The pair brought up James in the Christian faith, and even as a young girl, her voice stood out in the church choir. James would soon get solos and became so well known, she said that Hollywood stars would come to see her perform. But she wouldn't stay a gospel singer for long.
Rhythm and blues soon lured her away from the church, and she found herself drawn to the grittiness of the music. She was doing just that when bandleader Johnny Otis found her singing on San Francisco street corners with a couple of girlfriends in the early s.
We didn't think we would get in show business, we were just running around making up answers to songs," James told The Associated Press in When Otis heard it, he told James to get her mother's permission to accompany him to Los Angeles to make a recording. Instead, the year-old went home and forged her mother's name on a note claiming she was The Gibbs song was one of several in the early rock era where white singers got hits by covering songs by black artists, often with sanitized lyrics.
And we had a lot of fun," she recalled in She also had a lot of success. Chess Records, whose founder, Leonard Chess, called James their first soul singer, she wrote. Etta's crossed over!
The Chess brothers kept saying how I was their first soul singer, that I was taking their label out of the old Delta blues, out of rock and into the modern era. Soul was the new direction," she said in her autobiography. In , she cut one of the most highly regarded soul albums of all time, "Tell Mama," an earthy fusion of rock and gospel music featuring blistering horn arrangements, funky rhythms and a churchy chorus.
A song from the album, "Security," was a top 40 single in Her professional success, however, was balanced against personal demons - drug addiction.
Billie Holiday sang so groovy. Is that because she's on drugs? It was in my mind as a young person. I probably thought I was a young Billie Holiday, doing whatever came with that.
She was addicted to the drug for years, beginning in , and it led to a harrowing existence that included time behind bars and sapped her singing abilities and her money, almost destroying her career. It would take her at least two decades to beat her drug problem - her husband even went to prison for years, taking full responsibility for drugs during an arrest, even though James was culpable. The mark she made was setting the bar so high for the depths someone can sing from.
The ache and the pain and the ferocity and the soul and the sexiness — it all came through in the space of one three-minute song. Despite her early commercial success, James wrestled for much of her life with her weight, addictions to drugs and alcohol and with her tumultuous relationship with her mother, who was just 14 when she gave birth to Jamesetta Hawkins on Jan.
From Janis Joplin to Joss Stone, an incredible number of performers owe their debts to her. There is no mistaking the voice of Etta James, and it will live forever.
He outlined the song and James finished it, but for tax reasons she gave the co-writing credit to Medallions singer Billy Foster, to whom she was briefly married. It conveys the desperation of a woman who prefers losing her sight to seeing her man with someone else.
James, the child of a single teenage mother growing up in South Los Angeles during World War II, never knew her father but remained convinced throughout her life that he was pool shark Minnesota Fats.
With her blond curls and light complexion, she stood out in the African American community, and she started to make a mark singing in the choir of St. Paul Baptist Church.
Early on, she toured with Johnny Guitar Watson, the Texas singer, songwriter and guitarist, in an association that figured prominently in her approach to music for the rest of her life. Where he really influenced her was in his vocals. He would sing standards and then kind of bluesify them. He had an enormously healthy and rich influence on her.
She also fell under the positive and negative influences of musicians she revered, such as Billie Holiday, as well as some with whom she crossed paths on the road, including Ray Charles and Chet Baker, all of whom struggled with addiction. In the mids, after getting caught writing bad checks to support her drug habit, James was offered a choice between prison or rehab. She chose the latter and kicked heroin, but she started using cocaine a few years later.
A spiritual epiphany led her to give up cocaine and alcohol, and in the s she began a personal and professional renaissance, reestablishing her credibility in the music world.
Those works became family affairs when she enlisted her two sons as co-producers. The family moved to Riverside in the s because James said she had had enough of gang violence and other troubles in South Los Angeles. She lived in a simple ranch-style home. In addition to her two sons, James is survived by Artis Mills, her husband of 42 years;and several grandchildren.
Although there were no more 50s hits, she was a popular attraction in black America's working-class "chitlin' circuit" clubs. In James signed with the Chicago blues label Chess, which began marketing her as the "Queen of Soul". Here her powerhouse contralto voice was matched with the sumptuous, bluesy string arrangements of Riley Hampton, and James truly came into her own as a singer. Tell Mama's B-side was I'd Rather Go Blind, a brooding, agonised ballad of loss and jealousy which now stands as James's most celebrated recording and one of the classic sides of soul music.
James wrote or co-wrote several of her greatest songs. That year, James's influence was everywhere, with a variety of black female singers including Turner, Gladys Knight and Candi Staton employing her defiant, abrasive vocal style. Janis Joplin modelled her singing closely on James and covered Tell Mama. James was a star, yet one seemingly set on self-destruction. Addicted to heroin and bad men, she lived a criminal lifestyle and was jailed several times.
After leaving jail in Anchorage, Alaska, in , she met and married Artis Mills. When, in , the couple were arrested in San Antonio, Texas, on narcotics charges, Mills took the fall. On his release in , the couple reunited. James never again enjoyed a major US hit, although she continued to record strong material.
Perhaps her voice, so raw and emotionally expressive, was too fierce for the general public. Indeed, hurt, anger and self-destructive behaviour boiled beneath the surface of her vocals.
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