Adam Graham / Detroit News Pop Music Writer
Aretha Franklin’s decision to postpone all professional activity for the next six months has some worried about the state of the Queen of Soul’s health.
Among the casualties of Franklin’s announcement, which was spurred by doctor’s orders, was a planned Dec. 9 Christmas concert at Detroit’s Fox Theatre. The concert, which was to feature former Temptations lead singer Dennis Edwards, was announced just last week.
“I’m not upset about the cancellation; I’m more concerned about her health,” Edwards said Friday. He said he had tried to get in touch with Franklin but couldn’t because she had recently changed her phone numbers, which he said she does often.
“We go back 40-50 years, from the early Motown days and growing up in Detroit,” he said. “She’s a personal friend of mine, and her health is more important to me than the show.”
Up in the air is Franklin’s involvement in the Thanksgiving activities at Detroit’s New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, once pastored by her father, the late Rev. C.L. Franklin. The church is hosting a Thanksgiving dinner billed as “Aretha’s Thanksgiving Gospel Feast,” but the Rev. Robert Smith, the current pastor, said by e-mail Friday that he wasn’t sure whether Franklin would attend. There has been “no word from her,” Smith said.
The Fox Theatre concert is among a rash of recent concert cancellations from Franklin. The Fox show was announced the same day Franklin, 68, canceled a concert appearance in Charlottesville, Va., “for health reasons,” according to her representative. The next day, Franklin pulled out of an Oct. 30 concert at Drury University in Springfield, Mo., also citing health concerns.
The Charlottesville concert had originally been set for Oct. 1 but was postponed after Franklin’s son, Eddie, was beaten at a Detroit gas station. The fallout from that Sept. 21 attack pushed Franklin to release a statement blasting “gross inaccuracies” by both the media and the police regarding the incident.
Earlier in August, Franklin was forced to cancel her first-ever Brooklyn concerts, scheduled for Aug. 9 and 12, as well as an appearance at a birthday party for U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., after she fell and suffered two fractured ribs.
“I was very much looking forward to being in Brooklyn and having a foot-long hot dog at Coney Island,” Franklin said in a statement at the time, adding she was hoping to reschedule the concerts for later that month. She never did.
In April, Franklin backed out of an appearance at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, just 10 hours before she was due to perform. It was the second year in a row she pulled out of a scheduled performance at the festival.
Franklin did appear at a concert in Philadelphia in July, where she performed with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The benefit concert raised more than half a million dollars for Philadelphia’s Mann Center, the summer home of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She also performed at a concert in Vienna, Va., that same month and in October at Caesars in Atlantic City.
On Tuesday, it was announced, through her representative, that Franklin had been released from Sinai Grace Hospital in Detroit “following a brief stay.” The statement said she was resting comfortably at home but was anxious to get back on the road.
Meanwhile, Edwards, who had just returned from a performance overseas when he was informed of the Fox show’s cancellation, said he was in the dark about her condition. “I am just deeply concerned at this point,” he said.
agraham@detnews.com
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