Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote “ Natural Woman” for Aretha Franklin in 1967. In 2015, Franklin gave King a gift back, by singing “Natural Woman” for her when she was being celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors. The songwriter’s visible reaction, capture on video alongside fellow attendee Barack Obama’s, was almost as priceless as the Queen of Soul’s performance itself.
King offered her recollections of that night — which went down just three years before Franklin died in 2018 — in conversation with “Respect” star Jennifer Hudson for this week’scover story. Watch a video excerpt from the conversation above, as Hudson exclaims “I want to know that, too!” when King is asked what was going through her mind as she watched Franklin reach such a late-career high on that illustrious night in D.C.
“At the show, the very first thing I see her is her come out wearing the mink. Was it Clara Ward who wears the mink in the movie?” asks King, as Hudson affirms the thought. “Aretha took her inspiration from those gospel singers with that, and I was like, ‘Well, that’s cool.’ Then she sat down at the piano. She’s a great player, but she had not been playing piano in her later life like she used to.
“And that’s where ‘Singing My Way Home’ came from,” says Hudson, referring to “Here I Am ,” the song she co-wrote with King for the end credits of the new film. “Even in her last days, what was she doing? She was on the piano, still singing. And she sang until she sang her way home.”
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