Aretha's last ride: The vintage hearse that carried Rosa Parks will now bear the Queen of Soul

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Morning Mix

Aretha’s last ride: The vintage hearse that carried Rosa Parks will now bear the Queen of Soul



The 1940 Cadillac LaSalle that will carry Aretha Franklin home, seen Wednesday outside the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. (Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

By Meagan Flynn
August 30 at 7:03 AM

When Aretha Franklin is laid to rest Friday, she’ll travel as she did all her life: with grace and glamour.

The hearse that will carry her is a regal, pearly-white 1940 LaSalle, made by Cadillac, with sparkling chrome detail that looked as though it had been custom-made for the Queen of Soul herself. For the last 50 years, it’s been reserved at Swanson Funeral Home for some of the Motor City’s most stately send-offs.

The ivory hearse carried Rosa Parks in 2005, when the pallbearers pushed the antique vehicle with all their might on the final stretch toward the civil rights hero’s grave at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery. It transported the Temptations baritone David Ruffin in 1991 and Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops in 2008. And it ushered Franklin’s father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, in 1984.

Through it all, O’Neil D. Swanson II has been the man behind the scenes at every occasion. Swanson, the octogenarian funeral director at Swanson Funeral Home, has owned the business since 1958, and has been close to the Franklin family for years, he told The Washington Post.
....



The LaSalle leaves the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History on Aug. 28 (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
....

Meagan Flynn is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. She was previously a reporter at the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Press. Follow https://twitter.com/Meagan_Flynn

[malaise]

1. Lovely

Rec

[femmocrat]

2. Always classy until the end.

[denbot]

3. Fitting last ride for "The Queen of Soul".

I do hope the pallbearers won’t have to push it this time..

[marble falls]

4. Seriously nice ride, rightfully a museum piece.

[calimary]

5. NICE touch.

[bluescribbler]

6. Fitting

Nobody deserves it more.

[Anon-C]

7. Now that's a ride home!

[struggle4progress]

8. Bridge Over Troubled Water

[demsocialist]

9. Right On! nt

[struggle4progress]

10. How I Got Over

[mahatmakanejeeves]

12. Aretha's ups and downs: a posthumous appreciation

August 23, 2018 at 7:43 am EDT | by Joey DiGuglielmo

Aretha’s ups and downs: a posthumous appreciation

Aretha Franklin’s career accomplishments were, of course, impressive — 18 competitive Grammys (only Beyonce with 22 and Alison Krauss with 27 have her beat among women), first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and a gravitas in the culture that meant when the U.S. wanted to put its best foot forward — Obama’s inauguration, Pope Francis’ stateside visit — Franklin was the go-to performer (oddly, those two performances were among her less memorable musically).

In a way, Franklin’s accomplishments are a bit curious. She was more a singles-oriented artist, so her various albums (often cobbled together from various recording stints not necessarily recorded with any cohesive statement in mind) never went through the roof. When the 1985 title “30 Greatest Hits” reentered the Billboard chart last week at No. 7 upon news of her death, it was her highest-charting album since her landmark gospel masterpiece “Amazing Grace” made it to no. 7 way back in 1972.

There were also long stretches where Franklin went eons between albums and even when she did release them, they sometimes barely made blips on the charts. Beyonce is, of course, an arbitrary comparison in many ways — she and Franklin are of different eras — but a Beyonce album is always an event. All six of her studio albums have hit the top spot, while Franklin never once had a no. 1-selling album. During her hottest era upon first signing with Atlantic in the late ‘60s, the top spot proved evasive with 1967’s “I Never Loved a Man” peaking at no. 2, “Aretha Arrives” at no. 5, “Lady Soul” at no. 2 and “Aretha Now” at no. 3.

Later releases sometimes tanked for decent records like “Through the Storm” (no. 55) and “What You See is What You Sweat” (no. 153), unthinkable numbers for a Beyonce or a Mariah Carey. Franklin was 47 when “Through the Storm” came out in spring, 1989. Carey was 45 when her last album, 2014’s “Me. I Am Mariah …” made it to no. 3. For some hard-to-pinpoint reason, Franklin never developed the fiercely loyal fan base that ensures veteran acts top 10 album releases even decades after their heydays.
....

The Blade’s Joey DiGuglielmo has written extensively about Aretha Franklin including a review of her last album, a 2014 concert review and critique of David Ritz’s notorious biography and a 2012 interview with Franklin scholar Anthony Heilbut.

Joey DiGuglielmo is the Features Editor for the Washington Blade.

https://twitter.com/WashBlade

[SleeplessinSoCal]

11. Only after her passing did I learn the importance she placed on how . . .

. . . she presented herself. From hats, to outfits, to transportation, she thought seriously about how she was seen.