On Aretha Franklin’s ex-husbands and children
Behind her seemingly effortless stage performances and the endless adulation that was showered on her, Franklin was a troubled soul. The product of a broken home and a philandering preacher father, she became pregnant for the first time when she was 12 and had had two children by different fathers by the time she was 15. Clarence Franklin, her father and the single most influential person in her life, was an enormously successful Baptist preacher.

