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There are only a handful of people alive today who participated in the formation of modern gospel music in Chicago during the 1930s and 1940s. Fewer still worked directly with the genre’s founding mothers and fathers in those early days. Perhaps only one of them can claim to have also taught Aretha Franklin a hymn that became her first commercial single as a soloist.

Floriene Watson Willis is the one.

Turning 99 on Dec. 6, she never became a major star, but she nevertheless held a prominent position in the sanctuary as gospel music formed and flourished in Chicago some 90 years ago. “I wasn’t too worried about being popular,” she said during a recent video interview from her current home in Lakewood, Washington. “I just sang to the glory of G

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