The Queen is dead

It wouldn't be black church without at least one perfectly mad hat, and Cicely Tyson wins the brass figlagee, with a number that looks like a cross between a beekeeper's headgear and those wigs that British judges still, inexplicably, wear.

I'm watching the funeral of Aretha Franklin on BET, which has more coverage with less annoying commentary than the other cables.  (C-SPAN, for some reason, is covering McCain.)  Rick Snyder, the Fiend Who Poisoned Flint, had to be invited, I guess, but most of the other speakers and singers were well chosen and right:  Jesse Jackson, Smokey Robinson, William Barber, Bill Clinton, Michael Eric Dyson, Eric Holder, Clive Davis, Al Sharpton, Ariana Grande, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Faith Hill, Tyler Perry, Isiah Thomas.  Nearly six hours -- the funeral of a queen, like a coronation, takes stamina.

I would say there were three pivotal singers in twentieth century popular music.  Bing Crosby taught the megaphone boys how to use a microphone, intimately, intensely, to sing to one person at a time.  Frank Sinatra took Bing's "crooning" style and made each lyric tell a story, for which he frequently gave credit to Billie Holiday.  Aretha Franklin brought gospel music, with its melisma and intensity, out of the church to transform popular song.  If you doubt, listen to any of these amateur-night shows on the networks.  You will hear aspiring singer after singer imitating Whitney Houston imitating Aretha.  That is as close as you want to get to a volcano.  And a volcano is almost as hard to ignore.

Her voice was a force of nature, and we have it forever.