in front of a justice of the peace in Ohio in 1961 when she was nineteen. White later replaced Franklin's father as her manager in the mid 1960s and settled in 1964. According to close friends, White was physically abusive and it's suggested White's physical abuse and later philandering was the cause of Franklin's heart-wrenching vocals on her best-known recordings during the Atlantic years. Her producer Jerry Wexler once called Franklin "the lady of mysterious sorrows" since Franklin didn't tell anyone of her back story. Following a 1968 cover article in Time magazine in which portions of her abusive marriage and a claim that her mother abandoned her at a young age led Franklin to not give any interviews to media groups and increasing her privacy.
After ending her affair with Ken Cunningham after a seven-year on-again, off-again relationship, Franklin married actor Glynn Turman after a whirlwind courtship on April 11, 1978 at her father's New Bethel Baptist Church with her father presiding over the ceremony. Franklin became a stepmother to two of Turman's children from a previous marriage. Due to their schedules, however, it wasn't long before their marriage fell apart despite living together in Franklin's mansion in Encino. In 1982, Franklin and Turman filed for divorce after only four years, amicably divorcing in early 1984. In early 2012, it was reported that Franklin was set to walk down the aisle a third time with her longtime companion Willie Wilkerson. Franklin and Wilkerson had plans to marry in 1987 but later nixed those plans. Within a week after Franklin had announced the wedding this year, she nixed the plans again.
Relatives, other romances and friends
Franklin's sisters Erma and Carolyn were professional singers and sung as backup for Aretha during her initial success at Atlantic. Her brother Cecil Franklin took over as her manager after her divorce from Ted White was finalized. Franklin remained her manager until his death from cancer in 1989. Sister Carolyn preceded Cecil in 1988 from ovarian cancer while Erma Franklin died from cancer in 2002. Franklin's eldest half-brother, Vaughn (c. 1934) and half-sister Carl Kelley (née Jennings; born 1940) are still alive. Kelley is C.L. Franklin's daughter by Mildred Jennings, a then 13-year-old congregant of New Salem Baptist Church of Memphis, Tennessee, where C.L. was pastor in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Franklin was close to her minister father, C. L. Franklin. C. L. served as Franklin's first manager, a position he gave up to Ted White in 1964. Franklin's marriage to White led to an estrangement with her father until she divorced White in 1969. Franklin was performing in Las Vegas in July 1979 when her father was shot at his home at LaSalle Street in Detroit. Franklin and her family nursed their father back to his home after the shooting left him in a coma. Franklin later moved back to Detroit in 1982 to take care of her father, who died in July 1984.
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