Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin has been making some rare appearances in New York to rub elbows with industry bigs.
“I don’t get to be with [entertainment] industry people as much as I’d like to, living in Detroit,” said the singer, humorously pronouncing the Michigan city with a heavy French accent.
At a premiere of civil-rights film “Selma,” the Memphis-born legend, who won’t travel by air, recalled to Page Six: “When I was a little girl, I remember there were certain restaurants that I could not eat at. We went to the market instead. We brought groceries and ate in the car.”
She said of touring with her musician dad: “When we’d stop to get gas, we had to go to certain gas stations because we could not use the restrooms at all of them. We could only use the restrooms at Gulf. We’ve come a long way…because of Dr. King and the civil-rights movement, my life is forever changed.”
Aretha recently refuted unsavory accounts of her time on the road with her father in David Ritz’s unauthorized book, “Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin.”
She blasted it as “trashy.”