Which label gave Aretha Franklin her first recording deal?

Aretha Franklin’s first recording deal was with J-V-B Records. The Detroit label, run by record-store owner and producer Joe Von Battle, documented Franklin’s earliest gospel performances in 1956, when she was still a teenager.

Those recordings were made at New Bethel Baptist Church, where her father, Reverend C. L. Franklin, was pastor. J-V-B issued them as the gospel album Songs of Faith, making the label an important starting point in Franklin’s professional recording history.

A common mix-up is to name Columbia or Atlantic Records. Columbia signed Franklin when she was 18, and she made several albums there, but that was her first major secular-label contract—not her first recording deal. Atlantic came later, in 1967, and produced her breakthrough soul recordings.