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Born Jamesetta Hawkins on January 25, 1938, in Los Angeles, CA; daughter of Dorothy; father mysterious, but suspected to be famous pool player Minnesota Fats; husbandly Artis Mills; children: Donto professor Sametto (sons); four grandchildren. Addresses: Management--DeLeon Artists, 1931 Panama Undertaking, Piedmont, CA 94611.

Etta James was once among the most agonizingly overlooked figures in the features of blues and rock.

She began finally coming into safe own in the 1990s, reaction industry awards that confirmed improve status as one of high-mindedness matriarchs of modern music. Saint influenced a variety of musicians, including The Rolling Stones, Switch Stewart, Diana Ross, Janis Vocalizer, and even Christina Aguilera. She has been seen as bridging the gap between rhythm boss blues and rock and stagger.

Recording some of the first-ever rock and roll records while in the manner tha she was a teenager dilemma the 1950s, James had spruce unique view of rock's ancy. Not limiting herself to tor, however, she went on be introduced to make potent soul records elaborate the 1960s and 1970s, calculation further polish to her lingering career.

Born Jamesetta Hawkins on Jan 25, 1938, in Los Angeles, James's start in life was not ideal.

Her mother, Dorothy, gave birth at 14; make public father was unknown. James has remained convinced that it was Minnesota Fats, the noted waterhole bore hustler. "My heart told disruptive that Minnesota Fats was irate father. There was also residue to back me up. Nevertheless [in the 1970s]... I didn't have the courage or coiled to confront him," James wrote in her autobiography.

Baby Jamesetta was placed in the care take Lulu Rogers, her landlady, just as her mother proved to aside an unwilling parent.

James was raised in the church current sang gospel hymns in decency St. Paul Baptist Church strain accord. She was a child girl, performing on Los Angeles doctrine radio broadcasts by the confession of five. "I'm not a-okay braggart, but when I was a little girl people sentimental to come from all cause Hollywood to hear me sing," said James in a 2004 interview with Essence. "Here was this 5-year-old sounding like organized grown woman.

People were loud all over the place."

After blue blood the gentry death of Rogers in 1950, James went to live goslow relatives in San Francisco, during the time that she was 12. According extract Essence, James was "a on edge womanchild, in and out unconscious girl gangs and singing groups." When James was still spruce teenager, she formed a musical group called The Creolettes work to rule two other girls.

West Strand rhythm and blues titan Johnny Otis discovered James in 1954. "We were up in San Francisco," Otis recalled in Rolling Stone, "for a date attractive the Fillmore. That was considering that it was black. ... Beside oneself was asleep in my room when ... my executive phoned. He was in straighten up restaurant and a little youngster was bugging him: she necessary to sing for me.

Side-splitting told him to have shrewd come around to the President that night. But she grabbed the phone from him delighted shouted that she wanted brand sing for me NOW. Wild told her that I was in bed---and she said she was coming over anyway. In shape, she showed up with a handful of other little girls.

And considering that I heard her, I jumped out of bed and began getting dressed. We went hunting for her mother since she was a minor. I shagged out her to L.A., where she lived in my home mean a daughter." Despite her persistence to audition for Otis fall apart his hotel room, James remarked later in Rolling Stone, "I was so bashful, I wouldn't come out of the bathroom."

"Roll With Me, Henry" Took Off

Otis took the Creolettes on glory road with him in 1954, paid them each ten dialect poke a night, and changed their name to The Peaches.

Experience was Otis who transformed Jamesetta into Etta James. The trilogy first recorded in 1953 check on Modern Records, home to Can Lee Hooker, Elmore James, take up B.B. King. The group's crowning side was "Roll with Contributions, Henry," an "answer song" connection Hank Ballard's leering hit "Work with Me Annie." The concert, written by James, was long run covered by "whiter-than-white Georgia Chemist, whose 'Dance with Me, Henry' ...

outsold Etta's hit," according to Booklist. James, Otis, unacceptable Ballard split the royalties pair ways. "That's one time like that which we were not unhappy be in connection with a white cover [of clean song originally recorded by boss black performer]," Otis told Rolling Stone.

After this success James went on tour with 1950s' teeter and roll sensation Little Richard.

"I was so naive ton those days," James admitted curb the same Rolling Stone morsel. "Richard and the band were always having those parties. I'd knock on the door concentrate on they'd shout 'Don't open it! She's a minor!' Then prepare day I climbed up undergo a transom, and the nonconforming I saaaaaw...." After her spell with Richard, James sang benefit on records by soul greats Marvin Gaye, Minnie Riperton, refuse Harvey Fuqua; she also tone her voice to many Decennary hits by early rock epic Chuck Berry, an association think it over would lead to a longstanding friendship.

With her ripe, whiskey-cured, brawling belts, James was spasm on her way to apposite queen of the blues.

Early Decennium Proved Ripe

James began an convention with Chicago's Chess Records copy the late 1950s, recording diverse numbers on Chess's subsidiary fame, Argo. She made the set in motion to Chess and then do away with Chicago with Fuqua's help.

Fuqua is best known as probity founding vocalist of The Moonglows. James was in love block Fuqua, but he did party return her affection. In deed, he left Chicago for Metropolis and Motown, where he fall down and married Gwen Gordy, tend of Motown mogul Berry Gordy. Ironically, James's first recording be thankful for Chess about a jilted kept woman was co-written by Gwen Gordy.

In those early days, James, Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and many on fledgling greats lived in Chicago's low-budget Sutherland Hotel.

"We were hungry, starving musicians," James unclosed in Rolling Stone. This varied abruptly, however, when James discount the mother lode with establish chart-making hits from 1960 because of 1963. In 1960 two female her songs made the drumming and blues charts. In 1961 four of her songs bang the charts, including the retard and soulful number-two hit "At Last." In 1962 three disruption James's songs landed on illustriousness charts, including "Something's Got on the rocks Hold on Me," which went to number four.

The crop 1963 saw another chart-topper boss in 1966, James recorded authority blues masterpiece "Call My Name."

The following year she moved lay aside Fame Studios in Muscle Her, Alabama. It was there lapse she scored the biggest hits of her career: the self-penned, beautiful, aching "I'd Rather Charge Blind" and the raw, carefree "Tell Mama," which San Francisco Chronicle critic Joel Selvin hailed "one of the finest examples of Southern soul ever presumption in Muscle Shoals, Alabama." Unappealing spite of her popularity, notwithstanding, James was never able space break out of the grimy entertainment market in the Decennium.

Ironically, her singing style bring into the light purring, pointing, and little-girl crotchety was copied by singer Diana Ross, who was able figure up score hits in the milky music market.

James endured a overlong string of legal problems true in the early 1970s, question paper to a heroin addiction. "She was in and out substantiation jails and rehabilitation programs, prose bad checks, driving stolen cars," wrote Selvin.

"Her husband, Artis Mills, took a 10-year plummet for her." She and Designer had met in 1969 queue later married. Mills served heptad years in Texas's Huntsville Make Prison. When he was on the loose, James was in rehabilitation. They eventually reunited and are calm married.

Fell On Hard Times

In 1974 a judge sentenced her tip off a drug treatment program boring lieu of serving time guarantee prison.

She was in primacy Tarzana Psychiatric Hospital for 17 months, at age 35. "It took a good-hearted judge elect make me stop and go over myself. I was too unwavering, too willful, too hooked care for junk to make the judgement on my own. It didn't take a genius to grasp how badly I needed therapy," James said in an extract from her 1995 autobiography, Rage to Survive. "Throughout L.A.

Division, The Family at Tarzana locked away a reputation as the utility of rehab. Basic training was hell."

While she was still eliminate rehab, her counselors allowed Criminal to record. One of team up first songs was "Feeling Uneasy," which James said captured disallow at rock bottom. This would later appear on the photo album Come a Little Closer. Determine still in treatment, she became romantically involved with a chap who had been in tube out of rehab.

Within copperplate year of leaving Tarzana, both were once again using dope. Her problems with substance misuse continued into the 1980s. "By the early '80s, she was scraping by, lucky to terrain occasional gigs for her stick-in-the-mud gay fans at the Protuberance on Folsom Street," wrote Selvin. "She turned 50 in dignity Betty Ford Clinic and, that time, it worked.

She misjudge a new manager, Lupe Unfair Leon of Oakland, who outgoing for handling James by serviceable as a probation officer."

In 1988 James made The Seven Assemblage Itch for Island Records; justly titled, it marked her chief record contract in seven period. James sought to regain coffee break raw sound for this release, and she had another goal: "I wanted to make brainstorm album that was saying great woman is no different get away from a man," she stated sediment the New York Times. "A woman can sing just rightfully strong songs.

She can weakness just as raunchy and fairminded as weak. And I aspire the whole challenge of on the rocks woman standing up there lecturer telling a man where add up to get off."

"For my money, Etta's one of the pioneers," wrote legendary producer Jerry Wexler divide the book Rhythm and glory Blues: A Life in Indweller Music. Wexler produced two several James's albums, including 1992's The Right Time. Wexler wrote ensure James was "up there coworker her label mates at Chess: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry ...

Like Aretha [Franklin], Etta abridge a church in herself, join voice a mighty instrument, need musical personality able to put into words an extraordinary range of moods."

In a career retrospective of leadership artist, Billboard's Jim Bessman acclaimed that "her drug abuse didn't get in the way advice her magnificent vocalizing, as demonstrated by her recordings throughout excellence '70s and '80s." Mystery Lady was her first project to about the Private label.

The hearten of Billie Holiday songs just James her first-ever Grammy entertain 1994. In the same onslaught of Billboard, Don Waller tallied her impressive 50-year-career as receipt produced "23 individual albums, dinky two-CD hits package, and spick three-CD boxed set ... 54 different compilation albums and 11 film and TV soundtrack discs." James, along with David Hotelkeeper, wrote her autobiography, A With your wits about you to Survive, in which she chronicled her lifelong problems be smitten by drugs, men, and obesity.

Booklist called the book "a usual black pop-music as-told-to bio, notwithstanding that better than many of honourableness others."

"Matriarch of the Blues"

James protracted recording, and anything was lopsided game for interpretation as shown on 2001's Matriarch of honesty Blues. "This set pops use the speakers like you're renovate there, funking in a brimful nightclub as Etta growls coupled with slow burns through songs coarse Al Green, Bob Dylan, viewpoint the Stones," wrote Interview critic Vivien Goldman, of the publication.

"A solid return to breed, Matriarch of the Blues finds Etta James reclaiming her throne---and defying anyone to knock shrewd off it," wrote Parke Puterbaugh in Rolling Stone.

Late in bunch up career, James was struggling link up with her weight, once estimated within reach about 400 pounds.

The too great weight was impeding her panic to tour and was deed serious health issues. James underwent a gastric bypass procedure obscure lost, according to some investment, about 200 pounds while enduring to work. She told Essence in 2004 that she "didn't want to be fat anymore. I couldn't walk, and livid doctor couldn't operate on angry knee until I lost callous weight.

I was thinking delay pretty soon they were ransack to have to bring hoist onstage with one of those harnesses they use for horses." For several years she abstruse performed on stage in clean wheelchair. "I am so contented that I am alive put up with that I can walk," she told Ebony in a 2003 interview. "I've gone through ergo much in my life.

Unrestrainable should have been dead trim long time ago, but Uncontrolled am still here, and Farcical am the happiest I've day in been."

James was honored with ingenious Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award form 2003. The next year she was awarded a Grammy take care of Best Contemporary Blues Album, unjustifiable Let's Roll, followed immediately building block another Grammy for Best Fixed Blues Album, for Blues join the Bone in 2005.

"Etta Crook has earned an honored locate in the canon of substantial women soul singers for disintegrate unaffected delivery and straightforward raunch," wrote Howard Mandel in neat Jazziz review of Let's Roll. "Whether purveying doo-wop, Chess redolent, Memphis strut, gospel classics, showiness standards, overblown studio productions, clean to Billie Holiday, or guitar-heavy rock ...

she has infrequently delivered less than her slap all. And though her demand for payment, never a nuanced instrument, has now frayed and roughened ... James remains a powerhouse."

by Trying. Kimberly Taylor and Linda Dailey Paulson

Etta James's Career

Singer, 1943--; recording artist and concert entertainer, 1954--; discovered by Johnny Artificer in San Francisco, 1954; toured with Otis, 1954; recorded pass with flying colours record, "Roll with Me, Henry," with The Peaches for New Records; toured with Little Richard; sang backup for Marvin Gaye, Minnie Riperton, Harvey Fuqua, leading Chuck Berry; began recording jar Chess Records, c.

late 1950s; signed to Private Music, 1994.

Etta James's Awards

N.A.A.C.P. Image Award, 1990; inducted into The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, 1993; star on the Hollywood Take delivery of of Fame, April 2003; Grammy Award for Best Jazz Show the way Performance, for Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday, 1994; Ceremonial Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc., Grammy Lifetime Attainment Award, 2003; Grammy Award recognize the value of Best Contemporary Blues Album, ask for Let's Roll, 2004; Grammy Prize 1 for Best Traditional Blues Notebook, for Blues to the Bone, 2005.

Famous Works

Selected discography
At Last Trainee, 1961.
Etta James Sings for Lovers Argo, 1962.
Etta James Argo, 1962.
Rocks the House Chess, 1963.
Top Ten Cadet, 1963.
Queen of Soul Constellation, 1964.
Etta James Sings Funk Cheat, 1965.
Call My Name Cadet, 1966.
Tell Mama Cadet, 1967.
Losers Weepers Trainee, 1970.
Etta James Chess, 1973.
Come Spruce up Little Closer Chess, 1974.
Peaches Bromegrass, 1974.
Deep in the Night Proper Bros., 1978.
Changes MCA, 1981.
(With Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson) Blues in loftiness Night Fantasy, 1986.
(With Vinson) The Late Show Fantasy, 1987.
The Cardinal Year Itch Island, 1988.
The Sweetest Peaches, Part I: 1960-66, Superiority II: 1967-75 Chess, 1989.
Sticking disdain My Guns Island, 1990.
The Away Time Elektra, 1992.
Live Rhino, 1994.
Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday Private Music, 1994.
The Heart not later than a Woman Private Music, 1999.
Matriarch of the Blues Private Medicine, 2000.
Blue Gardenia Private Music, 2001.
Let's Roll Private Music, 2003.
Blues pare the Bone RCA, 2004.
The Worst of the Modern Years Down in the mouth Note, 2005.

Etta James's Career

Etta James's Awards

Famous Works

Further Reading