ETTA JAMES Winter’s Daughter

January 21, 2012 by Patricia Spears...

Johnny Otis, the great bandleader, producer and dj whom many thought was Black heard a 15 year old girl singing in his hotel bathroom (she was too bashful to sing directly in front of him) while her girlfriends sang backup.  When she finished, he asked her age—she lied and the rest is American cultural history.  Etta James is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because of her voice and musicianship.  Her deep contralto gave voice to ideas of courtship, sexuality, sensuality, erotic yearning,  conjugal bliss and romantic loss—in songs ranging from rhythm and blues classics such as “Roll with me Henry” “Tell Mama” and “Stop the Wedding” to standards such as “At Last” and “A Sunday Kind of Love”.   

Jamesetta Hawkins died a few days shy of her 74th birthday and a few days after Otis’ passing.  Aquarians often arrive and depart at inconvenient times—the heart of winter.  She was almost instantly orphaned, her mother barely in her teens and a father who might have been Minnesota Fats—at least that was the legend. Her early life showcases the rootlessness of post war America: foster homes, economic privation, and intense ambition. She was extremely charismatic, she had that gift.  But that gift also led her to places of great and enervating darkness-heroin and cocaine were twin charms.  And yes, she did purge herself of these medicines, but she could not conjure a caring mother or find that unnamed father.  

James came along when pop singers were Patti Page or Doris Day.  While Billie Holiday was slowly dying, a great cadre of women jazz singers including Sarah Vaughn and Carman McCrae were moving on up while the wondrous Dinah Washington, that supreme arbiter of jazz and supper club singing led the way -dripping diamonds and working sequined gowns.  James, named by Johnny Otis by turning her given name around, was as she pointed out a “tomboy” but she loved the dress-up.  She was light complected and she had no problem flaunting blonde wings and chandelier earrings. That her voice could not be anything but Black gave her added cache. And think of this, she sang during a time when the talent pool seemed bottomless: Betty Carter, Esther Phillips (another Otis discovery), Aretha Franklin, Irma Franklin, Betty Wright, Carla Thomas, Ann Peebles, Tina Turner, Dionne Warwick, Dee Dee Sharp, Mary Wells, et al.   

As I a poet, I am grateful that Etta James was an emotional truth teller. And tales were told.  She sang love.  She sang hope.  She sang anger.  She sang seduction.  She sang loneliness.  She was fearless.  And that fearlessness propelled her onstage and almost killed her off stage.  She gave me a model of creativity.  She showed me that a woman artist could/should explore the range of human emotions, the edge of her power.  That she could collaborate with others to make something larger or different, think of her  interpretations of Randy Newman’s songs especially “Sail Away” and “Let’s Burn Down the Cornfields”.  She made songs as different as “Come Rain or Come Shine”; “I’d rather go blind” and the lushly orgasmic, “Feeling Easy” her very own.  Like James Brown, the arc of her career follows much of Black American popular music from the 1950s on-from “race records” to “cross over”.  But it seems to me that American popular music deeply rooted in Black musical motifs has been crossing over since the first jazz recordings if not before. Her blonde wigs and Black diction tell part of a complex musical story as she lived through its promises and perils. 

And she survived the vicissitudes of the entertainment business; her addictions, her marriage and having Beyonce Knowles “play” her in a Hollywood movie. She leaves behind her husband of 42 years, two sons and four grandchildren.  Somehow I think she enjoyed being a grandmother. 

I have written poems that are directly or indirectly inspired by Etta James.  Here is one from 2008 that I wrote while at Yaddo.   James’ voice captures the suffering beneath the promise of that "somewhere”.  I am grateful to have seen her live when she was still fairly young (in 1975) and her voice for full of serious seduction and grit, grief and guff. 

Etta James sings “Somewhere” from West Side Story 

When the blue heron stands as still as cattails
All seems possible: a good life, 
Kind neighbors 
The healthy cheeks of loved children.

We are not outside nature. We hold nature in our hands.
But even with this knowledge, we cannot stop feeling trashed.
As if we can see the best of whom we can be
Thrown out on the street: 
Empty beer bottles, stale bread, fish gone bad. 

And yet the heron flies.
the singer strums her decaying voice
Across these words meant for a young soprano
Weeping. Her lover dead. Her brother dead.
Her mother distraught.  

How much sacrifice must be made
before that place is found. 
The place where our palms open
Our breathing evens out.
Where the flag does not make us sad.
Where we can look to the sky

And see the sky
Just the sky.

      Etta James sings “Somewhere” from West Side Story 
was  published in African Voices Magazine, Fall/Winter 2009