Soul music legend Aretha Franklin says she plans to retire from full-time touring after she releases a new album in September.”I am retiring this year,” the 74-year-old singer told a Detroit TV station in a telephone interview this week. “I will be recording, but this will be my last year in concert. This is it.”Known as the “Queen of Soul,” Franklin said she planned about a six-month tour to support her upcoming album. She also plans to perform “some select things, many, one a month, for six months out of the year.””I feel very, very enriched and satisfied with respect to where my career came from, and where it is now,” Franklin, who lives in Detroit, told TV station WDIV. “I’ll be pretty much satisfied, but I’m not going to go anywhere and just sit down and do nothing. That wouldn’t be good either.”The album will feature all original songs, several of them produced by Stevie Wonder, Franklin said, but she did not give details.Franklin began her music career in the late 1950s and has won 18 Grammy Awards.Her last album, “Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics,” was released in 2014.
Aretha Franklin to retire from full time touring
