STEVE PERRY Pays Tribute To ARETHA FRANKLIN: 'Her Music Was So Important To Me'

Former JOURNEY singer Steve Perry paid tribute to Aretha Franklin, the "Queen of Soul," who died Thursday after it was reported earlier this week that she was "gravely ill" in Detroit. Her family said that the cause of death was advanced pancreatic cancer of the neuroendocrine type.

During an appearance on the "Volume Remembers Aretha Franklin" show on SiriusXM's Volume channel, Perry said about Franklin: "When I was younger, her music was so important to me. And when I saw the documentaty about Rick Hall and Muscle Shoals, it was obvious to me that her voice, when it connected to the swampers in Muscle Shoals, became this incredible marriage between their love for R&B and her voice. Because they used to cut a lot of tracks here in New York, but it didn't click until she went down there. And so it became this magical thing, and some of her most amazing hits came out of that. And she is in the documentary about Muscle Shoals, where she talks about that. I'm really sad about that, because she is iconic and one of my favorites of all time."

Franklin was 76 years old at the time of her death.

In 1987, Franklin became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, and was later named the "Greatest Singer of All Time" by Rolling Stone.

Perry's new solo album, "Traces", will be released on October 5 via Fantasy Records (a division of Concord Records/UMG). The disc marks his first solo album since 1994's "For The Love Of Strange Medicine", which was certified gold in the U.S. for sales in excess of half a million copies.