US soul singer Etta James has died in a California hospital from complications related to leukaemia.
James (73), who also suffered from dementia and Hepatitis C, died today in at the Riverside Community Hospital with her husband, Artis Mills, and her sons by her side, according to her longtime friend and manager, Lupe De Leon.
"This is a tremendous loss for the family, her friends and fans around the world," Mr De Leon said. "She was a true original who could sing it all - her music defied category."
The Grammy-winner and Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame member, a feisty and outspoken personality off-stage who overcame heroin addiction, is perhaps best known for such hits as The Wallflower, Something's Got a Hold on Me and the wedding favourite At Last.
During her 50-year career, she won six Grammy Awards and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
She was discovered in the 1950s in San Francisco by singer Johnny Otis, who also died this week. Otis composed her first hit, The Wallflower which gained chart success in 1955.
The platinum blonde's first hit was a saucy R&B number about sex, and she was known as a hell-raiser who had tempestuous relationships with her family, her men and the music industry. Then she spent years battling a drug addiction that she admitted sapped away at her great talents.
"The bad girls ... had the look that I liked," she wrote in her 1995 autobiography,
Rage to Survive.
''I wanted to be rare, I wanted to be noticed, I wanted to be exotic as a Cotton Club chorus girl, and I wanted to be obvious as the most flamboyant hooker on the street. I just wanted to be."
Despite the reputation she cultivated, she would always be remembered best for At Last. The jazz-inflected rendition wasn't the original, but it would become the most famous and the song that would define her as a legendary singer. Over the decades, brides used it as their song down the aisle and car companies to hawk their wares, and it filtered from one generation to the next through its inclusion in films like American Pie.
Perhaps most famously, US president Barack Obama and the first lady danced to a version of At Last sung by Beyonce at his inauguration ball.
The tender, sweet song belied the turmoil in her personal life. James - born Jamesette Hawkins - was born in Los Angeles in 1938 to a mother whom she described as a scam artist, a substance abuser and a fleeting presence during her youth. She never knew her father, although she was told and had believed, that he was the famous billiards player Minnesota Fats. He neither confirmed nor denied it: when they met, he simply told her: "I don't remember everything. I wish I did, but I don't."
She was raised by Lula and Jesse Rogers, who owned the rooming house where her mother once lived in. The pair brought up James in the Christian faith, and as a young girl, her voice stood out in the church choir. James landed the solos in the choir and became so well known, she said that Hollywood stars would come to see her perform. But she wouldn't stay a gospel singer for long. Rhythm and blues lured her away from the church, and she found herself drawn to the grittiness of the music.
"My mother always wanted me to be a jazz singer, but I always wanted to be raunchy," she recalled in her book.
She was doing just that when Otis found her singing on San Francisco street corners with some girlfriends in the early 1950s. "At the time, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters had a hit with Work With Me, Annie, and we decided to do an answer. We didn't think we would get in show business, we were just running around making up answers to songs," James said in 1987. And so they replied with the song, Roll With Me, Henry.
When Otis heard it, he told James to get her mother's permission to accompany him to Los Angeles to make a recording. Instead, the 15-year-old singer forged her mother's name on a note claiming she was 18.
"At that time, you weren't allowed to say 'roll' because it was considered vulgar. So when Georgia Gibbs did her version, she renamed it Dance With Me, Henry and it went to No 1 on the pop charts," the singer recalled. The Gibbs song was one of several in the early rock era when white singers got hits by covering songs by black artists, often with sanitised lyrics.
After her 1955 debut, James toured with Otis' revue, sometimes earning only $10 a night. In 1959, she signed with Chicago's legendary Chess label, began cranking out the hits and going on tours with performers such as Bobby Vinton, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Everly Brothers.
"We would travel on four buses to all the big auditoriums. And we had a lot of fun," she recalled in 1987.
James recorded a string of hits in the late 1950s and '60s including
Trust In Me, Something's Got a Hold On Me, Sunday Kind of Love, All I Could Do Was Cry
and
At Last.
In 1967, she cut one of the most highly regarded soul albums of all time, Tell Mama, an earthy fusion of rock and gospel music featuring blistering horn arrangements, funky rhythms and a churchy chorus.
Her professional success, however, was balanced against personal demons, namely a drug addiction.
"I was trying to be cool," she said in 1995, explaining what had led her to try heroin. "I hung out in Harlem and saw Miles Davis and all the jazz cats. At one time, my heavy role models were all druggies. Billie Holiday sang so groovy. Is that because she's on drugs? It was in my mind as a young person. I probably thought I was a young Billie Holiday, doing whatever came with that."
She was addicted to the drug for years, beginning in 1960, and it led to a harrowing existence that included time behind bars. It sapped her singing abilities and her money, eventually, almost destroying her career.
It would take her at least two decades to beat her drug problem. Her husband, Artis Mills, even went to prison for several years, taking full responsibility for drugs during an arrest even though James was culpable.
"My management was suffering. My career was in the toilet. People tried to help, but I was hell-bent on getting high," she wrote of her drug habit in 1980.
She finally quit the habit and managed herself for a while, calling up small clubs and asking them, "Have you ever heard of Etta James?" in order to get gigs. Eventually, she got regular bookings even drawing Elizabeth Taylor as an audience member. In 1984, she was sand the national anthem at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and her career got the resurgent boost it needed, though she fought addiction again when she got hooked on painkillers in the late 1980s.
Drug addiction wasn't her only problem. She struggled with her weight, and often performed from a wheelchair as she got older and heavier. In the early 2000s, she had weight-loss surgery and shed 50kgs.
James did get her accolades over the years. She was inducted into the Rock Hall in 1993, captured a Grammy in 2003 for best contemporary blues album for
Let's Roll,
one in 2004 for best traditional blues album for
Blues to the Bone
and one for best jazz vocal performance for 1994's
Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday.
She was also awarded a special Grammy in 2003 for lifetime achievement and got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Her health went into decline, however, and by 2011, she was being cared for at home by a personal doctor.
She suffered from dementia, kidney problems and leukaemia.
Her husband and her two sons fought over control of her $1 million estate, though a deal was later struck keeping Mr Mills as the conservator and capping the singer's expenses at $350,000. In December 2011, her physician announced that her leukaemia was terminal.