(Spoiler alert: Do not read on if you have not seen “Respect.”)
Did Dinah Washington really lose it when she attended one of Aretha Franklin’s shows and heard Franklin sing one of Washington’s songs — as depicted in the new movie “Respect”? Not quite — but it did happen at someone else’s show.
In David Ritz’s biography of Franklin, “Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin,” he writes that Etta James told him she was playing a small club in Providence, Rhode Island, when she heard Washington would be coming to her midnight show: “With that in mind, I decided to open with her big hit, ‘Unforgettable.’