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The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Etta James

ByMarina Manoukian

Gilles Petard/Getty Images

Throughout her life, Etta James' experiences with drug addiction were as well known as her singing. But although she claimed that her singing never seemed to suffer, her drug addiction and the resulting emotional turmoil weren't the only hardships that James was forced to confront and deal with.

James was subjected to physical abuse, exploitation, imprisonment, and health issues over the course of her entire life. And her feelings towards these myriad of tragic experiences sometimes ended up being represented in her music, with more than one song reflecting how she felt about the trauma. In her autobiography "Rage to Survive," she wrote that R&B vocalists are "honest when we sing, that we're incapable of lying in our music."

While her music took her to great heights — several critically acclaimed albums, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, and three Grammys (and multiple nominations) — her tragedies ultimately left her filled with rage. But it was that rage t

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Rage To Survive: The Etta James Story

October 8, 2016

Rage to Survive, published in 1995 after R & B singer Etta James won a Grammy for the Billie Holiday tribute album she dedicated to her aloof jazz hipster mother Dorothy who she refers to as the “Mystery Lady,” is derived from a series of conversations between Etta James and David Ritz, who authored several biographies about musicians like Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and is responsible for writing the lyrics for “sexual healing.” From an uncertain childhood in San Francisco with an adolescent mother who would abandon Jamesetta Hawkins with benevolent friends who would establish normalcy only for Dorothy to disrupt everything, to learning to sing as a child in a Baptist church choir surrounded by sassy homosexuals (who she still refers to as “secret angels”), to teenage delinquency and rebellion against the “Suzy Creamcheeses” of 1950s conformity with Jamesetta in girl gangs with friends like Sugar Pie DeSanto, forming a girl group called the Peaches and writing her first song “Roll With Me Henry,” to travellin

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Remembering Etta James, Stunning Singer

The "Matriarch of the Blues" has died. Music legend Etta James died Friday morning at Riverside Community Hospital in California of complications from leukemia. She was 73.

She was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles in 1938. Her first manager and promoter cut up Jamesetta's name and reversed it: Etta James.

Her talent was discovered when she was 14 — the same age her mother was when James was born. Within three years, the foster-home runaway had her first hit, with the girl group The Peaches. Back then, "Roll With Me Henry" was deemed too racy for radio, "roll" being a sexual euphemism.

Etta James was still a minor when she toured with Little Richard. Then, she signed with leading blues label Chess Records and bleached her hair platinum blond.

"What I was doing was trying to be a glamour girl," she told NPR's Fresh Air in 1994. "Because I'd been a tomboy, and I wanted to look grown and wanted to wear high-heeled shoes and fishtail gowns and big, long rhinestone earrings."

Darkness Beneath The Joy

James had grit in her vo