James, Etta

Etta James

Singer

“Roll with Me, Henry” Took Off

Early Sixties Proved Ripe

Influenced Janis Joplin

Selected discography

Sources

Etta James is one of the most woefully overlooked figures in the history of blues and rock. She was never granted due credit for influencing tremendously popular acts like The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Diana Ross, Janis Joplin, and an entire generation of musicians who have lauded her as a bridge between rhythm and blues and rock and roll. Recording some of the first ever rock and roll records as a teenager in the 1950s, James had a unique bird’s-eye view of rock’s origins. Not limiting herself to rock, however, she went on to make potent soul records in the sixties and seventies, adding further polish to a career that has spanned nearly four decades.

James has performed for black audiences in the South, blues fans in the North, rock fans on both coasts and even opened tours for The Rolling Stones. Her booming mid-range and throaty lower register—both powerful enough to shake you out of your seat—are her trademarks. Born in 1938 in Los Angeles, she was raised singing gospel hymns in her local church choir. James was a child prodigy, performing on Los Angeles gospel radio broadcasts by the age of five.

In the 1950s, when James was still a teenager, she formed a singing group called The Creolettes with two other girls. West Coast rhythm and blues titan Johnny Otis discovered James in 1954. “We were up in San Francisco,” Otis recalled in Rolling Stone, “for a date at the Fillmore. That was when it was black…. I was asleep in my hotel room when … my manager phoned. He was in a restaurant and a little girl was bugging him: she wanted to sing for me. I told him to have her come around to the Fillmore that night. But she grabbed the phone from him and shouted that she wanted to sing for me NOW. I told her that I was in bed—and she said she was coming over anyway. Well, she showed up with two other little girls. And when I heard her, I jumped out of bed and began getting dressed. We went looking for her mother since she was a minor. I brought her to L.A., where she lived in my home like a daughter.” Despite her determination to audition for Otis in 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 the road with him in 1954, paid them each $10 a night, and changed their name to The Peaches. The trio first recorded with Modern Records, producing a track called “Roll with Me, Henry”—later changed to the less sexually suggestive “The Wallflower“—that was considered a reply to Hank Ballard’s leering hit “Work with Me Annie.” In 1955 James made “Good Rocking Daddy,” which became a

For the Record…

Born in 1938, in Los Angeles, CA; father was Italian; married to Artis Mills; children: Donto and Sametto (sons).

Singer, 1943—; recording artist and concert performer, 1954—. “Discovered” by Johnny Otis in San Francisco, 1954; toured with Otis, 1954; recorded first record, “Roll with Me, Henry,” with The Peaches for Modern Records; toured with Little Richard; sang backup for Marvin Gaye, Minnie Riperton, Harvey Fuqua, and Chuck Berry; began recording with Chess Records, c. late 1950s.

Awards: N.A.A.C.P. Image Award, 1990; inductee of the (San Franciso) Bay Area Blues Society Hall of Fame.

Addresses: Manager —DeLeon Artists, 1931 Panama Court, Piedmont, CA 94611.

hit. Then, Georgia Gibbs recorded a cover of “Roll with Me, Henry,” calling it “Dance with Me, Henry” it became a pop smash. James, Otis, and Ballard split the royalties three ways. “That’s one time when we were not unhappy with a white cover [of a song originally recorded by a black performer],” Otis told Rolling Stone.

After this success James went on tour with fifties rock and roll sensation Little Richard. “I was so naive in those days,” James admitted in the same Rolling Stone piece. “Richard and the band were always having those parties. I’d knock on the door and they’d shout ‘Don’t open it! She’s a minor!’ Then one day I climbed up on a transom, and the things I saaaaaw….” After her stint with Richard, James sang backup on records by soul greats Marvin Gaye, Minnie Riperton, and Harvey Fuqua; she also lent her voice to many 1950s hits of early rock legend Chuck Berry, an association that would lead to a longstanding friendship. With her ripe, whiskey-cured, brawling belts, James was well on her way to becoming queen of the blues.

Early Sixties Proved Ripe

James began an association with Chicago’s Chess Record company in the late 1950s, recording several numbers on Chess’s subsidiary label, Argo. In those early days, James, Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and many other fledgling greats lived in Chicago’s low-budget Sutherland Hotel. “We were hungry, starving musicians,” James revealed in Rolling Stone. This changed abruptly, however, when James hit the mother lode with ten chart-making hits from 1960 through 1963. In 1960 two of her songs made rhythm and blues charts. In 1961 four ascended to the charts, including the slow and soulful number-two hit “At Last.” In 1962 three of James’s songs landed on the chart, including “Something’s Got a Hold on Me,” which went to Number Four. 1963 saw another chart-topper and in 1966, James recorded the blues masterpiece “Call My Name.” The following year she moved to Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It was there that she scored the biggest hits of her career: the self-penned, beautiful, aching “I’d Rather Go Blind” and the raw, rollicking “Tell Mamma.” In spite of her popularity, however, James was never able to break out of the black market in the 1960s; ironically, her singing style of purring, pointing, and little-girl pouting, was copied by Supreme Diana Ross, who was able to score hits in the white music market.

Influenced Janis Joplin

In 1969, during a closed recording session, James spied a young woman in the corner of the studio in wrinkled clothes, with a velvet purse and a bottle of whiskey. “What’s she doing here?,” James asked, as the story was reported in the New York Post “Shhhh. That’s Janis Joplin,” someone said, “She’s a big star.” James stared at her for a few moments, and then remembered Joplin from years earlier, when the sixties rock and roll star was only 13 years old. James had been playing in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Joplin walked right up the back stairs of the black club, and into James’s dressing room. James let the girl visit for a while, and they talked about music. Throughout her career it was apparent that Joplin had been influenced by James’s brassiness, rawness, and deep-voiced angst.

After a hiatus of several years, James returned to the public eye in 1973, back with Chess Records. Her style had changed somewhat: she no longer pouted; instead, she cried, pleaded, and shouted as she had as a child in the choir of Los Angeles’s St. Paul Baptist Church. A portion of the proceeds from her 1973 album went to the maintenance of Los Angeles and New York City methadone programs, which aid heroin addicts trying to get off the drug. For 15 years, James was addicted to heroin; in March of 1974 she kicked the habit after checking in to the Tarzana Psychiatric Hospital in California. That year she recorded “Come a Little Closer.” The song displays a curious tension: James moans and scats through a series of rich changes, tossing in heart-stopping descending arpeggios in what is widely considered the apex of secular spirit-singing.

In 1988 James made The Seven Year Itch for Island Records; aptly titled, it marked her first record contract in seven years. James sought to regain her raw, Southern sound for this album, and she had another goal: “I wanted to make an album that was saying a woman is no different than a man,” she stated in the New York Times. “A woman can sing just as strong songs. She can be just as raunchy and just as weak. And I like the whole challenge of a woman standing up there and telling a man where to get off.”

Etta James’s mother once hounded her to forget rock and roll—“devil’s music” to her—in favor of jazz. James has explored both. Later in life she became more experimental with rock. “People don’t know how to slot me,” she continued in the Times. “That’s been a problem all my life. I bump, I grind, I howl—but what am I—Soul? Blues? Rock? Jazz? I like it all,” she said.

Selected discography

At Last, Cadet, 1961.

Etta James Sings for Lovers, Argo, 1962.

Etta James, Argo, 1962.

Rocks the House, Chess, 1963.

Top Ten, Cadet, 1963.

Queen of Soul, Argo, 1964.

Etta James Sings Funk, Chess, 1965.

Call My Name, Cadet, 1966.

Tell Mama, Cadet, 1967.

Losers Weepers, Cadet, 1970.

Etta James, Chess, 1973.

Come A Little Closer, Chess, 1974.

Peaches, Chess, 1974.

Deep in the Night, Warner Bros., 1978.

Changes, MCA, 1981.

(With Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson) Blues in the Night, Fantasy, 1986.

(With Vinson) The Late Show, Fantasy, 1987.

The Seven Year Itch, Island, 1988.

The Sweetest Peaches, Part I: 1960-66, Part II: 1967-75, Chess, 1989.

Sticking to My Guns, Island, 1990.

Sources

Boston Globe, November 6, 1986.

New York Daily News, November 3, 1988.

New York Post, June 18, 1974; February 13, 1981.

New York Times, June 28, 1974; November 19, 1982; November 20, 1988.

People, August 12, 1974.

Rolling Stone, June 15, 1974; August 10, 1978.

Time, July 17, 1978.

—B. Kimberly Taylor