What did etta james died of
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Etta James (1938-2012) was a U.S. blues, soul, R&B, rock & roll, and jazz singer and songwriter. She is the winner of four Grammies, seventeen Blues Music Awards, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (in 1993), the Blues Hall of Fame (in 2001), and the Grammy Hall of Fame (in both 1999 and 2008).
James was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles, California, on 25th January 1938, to an unmarried fourteen-year-old mother, Dorothy Hawkins. According to Etta, her mother claimed that her father was the white Rudolph "Minnesota Fats" Wanderone, and that they received financial support from him on the condition that they keep his paternity a secret. This seems unlikely, though it has not been definitively disproved. Etta was born in Los Angeles in 1938. At the time, Wanderone was known to be managing a pool hall in Washington, D.C. and had not yet become known to be the cross-country traveller he later became.
She received her first professional vocal training at five years old from James Earle Hines, musical director of the Echoes of Eden choir at S
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Etta James was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles in 1938. James’s mother was still a high school student when she was born, and she was largely raised by an aunt and then by a foster family. At five years old, she began singing at the St. Paul Baptist Church, famous for its Echoes of Eden gospel choir. She began taking voice lessons from the choirmaster, James Earle Hines, and piano lessons from his wife. “In the forties,” writes James in her autobiography, “word got out that a girlchild in the St. Paul Baptist could sing like a full-grown woman, with grown-up feelings and strength. Joe Adams’s radio broadcasts helped spread the news, and it didn’t take long before I was famous.”
When her foster mother died, James moved to San Francisco to live with her birth mother and other relatives. Life became unstable, and James struggled in school and personally. She writes about music in her teenage years as both a coping mechanism and an expression of rebellion: “I liked the blues and the feeling it gave me,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1992. “It gave me a naughty-girl feelin
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Etta James
Explore This Section
Music
1938-2012
California Connection
- Los Angeles native and longtime Riverside resident
Achievements
Biography current as of induction in 2023
In a career that spanned six decades, Etta James sang in a variety of genres, notching over 30 R&B hits, thrilling audiences with her energetic live shows and earning a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, despite possessing one of the most powerful voices in music, she only belatedly gained the attention of mainstream audiences and appeared rarely on the pop charts.
Born Jamesetta Hawkins to a mother who was just 14 years old, James never knew her father and was raised by foster parents. She began singing with St. Paul Baptist Church’s gospel choir at age five, becoming a soloist and frequently appearing with them on local radio broadcasts.
At age 12, she moved to live with her mother in San Francisco, where she formed a singing group with two friends. The girls attracted the attention of bandleader and talent scout Johnny Otis, and when he heard their song &
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