Aretha's hold on her crown is tenacious, and in RESPECT David Ritz gives us the decisive and definitive study of one of the greatest American talents of the twentieth century. ********** At the Marion County Courthouse, where a statue of a Confederate soldier had stood guard since 1908, Musleh ordered the show’s promoter, Albert Wright, to refund all customers. Soon a lawyer named Don Denson appeared in Musleh’s office. “Gus, I’m representing Lavell Hardy,” he said, “and he’s already been punished because he paid my fee!” Hardy had had $7,000 when they arrested him, he said.

“We pretty well cleaned him out!” Satisfied that Hardy had paid his dues—about $48,600 in today’s dollars—Musleh freed him on the condition that he leave Florida. With no money for a lawyer, Jones pleaded her own case directly to Musleh in his office. “I want the truth told,” she insisted. Jones told him she’d been forced to sing just for room and board, or face a dip in the bay. “I had gone to Florida to perform under my stage name of Vickie Jane Jones,” she insisted.

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Musleh believed her. “She didn’t have a red cent. She had four children at home and no way to get to them. We were thoroughly convinced that ‘Vickie’ was forced into being Aretha Franklin,” he concluded. But Musleh was curious how Jones had fooled so many people. So he asked her to sing. Her voice traveled out from Musleh’s office, filling the entire courtroom.

“This girl is a singer,” Musleh said. “She is terrific. Just singing without a combo, she showed she had a distinctive style of her own.” He decided not to file any charges.

“It was obvious she was a victim,” he said. And so Jones emerged from the courthouse a free woman, into a throng of reporters. “The judge said I really sounded like her,” Jones told them.

“I know I can use a little training in singing jazz and the blues, but I feel I can go all the way. I don’t believe there is such a word as ‘can’t.’” Waiting for her outside was Ray Greene, a white Jacksonville lawyer and entrepreneur who had become fixated on her story. Greene offered Jones a contract and sent her back to West Petersburg with a $500 cash advance. “I’m her managing agent and adviser,” the self-made millionaire told the Tampa Tribune before orchestrating what became a sold-out tour. And if Jones once needed money, Greene said, “she don’t need none now.” Jones again left her children with her mother and traveled back to Florida.

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This time she ate fine steaks. “I don’t like hamburgers no more,” she told delighted reporters. On February 6, just before 10:30 p.m., she stood in the wings at the Sanford Civic Center. Onstage was one of America’s finest bandleaders and the winner of nine Grammys, Duke Ellington. “I want to introduce you to a Florida girl who made national headlines two weeks ago,” Ellington said, glossing over the details of Jones’ story.

He ushered her into the limelight. His band, one of the greatest jazz orchestras of all time, had fallen into “Every Day I Have the Blues” when Jones took the microphone. The crowd fell silent as she began to wail: “Speaking of bad luck and trouble, well, you know I’ve had my share.” Afterward, Ellington planted a kiss on her cheek. “Did you get that one?” he asked the photographers, and when he kissed her a second time, a flashbulb popped. The next cover of Jet was not Aretha Franklin but a new star named Vickie Jones.

“How could a nobody like Vickie have snared a well-to-do white Southern backer,” asked the magazine, “then secured the help of one of the most famous bandleader-composers of music the world has ever known?” “It was so exciting just to be in Duke’s company,” Jones recalled. “But he don’t know how I sing, and I don’t know how he play.” She told the press that she hoped to complete her high school diploma. “Being black or white has nothing to do with success. It all depends on the individual,” she added, sounding more like the real Franklin with every interview. “No one can help the color he is—we were all born that way, and I never have been able to figure out what people get out of being segregated.”.