I would rather go blind
At last
A Sunday kind of Love
From
Wikipedia
Etta James (born Jamesetta Hawkins; January
25, 1938 – January 20, 2012) was an American singer who performed in various
genres, including blues, R&B, soul, rock and roll, jazz and gospel.
Starting her career in 1954, she gained fame with hits such as "The
Wallflower", "At Last", "Tell Mama", "Something's
Got a Hold on Me", and "I'd Rather Go Blind".
She
faced a number of personal problems, including heroin addiction, severe
physical abuse, and incarceration, before making a musical comeback in the late
1980s with the album Seven Year Itch.
James's
powerful, deep, earthy voice bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock
and roll. She won six Grammy Awards and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001,
and the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked James number 22
on its list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time; she was also ranked number
62 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time
1938–1959:
Childhood and career beginnings
Hawkins
was born on January 25, 1938, in Los Angeles, California, to Dorothy Hawkins,
who was 14 at the time. Her father has never been identified. James speculated
that she was the daughter of pool player Rudolf "Minnesota Fats"
Wanderone, whom she met briefly in 1987.
Her mother was frequently absent from their
apartment in Watts, conducting relationships with various men, and James lived
with a series of foster parents, most notably "Sarge" and
"Mama" Lu. James referred to her mother as "the Mystery
Lady".
James
received her first professional vocal training at the age of five from James
Earle Hines, musical director of the Echoes of Eden choir at the St. Paul
Baptist Church, in South-Central Los Angeles. Under his tutelage, she suffered
physical abuse during her formative years, with her instructor often punching
her in the chest while she sang to force her voice to come from her gut. As a
consequence, she developed an unusually strong voice for a child her age.
Sarge,
like the musical director for the choir, was also abusive. During drunken poker
games at home, he would awaken James in the early morning hours and force her
with beatings to sing for his friends. The trauma of her foster father forcing
her to sing under these humiliating circumstances caused her to have
difficulties with singing on demand throughout her career.
In
1950, Mama Lu died, and James's biological mother took her to the Fillmore
district of San Francisco. Within a couple of years, she began listening to
doo-wop and was inspired to form a girl group, the Creolettes (because of the
members' light-skinned complexions).
At
the age of 14, she met musician Johnny Otis. Stories on how they met vary. In
Otis's version, she came to his hotel after one of his performances in the city
and persuaded him to audition her. Another story was that Otis spotted the
Creolettes performing at a Los Angeles nightclub and sought for them to record
his "answer song" to Hank Ballard's "Work with Me, Annie". Otis
took the group under his wing, helping them sign to Modern Records and changing
their name from the Creolettes to the Peaches.
He
also gave the singer her stage name, transposing Jamesetta into Etta James.
James recorded the version, for which she was given credit as co-author, in
1954, and the record was released in early 1955 as "Dance with Me,
Henry". The original title of the song was "Roll with Me,
Henry", but it was changed to avoid censorship due to the off-color title (roll
connoting sexual activity). In February of that year, the song reached number
one on the Hot Rhythm & Blues Tracks chart. Its success gave the group an
opening spot on Little Richard's national tour.
While
James was on tour with Richard, pop singer Georgia Gibbs recorded a version of
James's song, which was released under the title "The Wallflower" and
became a crossover hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100, which
angered James. After leaving the Peaches, James had another R&B hit with
"Good Rockin' Daddy" but struggled with follow-ups. When her contract
with Modern came up for renewal in 1960, she signed a contract with Chess
Records instead. Shortly afterwards she was involved in a relationship with the
singer Harvey Fuqua, the founder of the doo-wop group the Moonglows.
Musician
Bobby Murray toured with James for over 20 years. He wrote that James had her
first hit single when she was 15 years old and went steady with B.B. King when
she was 16. James believed that King's hit single "Sweet Sixteen" was
about her.[14] In early 1955, she and an aspiring singer, the 19-year-old Elvis
Presley, then recording for Sun Studios and an avid fan of King's, shared a
bill in a large club just outside Memphis. In her autobiography, she noted how
impressed she was with the young singer's manners. She also recalled how happy
he made her many years later when she found out that it was Presley who had
moved her close friend Jackie Wilson from a substandard convalescent home to a
more appropriate facility and, as she put it, paid all the expenses. Presley
died a year later. Wilson went on to live for another ten years in the care
center Presley found for him.
1960–1978:
Chess and Warner Brothers years
Dueting
with Harvey Fuqua, James recorded for Argo Records (later renamed Cadet
Records), a label established by Chess. Her first hit singles with Fuqua were
"If I Can't Have You" and "Spoonful". Her first solo hit
was the doo-wop–styled rhythm-and-blues song "All I Could Do Was
Cry", which was a number two R&B hit. Chess Records co-founder Leonard
Chess envisioned James as a classic ballad stylist who had potential to cross
over to the pop charts and soon surrounded the singer with violins and other
string instruments.
The
first string-laden ballad James recorded was "My Dearest Darling" in
May 1960, which peaked in the top five of the R&B chart. James sang
background vocals for her labelmate Chuck Berry on his "Back in the
U.S.A."
Her
debut album, At Last!, was released in late 1960 and was noted for its varied
selection of music, from jazz standards to blues to doo-wop and rhythm and
blues (R&B).[18] The album included the future classic "I Just Want to
Make Love to You" and "A Sunday Kind of Love". In early 1961,
James released what was to become her signature song, "At Last",
which reached number two on the R&B chart and number 47 on the Billboard
Hot 100. Though the record was not as successful as expected, her rendition has
become the best-known version of the song.
James followed that with "Trust in
Me", which also included string instruments. Later that same year, James
released a second studio album, The Second Time Around. The album took the same
direction as her first, covering jazz and pop standards and with strings on
many of the songs. It produced two hit singles, "Fool That I Am" and
"Don't Cry Baby".
James
started adding gospel elements in her music the following year, releasing
"Something's Got a Hold on Me", which peaked at number four on the
R&B chart and was a Top 40 pop hit. That success was quickly followed by
"Stop the Wedding", which reached number six on the R&B chart and
also had gospel elements.
In
1963, she had another major hit with "Pushover" and released the live
album Etta James Rocks the House, recorded at the New Era Club in Nashville,
Tennessee. After a couple years of minor hits, James's career started to suffer
after 1965. After a period of isolation, she returned to recording in 1967 and
reemerged with more gutsy R&B numbers thanks to her recording at the
legendary FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. These sessions yielded her
comeback hit "Tell Mama", co-written by Clarence Carter, which
reached number ten R&B and number twenty-three pop. An album of the same
name was also released that year and included her take on Otis Redding's
"Security".
The B-side of "Tell Mama" was
"I'd Rather Go Blind", which became a blues classic and has been
recorded by many other artists. In her autobiography, Rage to Survive, she
wrote that she heard the song outlined by her friend Ellington "Fugi"
Jordan when she visited him in prison. According to her account, she wrote the
rest of the song with Jordan, but for tax reasons gave her songwriting credit
to her partner at the time, Billy Foster.
Following
this success, James became an in-demand concert performer though she never
again reached the heyday of her early to mid-1960s success. Her records
continued to chart in the R&B Top 40 in the early 1970s, with singles such
as "Losers Weepers" (1970) and "I Found a Love" (1972).
Though James continued to record for Chess, she was devastated by the death of
Leonard Chess in 1969. James ventured into rock and funk with the release of
her self-titled album in 1973, with production from the famed rock producer Gabriel
Mekler, who had worked with Steppenwolf and Janis Joplin, who had admired James
and had covered "Tell Mama" in concert. The album, known for its
mixture of musical styles, was nominated for a Grammy Award.
The
album did not produce any major hits; neither did the follow-up, Come a Little
Closer, in 1974, though, like Etta James before it, the album was also
critically acclaimed. James continued to record for Chess (now owned by All
Platinum Records), releasing one more album in 1976, Etta Is Betta Than Evvah!
Her 1978 album Deep in the Night, produced by Jerry Wexler for Warner Bros.,
incorporated more rock-based music in her repertoire. That same year, James was
the opening act for the Rolling Stones and performed at the Montreux Jazz
Festival. Following this brief success, however, she left Chess Records and did
not record for another ten years as she struggled with drug addiction and
alcoholism.
Style
and influence
James
possessed the vocal range of a contralto. Her musical style changed during the
course of her career. At the beginning her recording career, in the mid-1950s,
James was marketed as an R&B and doo-wop singer.
After
signing with Chess Records in 1960, James broke through as a traditional
pop-styled singer, covering jazz and pop music standards on her debut album, At
Last![35] James's voice deepened and coarsened, moving her musical style in her
later years into the genres of soul and jazz.
James
was once considered one of the most overlooked blues and R&B musicians in
the music history of the United States. It was not until the early 1990s, when
she began receiving major industry awards from the Grammys and the Blues
Foundation, that she began to receive wide recognition.
In
recent years, she was seen as bridging the gap between rhythm and blues and
rock and roll. James has influenced a wide variety of musicians, including
Diana Ross, Christina Aguilera, Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt, Shemekia
Copeland,[20] and Hayley Williams of Paramore as well as British artists The
Rolling Stones, Elkie Brooks, Paloma Faith, Joss Stone Rita Ora, and Adele, and
the Belgian singer Dani Klein.
Her
song "Something's Got a Hold on Me" has been recognized in many ways.
Brussels music act Vaya Con Dios covered the song on their 1990 album Night
Owls. Another version, performed by Christina Aguilera, was in the 2010 film
Burlesque. Pretty Lights sampled the song in "Finally Moving",
followed by Avicii's dance hit "Levels", and again in Flo Rida's single
"Good Feeling".
Personal
life
James
encountered a string of legal problems during the early 1970s due to her heroin
addiction. She was continuously in and out of rehabilitation centers, including
the Tarzana Treatment Centers, in Los Angeles, California. Her husband Artis
Mills, whom she married in 1969, accepted responsibility when they were both
arrested for heroin possession and served a 10-year prison sentence. He was
released from prison in 1981 and was still married to James at her death.
In
1974, James was sentenced to drug treatment instead of serving time in prison.
She was in the Tarzana Psychiatric Hospital for 17 months, at the age of 36,
and went through a great struggle at the start of treatment. In her
autobiography, she said that the time she spent in the hospital changed her
life. After leaving treatment, however, her substance abuse continued after she
developed a relationship with a man who was also using drugs. In 1988, at the
age of 50, she entered the Betty Ford Center, in Rancho Mirage, California, for
treatment In 2010, she received treatment for a dependency on painkillers.
James
had two sons, Donto and Sametto. Both started performing with their mother —
Donto played drums at Montreux in 1993, and Sametto played bass guitar circa 2003.
On
June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Etta James among hundreds of
artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
Illness
and death
James
was hospitalized in January 2010 to treat an infection caused by MRSA, a
bacterium resistant to many antibiotics. During her hospitalization, her son
Donto revealed that she had received a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease in
2008.
She
was diagnosed with leukemia in early 2011. The illness became terminal, and she
died on January 20, 2012, five days before her 74th birthday, at Riverside
Community Hospital in Riverside, California
Her death came three days after that of Johnny
Otis, the man who had discovered her in the 1950s. Thirty-six days after her
death, her sideman Red Holloway died.