Aretha Franklin San Francisco March 7, 1971

When the Queen of Soul was booked for a three-night stand (March 5-7, 1971) in San Francisco, the birthplace of the Summer of Love, no one was sure how the crowd would respond. "I wasn't sure how the hippies reacted to me," Aretha Franklin reflected in her 1999 autobiography. And in the words of Franklin's drummer, Bernard Purdie, "She’d been doing what you’d call Vegas-type shows. But this was a whole different audience." She didn't need to worry — the San Francisco audience loved Franklin and her band which featured King Curtis on saxophone and Billy Preston on organ.