Born: 25 January 1938, United States
Died: 20 January 2012
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Jamesetta Hawkins
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
Blues and jazz singer Etta James experienced early success, but is also known for a major comeback later in her life. Born Jamesetta Hawkins in 1938, she wrote the chart-topping song “Roll with Me, Henry” (later retitled “The Wallflower” or “Dance with Me, Henry”) when she was just 14. By 22, she was working with Chess Records, recording hits like the iconic standard “At Last.” Her time at Chess lasted 15 years, but the talented musician was struggling with a heroin addiction that would later come to include cocaine and opioids as well. The 1970s and ‘80s saw James in jail for check fraud, in a psychiatric hospital for 17 months, and at the Betty Ford Clinic for treatment.
But the 1980s also became a time of resurgence for James, opening for The Rolling Stones at Keith Richards’s request and singing at the opening ceremonies for the 1984 Olympics. As the Chicago Tribune wrote in 1989, “As anyone who saw her at this year’s Chicago Blues Festival will readily attest, James can be positively incendiary on stage.” The article in question was a review of her first album in seven years, titled accordingly The Seven Year Itch.
Her first album in almost seven years also is one of the first in her career to consistently capture the magic of James at her live best. Equally delightful is the fact that James wasn`t forced to make concessions to so-called contemporary popular taste. Though the production is crisp and modern, the music is classic, timeless, uncluttered, foot-stomping R & B belted out as only this powerful singer can…the songs here can stand proudly with James’ best over the last 30 years. Now let’s hope the itch comes more often than once every seven years.
And indeed it did. Over the next two decades, James released 14 more studio albums, along with a live album and various compilations. She would perform and record into her 70s despite illness and oncoming dementia, dying at age 73 in January 2012 following a year-long battle with leukemia.
James was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Although she had been nominated for Grammys earlier in her career, her first win came in 1995, with Best Jazz Vocal Performance for Mystery Lady – Songs Of Billie Holiday. In addition to a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003, she also won back-to-back Grammys in 2004 and 2005: Best Contemporary Blues Album for Let’s Roll at the 46th Grammy Awards and Best Traditional Blues Album for Blues To The Bone at the 47th.
David Ritz, co-author of her autobiography, Rage To Survive: The Etta James Story, recalled meeting James for the first time:
I already knew her singing voice — an instrument of overwhelming power — but was startled to hear that her speaking voice, her storytelling voice, was even stronger. She spoke as she sang, in great gusts of emotion. Her candor was shocking. Her opinions were extreme; she loved and hated with undiluted passion. She could speak soft as a kitten or rough as a grizzly. She was not egotistical but rather level-headed about her career, displaying an unpretentious sense of her role as a gritty pioneer in American popular music.