With a slimmed down look, a rejuvenated stage show and celebrating an incredible five decades as a recording artist, music legend Etta James has seen it all. In a life lived to the fullest, she has experienced all the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the pain and then, reinvention and renewal. With a range of material that would render most singers helpless, the truly legendary Etta James is one of the great forces in American Music having received two Grammy Awards, and a NARAS Lifetime Achievement Award. She is also a W.C. Handy Blues Foundation honoree, with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Etta is a recognized master in the field of blues, R&B, jazz, and pop, crossing genres time and again, proving her notion that, "If I can feel it, I can sing it."
Etta's history began in the early 50s when Johnny Otis first discovered the Los Angeles-born singer while still a teenager. It was the bandleader and talent scout that produced her first hit the saucy, Dance With Me Henry, which immediately topped R&B charts nationwide.
Etta's tenure with Chess Records began in 1960 and continued for sixteen incredible years with a string of landmark hits including her signature version of At Last, All I Could Do Was Cry, My Dearest Darling, Trust In Me, Something's Got A Hold On Me, Tell Mama, Fool That I Am, and Don't Cry Baby. Together they comprised a run of charting records that ranked Etta third, just behind Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick, as the most prolific female R&B vocalist of her era.
Etta continued to make definitive blues, soul and R&B music over the next four decades, including her acclaimed 2003 release, Let's Roll, which garnered Etta a reputation as a world class live performer in process.
Jerry Wexler, Atlantic Records' legendary producer describes Etta as "the greatest of all modern blues singers, the undisputed Earth Mother." Her raw, unharnessed vocals and hot-blooded eroticism has made disciples of singers ranging from Janis Joplin to Bonnie Raitt. Etta's pioneering 1950s hits, The Wallflower and Good Rockin' Daddy assure her a place in the early history of rock and roll alongside Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles.
Etta has launched thirty singles onto the R&B Singles Chart and placed a respectable nine of them in the pop Top Forty as well.
