Jamesetta Hawkins was born in Los Angeles on January 25, 1938. Her mother was all of fourteen while her father allegedly was pool player Minnesota Fats. Etta spent her youth on the streets and in the churches of L.A. At five, she was a singing star at the St. Paul Baptist Church. Etta's musical idols primarily were men, like Ray Charles, Guitar Slim, and the choirmaster at her church.
In the early 1950s, Etta and her mother moved to San Francisco, where the teen-ager drank wine, smoked pot, played hookey, and sang with a couple of girlfriends in the projects. They called themselves the Peaches. The famed West Coast bandleader Johnny Otis discovered the trio and took a shine to Etta, who was soon recording for the Modern label. Her first hit, in the early spring of 1955, was "The Wallflower" a/k/a "Roll With Me Henry." While it spent four weeks at #1 R&B, Georgia Gibbs' white-bread cover, "Dance With Me Henry," kept it off the pop charts.
By 1960, Etta had been off the R&B charts for four years. Her then-boyfriend, Harvey Fuqua of the Moonglows, got her signed to Chess Records. By that summer, Etta's stirring ballad, "All I Could Do Was Cry," hit #2 R&B and crossed over to the pop top forty. She followed it with "If I Can't Have You," a duet with Fuqua that reached #52 pop and #6 R&B.
For the next three years, Etta James had one smash R&B hit after another, including "My Dearest Darling," "Trust In Me," "At Last," "Don't Cry Baby," "Something's Got A Hold On Me," "Stop The Wedding," and "Pushover." Several of her singles also went pop, where they peaked mostly in the 30s.
By the middle 1960s, African-American music was growing blacker and prouder. Rhythm and blues was now soul music, and no one had a stronger, saltier soul than Etta James. It was she, in fact, who single-handedly brought Chess Records out of the Mississippi Delta and into the soul era.
In 1966, Etta hit the R&B top forty for the first time in three years, with the gutbucket "In The Basement," a duet with Sugar Pie DeSanto. The following year, Leonard Chess flew Etta to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where such Atlantic artists as Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin had cut some seriously deep soul.
Etta's sessions in Muscle Shoals resulted in one of the finest LPs of the soul era--TELL MAMA. Not only did the title song become Etta's biggest pop hit, peaking at #23, but the killer ballad "I'd Rather Go Blind" was the very definition of deep soul. From an artistic and commercial standpoint, TELL MAMA was pure dynamite from start to finish.
Etta James stayed with Chess through 1974, during which time she recorded some truly sublime music. Unfortunately, after 1968's "Security," she never again made the R&B top twenty.
Throughout her career, Etta was plagued with heroin addiction, but managed to kick the habit in the late '70s. Today she is healthy and happy, is constantly on tour, and continues to record. She was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, and sang at the Rockport Rhythm and Blues Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, in July of 1996.
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