R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Otis Redding wrote and performed it — quite successfully — but Aretha Franklin made it soar. Her background, as the daughter of a Baptist minister, surrounded by and participating in gospel choirs from her earliest years, made her the perfect singer for the soul-infused former ballad. But so did her personal life, when her early promising career was interrupted by pregnancy and the raising of two small boys on her own. The age during which the single landed also made it an informal theme for a whole generation of downtrodden, but proud and determined people.

On this day, April 29, in 1967, Aretha Franklin released her cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect.” Franklin had already been in the Top 10 songs before it; but the single launched her into the stratosphere, hitting #1 in the U.S. and Australia, and going to #10 in the UK. It even climbed to #7 for a time in Italy.

“Respect” was released around the same time the simmering Civil Rights conflict was boiling over into violence. A bomb exploded at a black school in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four children; while Newark and Detroit submerged into race riots. Aretha Franklin’s song became an inspiration and a motto for an African-American community fighting for equality.