Queen of Soul No King of the Road

The Queen of Soul is ending her reign on the concert circuit.

Aretha Franklin announced Monday that she plans to retire from touring following her current jaunt, which kicked off Friday at the Palace Theater in Albany, New York, and is scheduled through the spring and summer before wrapping up in the fall.

Billed as "Aretha Sings Her Musical History," the outing will be the last full-blown trek of the Grammy-winning diva's career.

Though she may no longer feel like the spry natural woman of her younger days, the R&B songstress can still shake it with the best of them. To that end, her camp has put out a call for male and female dancers ages 18 to 35 to attend open auditions in Detroit the second week in May to get in on her touring troupe.

But just because she's calling it quits from touring doesn't mean Aretha's hanging up the mike for good--she plans to release a brand-new studio album sometime in the fall.

"I'll never quit," she tells USA Today. "I'll always be singing. I just won't do as much as I have been. I'm scaling it down."

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer isn't the only road warrior packing it in this year. Cher has got similar vibes, too, babe.

While she has announced her retirement before, the singer and onetime Oscar winner said her current tour will almost certainly be her last--due to what she calls the "law of diminishing returns" for stage shows.

"I just kept saying we're not going to be able to do something better than the Believe tour. I [couldn't] think of anything," she told AP Radio. "And then one day we came up with one item, and then everything kind of started to fall into place."

One thing that's not diminishing however is Cher's audience. Last Tuesday's two-hour television concert special, Cher: The Farewell Tour, scored NBC its highest ratings in the adults 18-to-49 category since October 2000. And her latest greatest hits collection, The Very Best of Cher, debuted at number seven on last week's album charts.

Then there's Eric Clapton.

Perhaps finally feeling his age, old Slowhand told RollingStone.com that he was thinking about hanging up his guitar after 2001's Reptile tour--his first world trek in more than decade.

And Barbra Streisand fueled speculation of her impending exit from the stage when she announced that her pricey Y2K performance at the MGM Grand was perhaps her final show (notwithstanding the occasional fundraiser for the Democratic party).

"We may be seeing more [retirees] because so many of the generation that really created rock 'n' roll is coming toward the end of their career--physically and not just in terms of popularity," says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert trade Pollstar.

"In Aretha's case, she's never toured very heavily," he adds. But Cher is another story. "Cher announced its her farewell tour and that's continuing into its second year. An artist like Cher doesn't need to do it because she's already made her money but she does it anyway," says Bongiovanni.

But while their contemporaries stop playing live, the Eagles still live life in the fast lane. The California rockers will spend this summer on their wryly named "Farewell I" tour--not to be confused with farewell tour.

In fact, band members joked about the moniker, saying they've no intention of calling it quits. After all, they've already done that.

"Yeah, we're breaking up on August 15," singer-guitarist Glenn Frey told Launch, "and then we're gonna get back together on the 23rd of September."