Stevie Wonder Remembers His Final Words To A Dying Aretha Franklin
Detroit native Stevie Wonder said he told Aretha Franklin to “say hello to my sister” in his final conversation with the dying Queen of Soul.
Wonder, speaking today on CBS This Morning, said he visited Franklin at her home two days before she passed. He choked up as he recalled the meeting.
“She wasn’t able to speak back, but her family felt that she could hear me, and so I just said all the things that I’ve always said and told her to say hello to my sister,” Wonder said. His sister died in May.
Wonder was going to record a track with Franklin.
“We’d been talking about it,” Wonder said. “There was a song that I had written called ‘The Future,’ and we were going to sing it together.” He again became emotional during the conversation. “I thought I cried my last tear.”
Wonder talked about Franklin, her father, and how the two of them inspired him.
“She did incredible music, incredible singer,” he said. “She touched every genre. Every singer was influenced in some way by the way she sang, and they will forever be influenced by her because of her voice, her emotion; her sincerity is unforgettable…
“I remember hearing her singing at the Reverend Franklin’s church when I was little — maybe I was 4 or 5 years old — because my mother would always listen to the church services on Sunday. And so the voices I remember most in my life would be Dr. King, her voice, and her father, Reverend Franklin.”
In the end, Wonder said, “She was just consistently a great human being, and she always — even with whatever turmoil may have been happening in her life, even through her illness — she did not put that on anybody else.”
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