Etta James Has Died In Califonia

[Jimmy Mack]

soul singer's singer ,could sing any style of music one of a kind, r.i.p. etta james

[Mrtag]

Another great gone!! R.I.P your music will live on.

[Alison H]

Blimey, what a great loss.

RIP Etta x

[Dave Moore]

A few years ago myself and a gang of mates were lucky enough to walk the length of record row starting at Chess Recording Studio on 2120 S Michigan. Etta was one of the names that came to the forefront as we walked the route.

Although her passing is sad, I'll do what I usually do at these times and remember the legacy of a lady who rose above her difficult start in life and decided that the world was gonna hear her voice, whether they liked it or not. As previously stated it's a strange coincidence that her original mentor Mr Otis passed in the same week but maybe that was karma eh?

Not many people can lay claim toan iconic song that immediately connected the public with the artist but Ms James had 2! As Sam Cook has "A Change Is Gonna Come", Isaac Hayes has "Shaft" and Otis Redding has "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay", that will forever be tied to them and rightly so, Etta James leaves behind "At Last" and "I'd Rather Go Blind" which will be eternally linked to her. Not a bad legacy I think you'll agree.

And so, after a career spanning over 50 years and providing years of enjoyment to an army of fans step forward Ms Jamesetta Hawkins, take a bow...for a job extremely well done.

Regards,

Dave

https://youtu.be/ipI7DNvToMU

[Biggordy]

THE greatest female soul singer ever,

R.I.P.

[slimharpo]

I saw Etta James at The Other End club in New York in 1981. I went with a mate Rob Hughes (Ace Records) to buy records and we spent most of the 2 weeks in Downstairs Records! We found out that Etta was on and went to the first show meaning to explore Greenwich Village afterwards. However, after the first show the waitress told us we could stay free for the 2nd show if we carried on drinking!!!

Keith Richard turned up at the 2nd show and Bonnie Rait was also there and they both did a song with Etta. I know this is obvious but she was absolutely fantastic. After the show we went back to the dressing rooms and had a chat with her. She was very charming and signed the club flyer for me - attached. Keith Richard signed another one for me but sadly it has faded. I spent about 15 minutes talking to him and honestly he was just like one of the lads. I told him that I saw The Stones in Chester ABC cinema in 1964 and he told me an anecdote about it. I didn't tell him that I only went because Charlie & Inez Foxx were on the same show although I have to admit The Stones were great. On the way out of The Other End (which was a relatively small club) we bumped into Joe Jackson and he signed the flyer after looking who had already signed it he wrote Joe Jackson (was here too).

I bought Somthing's Got A Hold On Me on blue UK Pye about the time of release and Etta was always a favourite over the years. In fact the day before I heard she had died I was playing her take on the old standard Fools Rush In which she made sound like it was especially written for her which I suppose she made happen with everything she sang. Also I Sky Plussed the hour long Etta & The Roots Band from the BBC show the other night so that will be a good memory of her too.

[dob]

one of my all time faves r.i.p

[Yos Zoul]

Just wondered how many people on here have seen this documentry "Record Row Chicago" ?

It's a six part documentry on chicago soul labels

part one is narrated by Etta James

lots of famous faces in there

Tried to post but "Embeded" came up might still work on youtube though

It does still work on youtube

In fact the entire one hour documentary is narrated by Etta James. It's a great source of info on Chicago Soul.

On Youtube its divided up into ±10 minutes parts. Heavily recommended!!!

Part one:

https://youtu.be/rPCWPEoEaVs

Cheers

Yos

Edited January 21, 2012 by Yos Zoul

[Guest allnightandy]

In fact the entire one hour documentary is narrated by Etta James. It's a great source of info on Chicago Soul.

On Youtube its divided up into ±10 minutes parts. Heavily recommended!!!

Part one:

https://youtu.be/rPCWPEoEaVs

Cheers

Yos

Bit of an echo in here !

[nsoul2]

Very sad news. It's also sad coincidence that man who discovered her, Johnny Otis, also died this week.

Within 3 days of each other. It was Johnny Otis who changed her name and launched her career.

Nice to see both the Independent and Guardian have large front cover photographs of Etta today, Saturday editions

and the respectful coverage of her passing in the Uk media

[Stevie T]

what a magnificent voice , what a legacy to leave, voice of sweet gravel

[Rob Moss]

This is a review I did for Manifesto magazine several months ago on Etta's 'Call my name' cd.

Etta James

The fuss and furore made by the popular music press about any white female performer who sounds 'black' and can sing in an (apparently) soulful style masks a subtle form of elitist racism that continues to permeate much of our society. People like Joss Stone, Duffy, Amy Winehouse et al are revered and regarded not only because they are able to imitate significant others, either in style or substance, or both, but, perhaps more importantly, because they present a much less threatening and attractive proposition to a predominantly white audience - they are white themselves. There are, and have been, literally thousands of black female singers over the years, with far more talent and ability than these plagiarizing pretenders, who haven't gained anywhere near the same recognition or reward ...because of their ethnicity.

Etta James is the personification of that very special period from the late 1950s through to the1970s when 'rhythm and blues' and then 'soul' exerted a significant influence on popular music. She is the real thing. Down home and dirty, yet pure as a Prairie wind. Janis Joplin shamelessly stole her style and delivery in the late 1960s, and her influence is still being cunningly condiddled by lesser talents today. She had every right to complain about Beyonce performing 'her' song 'At last' at Obama's Inauguration ceremony - not because she had any special right to it (the original version was by Glenn Miller in 1942), but because it should been her standing tall, as a symbol of the struggle and strain that black people had to endure throughout that long journey that culminated in the election of a black President.

The album contained in this CD package, 'Call my name' was recorded in 1967 at the Chess studios in Chicago and features 12 examples of her raw, raucous, irreverent style of singing, pleading, cooing and calling out. It is superb, and greatly enhanced by the clarity of the stereo separation, which invites us into the room to hear it exactly as it was performed and recorded on the day(s). As an added bonus, there are an extra dozen tracks with a couple of gems that are worth the price of this package alone. It is a brave soul indeed that has the temerity to 'cover' a song made famous by Aretha, yet Etta James' interpretation of 'Do right woman, do right man' makes it her own. The real nugget in the batch though is the rocking 'You took it' which is as fine an example of the magic of Muscle Shoals and would get the moribund into motion. A well presented package that should be placed next to the aforementioned singers' albums, wherever they are sold, so that people can actually see and hear what the genuine article looks like.

[Stevie T]

people can by all means , think they sound like Etta james , but they dont ! janice Joplin ? ...terrible ! screaming out a song is not the same .

within this scene , every female singer is astounding , but Etta James stands alone . powerful , dirty , stirring , sweet , she could put it all

into one song . and an attitude to go with it .

the devils own music , its the one for me

[Guest brummiemick]

People may be interested that today The Guardian reprinted this article from 1978 in the NME. She really was a great lady who never got her just desserts:

https://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/jan/24/etta-james-interview

Etta James: 'I was like a punker ... I'd spit in a minute' - a classic interview from the vaults

In our latest visit to Rock's Backpages - the world's leading archive of vintage music journalism - we bring you an interview with the late Etta James, by Cliff White for NME in 1978

'I don't like places where people can't dance' ... Etta James in 1975. Photograph: Andrew Putler/Redferns

"Thanksgiving Day in November will be my silver anniversary: 25 years since I cut my first record and I haven't become a superstar yet. It took Janis Joplin two years."

A statement of fact. No bitterness in the voice, just a shadow of sadness exposed along with the naked truth; a fleeting glimpse of dues paid and years lost.

Etta James is not given to bitterness. She gets angry sometimes, certainly. Pretty wild with it too, so she says. But generally she greets life's dirty tricks with wry humour and a stoicism that has sustained her through the sort of professional trials and personal tribulations that have crippled - or killed - many a weaker personality.

Upon request, and if she's of a mind to, she can unpack a whole head load of memories of innocence and ignorance and exploitation and drug addiction, but once those private mental albums have been well thumbed by the insensitive interviewer, back they go in the file marked "education" and up bobs Etta's survival factor.

Like remembering the men who manipulated a lot of her life as "some of the greatest teachers that a person could have. If you went through them, boy, you knew how it was supposed to go. That's not saying that you won't get screwed again but at least you won't get screwed that way.

"Everybody's got their little come-on. The day that I signed with Chess Records, part of their come-on to me was a cheque laying on the desk that was made out to Chuck Berry and Alan Freed for $167,700. And I looked and Leonard Chess said, 'See, this is the kind of money our artists make.' I said gosh!

"The next cheque I saw was made out to the Moonglows, Harvey Fuqua and Alan Freed; it was about $70,000 royalties for the record Sincerely. Alan Freed's name just happened to be on all of those cheques, y'know. Alan Freed and Leonard Chess, boy, they were the very best teachers.

"After that, after I had the hit with All I Could Do Was Cry, when Leonard handed me my very first envelope that said 'royalties', I opened it up and there was no cheque in there, just a little piece of paper saying, 'You're $14,000 in the red.' 'But,' he told me, 'don't worry about that. You need some money? We'll let you have two thousand.' That was always the way it was. You'd get a Cadillac or a fur stole or a ring, something like that. That was your royalties.

"But bitter? No. After all, what did I know? I didn't have any lawyer or a good manager or nothing, so what the heck? Long as I was riding in a big Cadillac and dressed nice and had plenty of food, that's all I cared about."

Etta James is a remarkable lady. Born in 1938 and raised on the west coast of America, in 1954 - while still a delinquent bobby-soxer - she was hustled into a private audition for Johnny Otis by an older groupie friend; taken straight into a studio to record the girls' whimsical composition Roll With Me Henry (which they made up in answer to the Hank Ballard and the Midnighters hit Work With Me Annie) and, having lied about her age, boarded the Otis touring revue on the princely wage of $10 per night.

The record shot up the R&B charts, was promptly banned from All-American airwaves for being too sexually upfront, and was coyly adapted as Dance With Me Henry by Georgia Gibbs, who reputedly sold 4m copies.

For four or five more years she continued to record for Modern Records of Los Angeles, cutting some of the best female rock and R&B of the era (Good Rockin' Daddy, Tough Lover) without ever seeing a royalty cheque, until she got stranded in Chicago in 1959, where she was introduced to Chess Records by Harvey Fuqua - then leader of the Moonglows, subsequently a producer with Anna, Motown and Fantasy.

For 17 years Etta enjoyed/suffered - delete where applicable - an erratic career with the ever-ailing Chess Corp, recording a small string of hits (including At Last and Fool That I Am) which were arranged to appeal to the early-60s supper-club audience; a more typical selection of hardcore rhythm'n'blues tunes (I Just Want to Make Love to You, Something's Got a Hold on Me) and, best remembered of all, many superb soul sides, from her first Chess hit (All I Could Do Was Cry) through late-60s Muscle Shoals classics (I'd Rather Go Blind, Tell Mama, Security,

) to 70s stunners such as Leave Your Hat On, All the Way Down and Come a Little Closer.

Although consistently lauded by folk within the biz as one of the great black female singers, Etta is only just now emerging into the extreme sidelights of the great white wunnerful rock arena via a contract with Warner Brothers and her appearances on the current Rolling Stones tour of America.

"The Stones are great," she says, slightly wistfully. "They are doing black music and they've got it. They got the direction and they know what the hell to do. They know how to pump plenty of sound, they know how to get real intense and get people so crazy that they don't know what the heck's happening to them. And that's the way you gotta do it.

"I find myself going crazy about the Stones just like the kids are in the audience. Keith, he just stumbles over his own feet, blam, he falls down, he just lays there, blungablunga, he's still there just like it's part of the act. They kick each other and thump each other in the back of the head. Mick, if he forgets the damn words he just burbles and they go nuts. He forgets what part of the song he's singing but who cares, y'know? Long as he's there to holler something people just bump their heads on the wall, it's great.

"But, you know, Mick told me: 'I met you 15 years ago at a little club in Los Angeles. You were wearing a blonde wig and you had on a green dress and it had feathers ...' he named everything. He was right. And a lot of the stuff that I see him do on stage is stuff that I used to do. I mean when I was really jumping around an' leaping an' looking all crazy.

"I was originally like a punker, know what I mean, like the punks are today, I'd spit in a minute. And I notice Mick does that same facial expression that I see, so then I sit in the dressing room and I think it's really weird how these guys have gotten over.

"The first night I worked with them I almost cried in my dressing room. I thought, God, here are these guys, they're famous millionaires from doing this here and I'm still nowhere after all these years. What is happening here?

"Then I think, I don't know, I wanna make money but I don't probably never wanna be cool about it, you know what I mean? I would never be cool about it. I would never give a shit whether I worked Las Vegas or Lake Tahoe or not. I'm not a bourgeois person, never will be. I could work Dingwalls forever because I'm used to that kind of joint.

"Like the guys came to me last night and said, 'I'm sorry this is not like the Ritz.' Well what the heck would I know? In 25 years I've never worked the Ritz; I've worked nothing but places that look like Dingwalls. And for those kind of people, that stand there and scream all night, and when you get through they're mad because you don't come back, that's my kind of people.

"See, I don't like places where people can't dance - don't like clubs or theatres where a bunch of bourgeois people sit around tip, tip, tipping their fingers."

Through an uncustomary tactical error on the part of producer Jerry Wexler, Etta's first Warners album Deep in the Night seems to be primarily aimed at the very audience she could live without. Fortunately Etta has the voice and personality to score a points win in her 10-round contest with the inappropriate arrangements and production, so that even with its faults the album is still one of the better releases by an American black female singer so far this year. Nevertheless, it could have been a good deal better, could it not?

"I think we could have made it stronger," Etta concedes. "It's a nice album, I'm not disappointed with it, but I think we went too far too soon. It was Jerry's idea to help me get over to a wider audience and to that extent it partly succeeded, but it's not really me, know what I mean?

"I think for the next album we'll go back to being a little more soulful. Y' know, the kind of bag that I think I've kinda made up my mind to shoot for, the slot that I think I should have taken, is the female Otis Redding slot.

"That's the direction I wanna go in now cause there's no other chick got the balls to do it. Tina Turner came very close - if she had of just kept right on that right track, she had it. That's the thing I'm talking about, that intense thing. But now she's shooting for another bag. And the closest chick that could do it now is Millie Jackson, but I don't think she would. She's a little bit over here on another kick; she's busy rapping and stuff.

"I'm talking about singing and laying it down for 'em, y'know, making people go crazy an 'burnin' their ears up. That's the deal. That's really the direction I wanna go in."

[Guest]

Been following her demise over past 8 weeks, chronic leukemia and was dreading the news! Taken me a week to write something and now I'm stumped! I did a 7 track tribute to Etta on redroadmusic.com last Sunday - I could have played Etta for the whole 3 hours show but.............

First heard her sing when I was 10 (I very quickly dropped Connie Francis & Brenda Lee LOL) Regret to say that she wasn't covered with enough respect thru music industry in general and THAT film "Cadillac" either(sorry)! Like she said "it took Janis Joplin 2 years and its taken me 25 and counting"

Sad sad loss indeed - she was never a "Pushover" and "At Last" she's at peace - miss you girl

RIP ETTA JAMES