Aretha Franklin

In the 1990s Mojo magazine voted Aretha Franklin the greatest singer of all time and it's a view echoed by many people who've been enthralled by electrifying records like Respect, Say A Little Prayer and (You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman. The daughter of Baptist minister Rev C. L. Franklin and singer/pianist Barbara Siggers Franklin, she was raised on gospel music and, mentored by the great gospel singer James Cleveland, made her first album at the age of 14. By the mid-1960s, however, she was embracing pop and R&B under the guidance of Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records, resulting in many of her classic records as she took songs as disparate as Burt Bacharach's ballad I Say A Little Prayer and the old pop hit Spanish Harlem and with her fiercely individual style made them completely her own. By the 1980s she was even collaborating on pop records with younger stars such as George Michael and Eurythmics and although she recorded only sporadically through the 1990s and 2000s, she sang - brilliantly - at the 2009 inauguration of President Obama and her reputation as one of the all-time greats is unimpeachable.