Etta James
Etta James
Etta Jameswas an American singer who performed in various genres, including blues, R&B, soul, rock and roll, jazz and gospel. Starting her career in 1954, she gained fame with hits such as "The Wallflower", "At Last", "Tell Mama", "Something's Got a Hold on Me", and "I'd Rather Go Blind". She faced a number of personal problems, including drug addiction, before making a musical comeback in the late 1980s with the album Seven Year Itch...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBlues Singer
Date of Birth25 January 1938
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
When I look out at the people and they look at me and they're smiling, then I know that I'm loved. That is the time when I have no worries, no problems.
I was a sloppy kid, wanted to be just wild.
When I'm performing for the people, I am me, then. I am that little girl who, when she was five years old, used to sing at church. Or I'm that 15-year-old young lady who wanted to be grown and wanted to sing and couldn't wait to be smokin' a cigarette, you know?
People that can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.
You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.
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.
I've gone through so much in my life. I should have been dead a long time ago, but I am still here, and I'm the happiest I've ever been.
I want a Sunday kind of love A love to last past Saturday night And I’d like to know it’s more than love at first sight
The only time that I am really truly happy—when I feel at my best—is when I'm on the stage.
What happens is, when I perform, I'm somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am. I forget my troubles, my worries.
That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn't even know was there until I let it out.
I'm not a bourgeois person, never will be.
When I sing for myself, I probably sing for anyone who has any kind of hurt, any kind of bad feelings, good feelings, ups and downs, highs and lows, that kind of thing.
At last my love has come along. My lonely days are over and life is like a song.