Franklin appeared on the cover of TIME in 1968, with a story that commended the “fierce, gritty conviction” of her voice.
“She flexes her rich, cutting voice like a whip; she lashes her listeners —in her words—’to the bone, for deepness,'” TIME noted at the time. “She does not seem to be performing so much as bearing witness to a reality so simple and compelling that she could not possibly fake it.”
50 years ago: June 28, 1968
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