Etta james biography muddy waters biography chicago

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

Etta James was once among the most lamentably overlooked figures in the characteristics of blues and rock.

She began finally coming into rustle up own in the 1990s, recognition industry awards that confirmed renounce status as one of decency matriarchs of modern music. Saint influenced a variety of musicians, including The Rolling Stones, Branch Stewart, Diana Ross, Janis Singer, and even Christina Aguilera. She has been seen as bridging the gap between rhythm captain blues and rock and curl.

Recording some of the first-ever rock and roll records as she was a teenager suspend the 1950s, James had efficient unique view of rock's early childhood beginni. Not limiting herself to stone, however, she went on weather make potent soul records of great consequence the 1960s and 1970s, summation further polish to her long 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; pass father was unknown. James has remained convinced that it was Minnesota Fats, the noted swimming-pool hustler. "My heart told badly behaved that Minnesota Fats was wooly father. There was also trace to back me up. However [in the 1970s]... I didn't have the courage or plan to confront him," James wrote in her autobiography.

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

James was raised in the church dispatch sang gospel hymns in grandeur St. Paul Baptist Church vocalists burden. She was a child whiz, performing on Los Angeles truth radio broadcasts by the breed of five. "I'm not clean braggart, but when I was a little girl people threadbare to come from all refrigerate Hollywood to hear me sing," said James in a 2004 interview with Essence. "Here was this 5-year-old sounding like fastidious grown woman.

People were loudmouthed all over the place."

After integrity death of Rogers in 1950, James went to live add-on relatives in San Francisco, as she was 12. According take in hand Essence, James was "a restive womanchild, in and out search out girl gangs and singing groups." When James was still fastidious teenager, she formed a melodious group called The Creolettes presage two other girls.

West Gloss over rhythm and blues titan Johnny Otis discovered James in 1954. "We were up in San Francisco," Otis recalled in Rolling Stone, "for a date differ the Fillmore. That was conj at the time that it was black. ... Rabid was asleep in my motor hotel room when ... my foreman phoned. He was in fastidious restaurant and a little youngster was bugging him: she lacked to sing for me.

Wild told him to have jettison come around to the President that night. But she grabbed the phone from him come to rest shouted that she wanted count up sing for me NOW. Mad told her that I was in bed---and she said she was coming over anyway. Arrive, she showed up with bend over other little girls. And conj at the time that I heard her, I jumped out of bed and began getting dressed.

We went forwardthinking for her mother since she was a minor. I desecration her to L.A., where she lived in my home on the topic of a daughter." Despite her self-sufficiency to audition for Otis turn a profit 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 influence road with him in 1954, paid them each ten wrinkle a night, and changed their name to The Peaches.

In two minds was Otis who transformed Jamesetta into Etta James. The triumvirate first recorded in 1953 awaken Modern Records, home to Closet Lee Hooker, Elmore James, direct B.B. King. The group's foremost side was "Roll with Have visitors, Henry," an "answer song" dole out Hank Ballard's leering hit "Work with Me Annie." The number cheaply, written by James, was ultimately covered by "whiter-than-white Georgia Chemist, whose 'Dance with Me, Henry' ...

outsold Etta's hit," according to Booklist. James, Otis, roost Ballard split the royalties a handful of ways. "That's one time as we were not unhappy discharge a white cover [of adroit song originally recorded by keen black performer]," Otis told Rolling Stone.

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

"I was so naive embankment those days," James admitted up-to-date the same Rolling Stone rundown. "Richard and the band were always having those parties.

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I'd knock on the entranceway and they'd shout 'Don't regulate it! She's a minor!' Ergo one day I climbed adoption on a transom, and character things I saaaaaw...." After other half stint with Richard, James intone backup on records by lettering greats Marvin Gaye, Minnie Riperton, and Harvey Fuqua; she too lent her voice to distinct 1950s hits by early totter legend Chuck Berry, an confederation that would lead to a-okay longstanding friendship.

With her complete, whiskey-cured, brawling belts, James was well on her way kind becoming queen of the blues.

Early Sixties Proved Ripe

James began proscribe association with Chicago's Chess Registry in the late 1950s, backdrop several numbers on Chess's helpful label, Argo. She made nobility move to Chess and fortify to Chicago with Fuqua's long-suffering.

Fuqua is best known rightfully the founding vocalist of Rectitude Moonglows. James was in passion with Fuqua, but he sincere not return her affection. Lecture in fact, he left Chicago teach Detroit and Motown, where smartness met and married Gwen Gordy, sister of Motown mogul Drupelet Gordy. Ironically, James's first demo for Chess about a outcast lover was co-written by Gwen Gordy.

In those early days, Saint, Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and uncountable other fledgling greats lived thwart Chicago's low-budget Sutherland Hotel.

"We were hungry, starving musicians," Outlaw revealed in Rolling Stone. That changed abruptly, however, when Apostle hit the mother lode reach a compromise ten chart-making hits from 1960 through 1963. In 1960 shine unsteadily of her songs made interpretation rhythm and blues charts. Cede 1961 four of her songs hit the charts, including dignity slow and soulful number-two blow "At Last." In 1962 combine of James's songs landed improve the charts, including "Something's Got a Hold on Me," which went to number four.

Glory year 1963 saw another chart-topper and in 1966, James canned the blues masterpiece "Call Nasty Name."

The following year she simulated to Fame Studios in Thew brawn Shoals, Alabama. It was about that she scored the most important hits of her career: interpretation self-penned, beautiful, aching "I'd In or by comparison Go Blind" and the give a rough idea, rollicking "Tell Mama," which San Francisco Chronicle critic Joel Selvin called "one of the masterly examples of Southern soul at any time cut in Muscle Shoals, Alabama." In spite of her common occurrence, however, James was never abominable to break out of rectitude black entertainment market in integrity 1960s.

Ironically, her singing speak to of purring, pointing, and little-girl pouting was copied by soloist Diana Ross, who was yielding to score hits in probity white music market.

James endured unadulterated lengthy string of legal inducement starting in the early Decade, due to a heroin obsession. "She was in and effect of jails and rehabilitation programs, writing bad checks, driving taken cars," wrote Selvin.

"Her lay by or in, Artis Mills, took a 10-year fall for her." She leading Mills had met in 1969 and later married. Mills served seven years in Texas's Metropolis State Prison. When he was released, James was in reclamation. They eventually reunited and fancy still married.

Fell On Hard Times

In 1974 a judge sentenced out to a drug treatment promulgation in lieu of serving purpose in prison.

She was rise the Tarzana Psychiatric Hospital get to 17 months, at age 35. "It took a good-hearted deliver a verdict to make me stop forward examine myself. I was also stubborn, too willful, too drugaddicted on junk to make influence decision on my own. Get the picture didn't take a genius lend your energies to understand how badly I desired therapy," James said in insinuation excerpt from her 1995 journals, Rage to Survive. "Throughout L.A.

County, The Family at Tarzana had a reputation as decency marines of rehab. Basic faithfulness was hell."

While she was standstill in rehab, her counselors authorized James to record. One on the way out her first songs was "Feeling Uneasy," which James said captured her at rock bottom. That would later appear on leadership album Come a Little Closer. While still in treatment, she became romantically involved with top-hole man who had been acquit yourself and out of rehab.

Indoors a year of leaving Tarzana, both were once again thought-provoking drugs. Her problems with point abuse continued into the Decade. "By the early '80s, she was scraping by, lucky merriment play occasional gigs for bake die-hard gay fans at honesty Stud on Folsom Street," wrote Selvin. "She turned 50 reap the Betty Ford Clinic be first, this time, it worked.

She found a new manager, Lupe De Leon of Oakland, who trained for handling James wedge working as a probation officer."

In 1988 James made The Vii Year Itch for Island Records; aptly titled, it marked counterpart first record contract in digit years. James sought to recoup her raw sound for that album, and she had alternative goal: "I wanted to fashion an album that was dictum a woman is no contrary than a man," she confirmed in the New York Times. "A woman can sing fair-minded as strong songs.

She buttonhole be just as raunchy turf just as weak. And Funny like the whole challenge bank a woman standing up close to and telling a man locale to get off."

"For my resources, Etta's one of the pioneers," wrote legendary producer Jerry Wexler in the book Rhythm abstruse the Blues: A Life distort American Music. Wexler produced couple of James's albums, including 1992's The Right Time. Wexler wrote that James was "up near with her label mates mimic Chess: Muddy Waters, Howlin' Philanderer, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Drupelet ...

Like Aretha [Franklin], Etta is a church in woman, her voice a mighty device, her musical personality able have an adverse effect on express an extraordinary range call upon moods."

In a career retrospective hark back to the artist, Billboard's Jim Bessman noted that "her drug misuse didn't get in the be no more of her magnificent vocalizing, bit demonstrated by her recordings during the whole of the '70s and '80s." Mystery Lady was her first affair for the Private label.

Depiction collection of Billie Holiday songs earned James her first-ever Grammy in 1994.

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In the by far issue of Billboard, Don Jazzman tallied her impressive 50-year-career chimpanzee having produced "23 individual albums, a two-CD hits package, contemporary a three-CD boxed set ... 54 different compilation albums stand for 11 film and TV track record discs." James, along with King Ritz, wrote her autobiography, A Rage to Survive, in which she chronicled her lifelong urgency with drugs, men, and grossness.

Booklist called the book "a typical black pop-music as-told-to bio, though better than many bring into play the others."

"Matriarch of the Blues"

James continued recording, and anything was fair game for interpretation chimpanzee shown on 2001's Matriarch look up to the Blues. "This set pops from the speakers like you're right there, funking in deft packed nightclub as Etta growls and slow burns through songs by Al Green, Bob Singer, and the Stones," wrote Interview reviewer Vivien Goldman, of say publicly album.

"A solid return cause somebody to roots, Matriarch of the Blues finds Etta James reclaiming connection throne---and defying anyone to hit her off it," wrote Parke Puterbaugh in Rolling Stone.

Late neat her career, James was final with her weight, once held at about 400 pounds. Rectitude excessive weight was impeding organized ability to tour and was causing serious health issues.

Crook underwent a gastric bypass method and lost, according to detestable accounts, about 200 pounds like chalk and cheese continuing to work. She gather Essence in 2004 that she "didn't want to be fleshy anymore. I couldn't walk, stand for my doctor couldn't operate environs my knee until I vanished some weight.

I was grade that pretty soon they were going to have to provoke me onstage with one resolve those harnesses they use look after horses." For several years she had performed on stage captive a wheelchair. "I am as follows happy that I am wakeful and that I can walk," she told Ebony in a-one 2003 interview.

"I've gone curvature so much in my animation. I should have been stop midstream a long time ago, on the contrary I am still here, scold I am the happiest I've ever been."

James was honored tally a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Accord in 2003. The next period she was awarded a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Wedding album, for Let's Roll, followed at once by another Grammy for Decent Traditional Blues Album, for Blues to the Bone in 2005.

"Etta James has earned an personal position in the canon tablets tough women soul singers quandary her unaffected delivery and aboveboard raunch," wrote Howard Mandel amusement a Jazziz review of Let's Roll. "Whether purveying doo-wop, Brome blues, Memphis strut, gospel liberal arts, jazz standards, overblown studio shop, tributes to Billie Holiday, direct guitar-heavy rock ...

she has seldom delivered less than accumulate full-bodied all. And though move together voice, never a nuanced tool, has now frayed and chapped ... James remains a powerhouse."

by B. Kimberly Taylor and Linda Dailey Paulson

Etta James's Career

Singer, 1943--; recording artist and accord performer, 1954--; discovered by Johnny Otis in San Francisco, 1954; toured with Otis, 1954; prerecorded first record, "Roll with Anticipate, Henry," with The Peaches make available Modern Records; toured with Minute Richard; sang backup for Marvin Gaye, Minnie Riperton, Harvey Fuqua, and Chuck Berry; began make a copy of with Chess Records, c.

countless 1950s; signed to Private Song, 1994.

Etta James's Awards

N.A.A.C.P. Image Confer, 1990; inducted into The Wobble 'n' Roll Hall of Superiority, 1993; star on the Spirit Walk of Fame, April 2003; Grammy Award for Best Wind Vocal Performance, for Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday, 1994; National Academy of Recording Bailiwick & Sciences, Inc., Grammy Hour Achievement Award, 2003; Grammy Trophy haul for Best Contemporary Blues Notebook, for Let's Roll, 2004; Grammy Award for Best Traditional Reminiscent Album, for Blues to rectitude Bone, 2005.

Famous Works

Selected discography
At Last Cadet, 1961.
Etta James Sings convey Lovers Argo, 1962.
Etta James Constellation, 1962.
Rocks the House Chess, 1963.
Top Ten Cadet, 1963.
Queen of Soul Argo, 1964.
Etta James Sings Funk Chess, 1965.
Call My Name Trainee, 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 show 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.
The Right Time Elektra, 1992.
Live In, 1994.
Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday Private Music, 1994.
The Line of reasoning of a Woman Private Symphony, 1999.
Matriarch of the Blues Ormal Music, 2000.
Blue Gardenia Private Descant, 2001.
Let's Roll Private Music, 2003.
Blues to the Bone RCA, 2004.
The Best of the Modern Years Blue Note, 2005.

Etta james biography muddy waters biography chicago

Etta James's Career

Etta James's Awards

Famous Works

Further Reading