While most of the Aretha Franklin memories being shared today are from live performances like Barack Obama’s inauguration or the Kennedy Center Honors, the legendary singer also gave a memorably sweet performance in a sitcom cameo back in 1991. During Murphy Brown’s season-four episode “The Queen of Soul,” Brown lands an interview with Franklin on her show, only for Franklin’s train and limo to the studio to get so delayed that she doesn’t make it on time, leaving Brown and her crew scrambling to fill the dead airtime. Eventually, Brown gets a one-on-one meeting with Franklin, who treats her fan to her own personal performance of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” The song was somewhat of a hallmark on Murphy Brown, with Bergen’s character singing it in both the series-premiere episode “Respect” and the season-four finale “Birth 101”:
Franklin served as a kind of patron saint to Brown, played by Candice Bergen, reminding the newswoman of who she wanted to be and what it sounded like to be a strong woman comfortable in her own skin. Franklin’s songs bookended the entire series.
In fact, creator Diane English has said the concept of Murphy Brown fell into her head perfectly formed one day while she was sitting in Los Angeles traffic, and Franklin’s “Respect” came on the radio. True to her initial bolt of inspiration, this song framed the very first moments of the pilot episode when Murphy Brownpremiered in November 1988 on CBS.
“Respect”—which had become a black power and women’s liberation anthem after Franklin recorded the Otis Redding song in 1967—played as the camera cruised across Brown’s office at the TV news program FYI, scanning the magazine covers that hung on her walls with headlines like, “Move Over Mike Wallace!” and “Who Is Man Enough for This Woman?” Before we ever heard Brown’s voice, we heard Franklin’s.