Erma Franklin Biography
13 March 1938, Shelby, Mississippi, Tennessee, USA, d. 7 September 2002, Detroit, Michigan, USA. The older sister of Aretha Franklin and Carolyn Franklin, this excellent singer’s career was overshadowed by her illustrious sibling. Erma’s most celebrated moment came in 1967 with ‘Piece Of My Heart’, an intense uptown soul ballad co-written, produced and released by Bert Berns of Shout Records. The song was adopted by Janis Joplin, but Franklin’s own progress faltered with the collapse of the Shout label after Berns’ untimely death. Although she did secure a minor 1969 hit with ‘Gotta Find Me A Lover (24 Hours A Day)’ for Brunswick Records, her later work failed to match that early promise. From the early 70s much of her time was spent working for Boysville, a child care charity in Detroit. In 1992, Levi Strauss Jeans chose ‘Piece Of My Heart’ for one of their television advertisements, and in predictable fashion it scaled the charts and gave Franklin her true moment of (belated) glory. Franklin died of throat cancer in September 2002.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
|
