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
It's the same thing now. When I go onstage the young people scream and holler as much as the older generation.
I'm not a braggart, but when I was a little girl people used to come from all over Hollywood to hear me sing.
People always say 'Etta, you know what your problem is? You're neither fish nor fowl. There is no place to rack you.' When I would go in a record shop, you might find one or two records by me in different stacks.
I sing the songs that people need to hear.
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.
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.
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.
A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.
The only time that I am really truly happy - when I feel at my best - is when I'm on the stage.
Most of the songs I sing, they have that blue feeling to it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about.
But even so, I still get nervous before I go onstage.
The music was thunder and joy. Lightning bolts of happiness and praise, foot-stomping, dance-shouting, good-feeling singing from the soul.
This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.