"The Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin is dead. She was a great woman with a wonderful gift from God her voice. She will be missed!" Trump said in a Twitter post Efe reported.
Bill and Hillary Clinton said the artist was "elegant graceful and utterly uncompromising in her artistry".
"For more than 50 years she stirred our souls " the Clintons said noting that Franklin s first music school was the church.
Barack Obama said in a statement that Franklin "may have passed on to a better place but the gift of her music remains to inspire us."
"In her voice we could feel our history all of it and in every shade - our power and our pain our darkness and our light our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect " Obama and his wife Michelle said.
Franklin was a favoured artist among US presidents performing for Jimmy Carter Clinton and Obama.
In 2005 President George W. Bush honoured Franklin with the Presidential Medal of Freedom the nation s highest civilian honour.
--IANS ahm/
