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Some people who saw Beyonce Knowles portray Etta James in the film “Cadillac Records,” which was released in December 2008, might wonder what happened to the troubled singer. Others might even have believed that Etta James was a fictional character.
Fortunately, the real thing is coming to the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center this Saturday night, and Ms. James brings with her one of the most fascinating personal stories in show business—one that the critically acclaimed movie only hinted at.
She also will be bringing controversy to Westhampton. At one of the inauguration balls on January 20, Ms. James’s signature song, “At Last,” was sung while Barack and Michelle Obama danced. However, it was not performed by the singer who had made it an R&B classic, but by Beyonce.
During a concert two weeks later in Seattle, it seemed that Ms. James criticized Beyonce’s rendition and referred to the president as “the one with big ears.” She added, “That woman he had singing for him, singing my song—she’s going to get her ass whipped.”
“I didn’t really mean anything,” Ms. James says, pointing out that she and the audience were laughing at the time the remarks were made. “Nobody was getting mad.”
Still, she says she would have preferred to be the one who sang “At Last” for the Obamas. “I was feeling left out of something that was basically mine,” she admitted. “That’s my song—I’ve done it every time you look around for a lot of years.”
That Etta James is still singing and creating headlines at 71 is something of a miracle considering the hard road she has traveled.
She was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles; her mother was a 14-year-old girl. The story has persisted that her father was the legendary pool player Minnesota Fats, but she says she doesn’t know and has never bothered to find out.
She began to sing at the age of 5 at the St. Paul Baptist Church, but she didn’t become a “professional” singer until she was 14, when, while living in San Francisco, she and two other girls performed as a doo-wop group, The Peaches, and the band leader Johnny Otis brought them into a recording studio. A song titled “The Wallflower” was released in February 1955 and leaped to number two on the R&B charts.
Ms. James found early success as a solo act with hits like “Good Rockin’ Daddy” and on tours with Otis Redding and Johnny “Guitar” Watson. But she really hit her stride when she signed with Chess Records in 1960.
As shown in the film “Cadillac Records”—which does take some liberties with the facts—Leonard Chess, who was white, had a particular enthusiasm for the R&B music of African-American performers, especially those from the South. He had already signed and recorded Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Willie Dixon, and Chuck Berry.
With Chess as her producer, Ms. James recorded “All I Could Do Was Cry,” “My Dearest Darling,” and a string of other hits that included “At Last,” and she was viewed as one of the best female vocalists in the United States. But at her career peak, she began using heroin. Her addiction became so serious that she was in and out of the Tarzana Psychiatric Hospital in Los Angeles. The death of Leonard Chess was another blow.
She continued to record but was bedeviled by drugs. She and her husband, Artis Mills, were arrested for heroin possession in 1972, and he served a 10-year prison sentence. A 17-month stay in the Tarzana facility offered temporary help for Ms. James, but it wasn’t until 1988, when she was 50, that she was successfully treated at the Betty Ford Center.
It was only six years ago when she overcame another serious problem: obesity. At one point, Ms. James had ballooned to 400 pounds, but after undergoing gastric bypass surgery, she lost more than 200 pounds. “That was a life-changing decision,” she says of the surgery.
After her release from the Ford facility, Ms. James went into the famous Muscle Shoals Studio in Alabama with the producer Jerry Wexler, an East Hampton resident until his death last year. What emerged was her first album in seven years, appropriately titled “Seven Year Itch.” It was hailed as her comeback record, and it was the beginning of a fresh series of albums that did well on jazz and blues charts.
Ms. James won her first Grammy Award in 1994 for the album “Mystery Lady (Songs of Billie Holiday),” and last year she was elected to the Grammy Hall of Fame. In a poll conducted five years ago, Rolling Stone magazine ranked her number 62 on its list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Ms. James is looking forward to her first appearance at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. And to meeting Mr. Obama at some point to have a chuckle over her remarks. For now, she says, “He’s got other stuff to worry about besides Etta James.”
Etta James will perform with The Roots Band on Saturday, May 9, at 8 p.m. at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $100, $125 and $150. For more information, call 288-2350, ext. 102, or stop by 76 Main Street in Westhampton Beach from Wednesday to Sunday, between noon and 6 p.m., and later on show nights, or purchase tickets online at whbpac.org.
on May 5, 2009