It’s still hard to believe Prince is gone. Roughly two weeks have passed since he left this world, and the tributes are continuing to flood in. The beautiful Aretha Franklin is the latest to add her voice to the collective song of love coming from the music world.
At The White House, Barack Obama (who offered his own tribute to Prince) celebrated the fifth annual International Jazz Day, where many jazz greats such as Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin and Herbie Hancock joined more contemporary jazz musicians like Terrace Martin and Robert Glasper. “There’s something fearless and true about jazz,” Obama remarked at the start of the evening, and that never seemed more true than now.
Aretha Franklin performed a section of Purple Rain, and it is ridiculously moving, despite being quite short. I highly encourage you to watch the whole video, but Purple Rain begins around the 1:14:00 mark. Watch below:
Speaking to MSNBC shortly after Prince’s death, Franklin said that “He was definitely an original and a one-of-a-kind. There was truly only one Prince.”
“He put his stamp [on his sound]. Prince is gone but his music lives on.” She went on to say, “There was a mystique about him that made you want to know a little more about him. Kind of like Stevie [Wonder], he was one of those artists that loved to go into and stay in the studio.”
If there was any artist who could truly do justice to the beauty of Prince’s work, Franklin would be up there.
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