Etta James

Throughout a six-decade career, few women in R&B commanded the steady critical praise that came Etta James’s way; famed producer Jerry Wexler once hailed her as “the greatest of all modern blues singers,” and she cut a string of timeless classics such as “At Last,” “Tell Mama,” “I’d Rather Go Blind,” and “All I Could Do Was Cry.” Even with one of the most commanding voices in popular music, however, mainstream success arrived late; she rarely appeared on the pop charts despite racking up 30 R&B hits, and her turbulent existence—marked by drug addiction, troubled romances, and repeated clashes with health and legal troubles—could easily have supplied plotlines for a dozen daytime dramas.

Born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles, California, on January 25, 1938, James grew up with a mother who was only fourteen at the time of her birth and never met her father, although she later expressed the belief that legendary pool player Minnesota Fats was the man in question. Raised largely by relatives and family friends rather than her mother, she began frequenting a Baptist church while living with her grandparents; her vocal ability quickly earned her a spot as a featured soloist in the choir and led to local radio appearances. After her foster mother’s death, twelve-year-old James moved in with her mother in San Francisco, where scant supervision allowed her to drift into delinquency. Music remained a powerful draw, and she formed the singing trio the Creolettes with two friends. Bandleader Johnny Otis took notice when he heard their risqué reply to Hank Ballard’s “Work with Me Annie”—“Roll with Me Henry”—and secured the group a deal with Modern Records. Rechristened the Peaches (after James’s longtime nickname), they recorded the track, which was retitled “The Wallflower” and became a hit in 1955, though Georgia Gibbs’s cover outsold it and left James disappointed. A follow-up R&B success, “Good Rockin’ Daddy,” preceded the trio’s breakup, after which James launched her solo career.

Progress proved slow at first; she issued modestly received singles on Modern while playing small venues until Leonard Chess signed her in 1960. For nearly two decades she recorded for Chess and its Argo and Checker imprints, collaborating with producers Ralph Bass and Harvey Fuqua on a hybrid of gritty R&B and refined jazz that yielded further hits including “All I Could Do Was Cry,” “My Dearest Darling,” and “Trust in Me.” While her professional fortunes improved, personal struggles mounted: she had begun using drugs as a teenager and was a heroin addict by twenty-one, and mounting tensions with Chess over creative control, unpaid royalties, and abusive relationships compounded the difficulties. A mid-’60s commercial lull ended when she teamed with producer Rick Hall at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in 1967; adopting a rawer approach, she returned to the R&B charts with “Tell Mama” and “I’d Rather Go Blind.”

By the early ’70s she had again slipped from the charts, her addiction had intensified, and she resorted to petty crime to fund her habit. Court-ordered rehabilitation arrived in 1973, the same year she made the rock-leaning Only a Fool with Gabriel Mekler. Throughout most of the decade a sober James sustained herself with club work and occasional festival appearances, recording for Chess to little commercial effect despite strong material. Longtime admirers the Rolling Stones invited her to open select dates in 1978; she subsequently joined Warner Bros. and cut Deep in the Night with Jerry Wexler. Though sales were modest, glowing notices reaffirmed her stature among serious blues and R&B listeners. She later recounted falling back into addiction after a relationship with a fellow user, returning to sporadic club gigs until another recovery at the Betty Ford Center in 1988. That year she signed with Island Records and released the potent comeback Seven Year Itch, produced by Barry Beckett of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Steady touring and further albums—Stickin’ to My Guns in 1990 and The Right Time in 1992—kept her career moving forward.

Following her 1993 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, James joined Private Music in 1994 and delivered Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday, a salute to a lifelong influence that earned her first Grammy. The label relationship thrived; she issued eight albums there between 1995 and 2003 while maintaining a rigorous touring schedule. She published the memoir Rage to Survive: The Etta James Story in 2003, and in 2008 Beyoncé Knowles portrayed her in the Chess Records–inspired film Cadillac Records. Knowles contributed a note-for-note rendition of “At Last” to the soundtrack and performed it at Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural ball, prompting James to declare during a concert several days later, “I can’t stand Beyoncé, she had no business up there singing my song that I’ve been singing forever.” Later that week she told The New York Times the remark had been intended as humor—“I didn’t really mean anything…even as a little child, I’ve always had that comedian kind of attitude”—yet she remained disappointed at not having been asked to sing the number herself.

Hospitalized in 2010 with MRSA-related infections, James disclosed prior treatment for painkiller dependence and a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, which her son suggested may have fueled her earlier comments about Knowles. She issued The Dreamer on Verve Forecast in 2011, describing it as her last collection of new songs. Terminal leukemia was diagnosed later that year; she died in Riverside, California, on January 20, 2012, at age seventy-three.