Roots of R&B: Singer/songwriter Etta James

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Today, we continue our archive series R&B, rockabilly and early rock 'n' roll. Before Elvis Presley recorded "Hound Dog," it was recorded by Big Mama Thornton. The record's drummer and producer was Johnny Otis, whose interview we're featuring today.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOUND DOG")

BIG MAMA THORNTON: (Singing) You ain't nothing but a hound dog. Been snooping 'round my door. You ain't nothing but a hound dog. Been snooping 'round my door. You can wag your tail, but I ain't going to feed you no more. You told me you was high class, but I could see through that. Yes, you told me you was high class, but I could see through that. And, Daddy, I know, you ain't no real cool cat. You ain't nothing but a hound dog, been snooping 'round my door. You're just an old hound dog. Been snooping 'round my door. You can wag your tail, but I ain't going to feed you no more. Oh, play that thing, boy. Oh, listen, ain't that them old hound dog?

GROSS: Otis was also an R&B singer and musician, a band leader, nightclub owner and talent scout. He started out leading a big band that had the 1945 hit "Harlem Nocturne." Soon after, his band, like most of the big bands, broke up for financial reasons. Otis organized a smaller unit that played a hybrid of swing and blues that became known as Rhythm & Blues. Otis' Rhythm & Blues Caravan became the first R&B touring road show. Through his nightclub, talent shows and road show, Otis discovered such singers as Esther Phillips, who first worked under the name Little Esther, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard and Etta James, who we'll hear from later in the show. Otis had several R&B hits in the early '50s, and in 1958, his record "Willie And The Hand Jive" made it to the top 10 of the rock 'n' roll chart. Although Otis is a pioneer of R&B and played almost exclusively with Black performers, he was a white Greek American who grew up in a Black neighborhood where his father ran a grocery store. During the British invasion of the '60s, his style of music became decreasingly unpopular. Otis died in 2012 at the age of 90. When I spoke with him in 1989, he was back on the road and in the recording studio. His sessions from the 1950s had just been reissued. We began with his first hit - that 1945 instrumental recording of "Harlem Nocturne."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: There's a great story behind recording this record. Would you tell it?

JOHNNY OTIS: Well, this goes back to the mid '40s, and it was my first record date with my own band, as I recall. And we did three things. I went to the producer after we had completed the third one and I said, well, Mr. Renee (ph), that's it. Three songs in four hours, and we got plenty of time left. He said, no, you've got that wrong. It's four songs in three hours. Now, get out there and get another song together. So, we were - the house band at the Club Alabam on Central Avenue here in LA at the time, and I remember when we would play this particular song, the chorus girls and the show girls would come out of the - out of their dressing rooms and dance on the balcony, and they would always ask us to play it. And I thought it must have some charm if the ladies like it that well. So I said, let's play that. And it was a stock arrangement that had been recorded once before by Ray Noble and an Earle Hagen tune. So - but I slowed it down, and I was a drummer then. I then went, boom, boom, boom on the tom toms, and we recorded it. And the songs that we had done previously with Jimmy Rushing, the great Count Basie singer, and some wonderful arrangements, they didn't do it, but "Harlem Nocturne" became an instant hit.

GROSS: And when "Harlem Nocturne" became an instant hit, then you started touring with Louis Jordan and with The Ink Spots. And they were some of the biggest Black acts of the time. Can you describe a little bit what the atmosphere was like at the concerts in which you shared the bill?

OTIS: That same feeling you feel the day before the curtain opens, that great anticipation, they're going to see Bill Kenny and The Ink Spots. They're going to see Louis Jordan. And we were lucky enough to be the band.

GROSS: Did the audiences assume that you were Black?

OTIS: Of course. In those days, many of the places we played, had they suspected I was white, we would have been arrested.

GROSS: Well, I remember when I interviewed Solomon Burke, he told a story about how when one of his records crossed over to the country charts, he started getting invitations to play certain places in the South with white crowds who would have never asked him to play if they knew he was Black, and he showed up to one of these places, and it was quite a scene. Did anything similar ever happen to you?

OTIS: No. We're talking now, I assume we're back in the '40s. If we are, it was much different than the Solomon Burke days of the '50s or the '60s with Solomon Burke. You see, your life was on the line in those days. When our bus would cross the Mason-Dixon line, and the driver would say, well, we just crossed the Mason-Dixon line, a pall would fall over the entire show. We'd all get quiet because we knew we were down there where we had problems. And many times, we came close to being hurt. One time we stopped the bus to go to get some gas, and my little singer, Little Esther, who was only 13, jumped off and went to the restroom. And I looked up, and there's a guy with a gun in my belly. And he's shaking and he's all excited because the little Black girl went to the white woman's bathroom. And I thought to myself, any death but this. So she came out, and we went on down the road. But those things happened to us all the time. That was the open version of white racism as against the very subtle, pervasive and institutionalized version that we have today.

GROSS: Let me play one of the rhythm and blues records from the period that you made. And this was with the singer Little Esther, who we now know as Esther Phillips. And this was "Double Crossing Blues." Do you want to say anything about this? Did you write this song?

OTIS: Well, I can give you a little anecdote about it.

GROSS: Yeah.

OTIS: I was leaving my little chicken ranch in Watts, back in the '40s, and with me were a group of guys I had found at the Barrelhouse, where - I had a nightclub there called the Barrelhouse. And we were going to do their first record, and they became known as The Robins and later The Coasters. But Little Esther was a neighborhood little girl who used to help me, with the other children, catch my chickens when people would pick out the chicken they wanted. And then we would have refreshments later. And she ran and she said, Johnny, let me go. Let me go. So I said, oh, get in. So she got in. We went to Hollywood to the studio. And when we got there, we did the four sides by The Robins, and we had a few minutes left. So I told - I asked the producer, Ralph Bass. I said, man, we got some time. Let me get these kids together. I got a song I think would make sense. He said, well, hurry up. You've only got a couple of minutes. So we - I taught it to him, and we did it, and it was called "Double Crossing Blues." And he said - I said, can I do it one more time 'cause she kind of giggled. He said, no, that's it. But anyhow, that became the No. 1 song of 1950. And it brought Little Esther to stardom, and it did an awful lot for us, too.

GROSS: And you're playing vibes.

OTIS: Yeah, and I'm playing vibes.

GROSS: OK, here we go.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DOUBLE CROSSING BLUES")

ESTHER PHILLIPS: (Singing) I've been looking for you, Daddy. I just found you in time. You're with some other woman, and you swore that you are mine. What's the matter, Daddy? Don't my kisses satisfy? Well, if I don't thrill you baby, goodness knows how hard I've tried. Folks say that you've been cheating, and now I see it's true. Well, I can't quit you baby 'cause I'm so in love with you. What's the matter, Daddy? If you'd only tell me why. Well, if I don't thrill you baby, goodness knows how I've tried.

BOBBY NUNN: (Singing) You stayed out last night, said you were playing cards. Can't understand it baby, just what makes you play so hard. I'm gonna leave you.

GROSS: Johnny Otis is my guest, and by the way, he has a new album of some of his reissued recordings from the 1950s. It's called "The Capitol Years." We'll be hearing some of that in just a little while. You discovered a lot of talent, not just a Little Esther, Esther Phillips. What was your way of scouting for people?

OTIS: Actually, my first singer was Ernestine Anderson when she was just a little girl.

GROSS: Really?

OTIS: Then - yeah. And then came Esther Phillips. But after Esther Phillips' amazing success and became the big child star of the African American community nationally, then everywhere we played, people - they would bring me their sons and their daughters backstage. I guess they figured I was an expert who knew how to make stars out of kids. And that's how it started.

One day in Detroit at the Paradise Theater, I asked the manager. I said, during this week that we'll be here, how about me doing a talent show to avoid having to have all these people coming around with their kids? He said, great. And we did. It was to have been one hour, but it stretched into two hours. And we found so many wonderful singers and players that day. I found Little Willie John, Jackie Wilson and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters on that particular show. And there were probably others, but the record company I was scouting for - King - only wanted to deal with three at the moment. And I thought years later, when Berry Gordy formed his great "Motown Story," I said, no wonder. Look at the reservoir of talent here in Detroit.

GROSS: It must have been funny, though, when the parents were bringing you their children. You must have been exposed to a lot of really untalented kids also.

OTIS: Well, I learned quick. They would come and say - and they almost all had exactly - I don't care if I was in Mississippi or Massachusetts. They would say, Now, Mr. Otis, we know that you know. And if Junior has any real talent, you'll tell us the truth. And if he doesn't, of course - but they didn't mean that. I didn't know it. What they meant was, this is the world's answer to the great child star. This is it. And if I would dare to suggest they weren't, then I had an enemy on my hands. So I learned how to sidestep that and tell little fibs.

GROSS: We're listening back to my 1989 interview with the late Johnny Otis. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my 1989 interview with the late Johnny Otis, an R&B musician, producer, nightclub owner and talent scout who discovered Big Mama Thornton, Esther Phillips, Jackie Wilson and Etta James, who we'll hear from later.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: We've been talking about rhythm and blues. When there was the transition between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, did you have to - did you find yourself changing the music, or were, maybe, the audiences changing that you were playing your music to?

OTIS: Yeah, that's true. When I was dealing with the classic rhythm and blues that we developed back in the '40s, we did a lot of bluesy material because the Black audience demanded it. As the transition occurred and as it developed, we then had to play more animated jump blues, boogie styles and act - put on an act for white folks, because they wanted it to be - they wanted to see us, you know, work and sweat. And that's what they liked.

The early Black audiences wanted a more musical, bluesy jazz thing. The white audiences wanted that jump tune, boogie-woogie kind of thing.

GROSS: Well, I want to play a song that you had that was a hit on the rock 'n' roll charts in 1958, and this is "Willie And The Hand Jive." Let's play it, and then we'll talk about it.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WILLIE AND THE HAND JIVE")

OTIS: (Singing) I know a cat named Way Out Willie. He got a cool little chick named Rockin' Millie. He can walk and stroll and Susie Q and do that crazy hand jive, too. Papa told Willie, you'll ruin my home. You and that hand jive has got to go. Willie said, Papa, don't put me down. They're doing that hand jive all over town. Hand jive, hand jive, hand jive, doing that crazy hand jive. Mama, mama, look at Uncle Joe.

GROSS: That's "Hand Jive," which was a big hit for my guest, Johnny Otis, back in 1958. Tell me about writing this song.

OTIS: My manager, the late Hal Zeiger and partner, back at that time, we had a hit in '57 called "Ma, He's Making Eyes At Me" with the great Marie Adams singing, and it became a hit, not here in the States, but in Europe and England, it was No. 1. So he went over to set up the tour, and when he got back, he said, listen, I saw something interesting.

I saw the young people around the London area in the venues where they couldn't dance, at the concerts and the theaters. As they sat there, they would do a thing that you guys in the big Black bands used to do with their hands, you know, while the band was playing. And they call it hand jive. Why don't you write a song called "Hand Jive" and maybe we'll do some good over in Europe? Well, I did, and it - luckily, it became a hit everywhere.

GROSS: So the hand jive was a - basically, just kind of clapping and moving your hands...

OTIS: Yeah, while you're sitting.

GROSS: ...While you're sitting, in a dance-like version...

OTIS: Well, it became a whole dance later (laughter).

GROSS: I want to play something that you're featured on from this new re-issue called "The Capitol Years." And this is "Can't You Hear Me Calling."

OTIS: OK.

GROSS: And you're singing on this?

OTIS: Yeah.

GROSS: And what do you play?

OTIS: After a fashion (laughter).

GROSS: Oh, you sound really good on it.

OTIS: Oh, well, OK. You and my mother think so.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: OK. Well, let's give it a listen.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CAN'T YOU HEAR ME CALLING")

OTIS: (Singing) Can't you hear me calling, babe.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Babe.

OTIS: (Singing) Babe.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Babe.

OTIS: (Singing) Babe. Baby, please, don't go.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Baby, please don't go.

OTIS: (Singing) Baby, don't you know I love...

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Love.

OTIS: (Singing) I love...

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Love.

OTIS: (Singing) I love...

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Love.

OTIS: (Singing) ...I love you so.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I love you so.

OTIS: (Singing) Now you got me all alone, alone and blue. And I'm sitting here crying over you. Can't you hear me calling, baby, baby, please, don't go.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Don't go, don't go.

OTIS: (Singing) Can't you hear me calling. I...

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I.

OTIS: (Singing) I...

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I.

OTIS: (Singing) I...

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I.

OTIS: (Singing) ...I can't go on.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I can't go on.

OTIS: (Singing) And now you know you got me crying.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Crying.

OTIS: (Singing) I'm crying.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Crying.

OTIS: (Singing) I'm crying. I'm all alone.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I'm all alone.

OTIS: (Singing) Come on, baby, won't you tell me that you coming home. You don't want to leave me crying here all alone. Can't you hear me calling, baby, baby, please don't go.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Don't go, don't go.

OTIS: (Singing) In the morning...

GROSS: Johnny Otis from the new album "The Capitol Years." You know, Ben Vaughan wrote the liner notes for this record and in it he mentions that in one of - I guess it was a publicity shot - that your goatee was airbrushed out so that you would look less ethnic? What was the story behind that?

OTIS: (Laughter) Oh, Hal Zeiger, the late Hal Zeiger, God rest his soul. He was my partner at the time and he did these things without even asking me. Well, you know, he wanted me to look less Black. He wanted me to look less like a Greek. He wanted me to look like a nice Anglo-Saxon WASP, which is hard to do. But he tried.

GROSS: So he airbrushed out the goatee.

OTIS: Yeah (laughter). I don't think that sold any records (laughter).

GROSS: Now, your family is Greek? Was Greek?

OTIS: Yeah.

GROSS: Your parents?

OTIS: Yeah.

GROSS: And...

OTIS: Yeah. Were and are. Yes.

GROSS: ...And your last name was Veliotes?

OTIS: Veliotes.

GROSS: And when did you change it to Otis?

OTIS: The kids at school kind of made that decision for me. They decided not to deal with try to remember how to pronounce that. They would say, Johnny Otis. And that's the way it stuck.

GROSS: So, I know that your father had a grocery store. Was that in the same neighborhood that you lived in?

OTIS: Oh, yes. The grocery store was downstairs and we lived upstairs.

GROSS: And this was in a Black neighborhood?

OTIS: Yes. In the heart of the Black neighborhood.

GROSS: So that, I guess, helps explain why you grew up with such Black identification.

OTIS: It's also the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.

GROSS: So...

OTIS: He might, in fact, have put it in a WASP neighborhood. Then what would have happened to me?

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Did you not think of yourself as being white when you were growing up?

OTIS: I didn't think about that at all. I had no concept about that. Luckily, my father was absolutely wonderful in that respect. And my playmates were - I didn't know it then, but they were Black, African American. I thought we were all the same thing. And I don't think it's so unique in America for white kids to grow up with Black youngsters and come up together as brothers and sisters.

What might be unique is not to veer away. I could not veer away because that's where I wanted to be. Those were my friends. That's what I loved. Wasn't the music that brought me to the Black community. It was the way of life. I felt I was Black.

GROSS: What was it about the way of life?

OTIS: Everything about it. You know, different cultures have different characteristics, and the characteristics of the African American community became my own. And I just wasn't willing to give that up, to go become part of the mainstream community where people felt superior to Black people, and they oppressed Black people and they practiced democracy and preached racism.

I didn't want to be part of that. I want to stay in that sweet, beautiful Black place in the Black community.

GROSS: My interview with Johnny Otis was recorded in 1989. He died in 2012 at the age of 90. After we take a short break, we'll hear from one of the singers he discovered, Etta James. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE WALLFLOWER")

RICHARD BERRY: (Singing) Hey, baby. What do I have to do to make you love me, too?

ETTA JAMES: (Singing) You got to roll with me, Henry.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE ROLLING STONES' "NOW I'VE GOT A WITNESS")

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's continue our archive series R&B, rockabilly and early rock 'n' roll with rhythm and blues singer Etta James. She got her start at the age of 15 when she was discovered by Johnny Otis, who we just heard from, and began performing with his traveling R&B review. By age 17, she had her first hit, "Roll With Me Henry," an answer song to Hank Ballard's "Work With Me Annie." After establishing herself as a rhythm and blues star in the late '50s and early '60s, her career was eclipsed by changes in pop music. But later, she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame. Younger generations became aware of her for her recording of "At Last" after Beyonce sang that song at President Obama's first inaugural, while he and Michelle Obama had their first dance as president and first lady.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AT LAST")

ETTA JAMES: (Singing) At last, my love has come along. My lonely days are over, and life is like a song. Oh, yeah, yeah. At last...

GROSS: When I spoke with Etta James in 1994, she had just released an album called "Mystery Lady," paying tribute to jazz singer Billie Holiday. The album featured James doing songs Holiday had recorded, like this one, "The Very Thought Of You."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE VERY THOUGHT OF YOU")

JAMES: (Singing) The very thought of you, and I forget to do the little ordinary things everyone ought to do. I'm living in a kind of daydream. I'm happy as a queen. But foolish though it may seem, to me, that's everything.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: Etta James, welcome to FRESH AIR. Tell me the story of why you wanted to record a Billie Holiday record.

JAMES: Well, I thought that since I grew up and I did my teenage years in San Francisco and my mother was such a Billie Holiday and jazz fan, mostly Billie Holiday, and I kind of - all along, I says, what, jazz? You know? So to me, as a young kid, that was like - it was too disciplined. It was too confining. At least, that's the way I thought. And I thought you had to be really, really cool and had to be -and be bourgeois, you know, to do that. And I didn't want to do that. I mean, I was a sloppy kid with tattoos all over. I wanted to be just wild. I really think that I had to mature. I got to the point where I'm 56 years old. I think it took me maturing.

GROSS: Now, let me ask you this. You grew up in a foster home. I think when your mother had you, she was 14 years old.

JAMES: Right. She was a kid. And, you know, I had feelings about all that kind of stuff for years, and I went to therapy and all about it. But then, as I got older, I realized that she really did the best for me. She put me in a lovely home. The people were, you know, lovely to me. They never said that they were my real parents. I mean, I always knew I had this good-looking, you know, high-stepping mom, and she was, like, only 14 years older than me. And so she did the best for me because if she had tried to take me with her, she was just a child. What would she have done with me? Would I have been singing today? Would I have been anything, you know?

GROSS: What was your foster family like?

JAMES: They were lovely. They were older people, and they had property. And they lived in the Eastside, lower Eastside of Los Angeles. And my grandmother was a church lady, and they believed in - you know, they gave me singing lessons at 5. And so, you know...

GROSS: So when you...

JAMES: I...

GROSS: When you were singing in the church choir, did your grandmother or anyone else in the family get upset if, on your own time, you sang blues or any kind of secular music?

JAMES: No, because when - as long as - my grandmother lived until I was - my grandmother died when I was 12. So I sang gospel music from 5 until 12. And so my grandmother - she never - she wasn't one of those kind of people, because I was already the prodigy child of the church. And - you know, and I did nothing but - and I loved church. I went to Bible camp, and I was a little Christian girl. And until my grandmother passed away at 12 - that is when my mother came back, came to get me, because I had nothing but my grandfather there in the house. And my grandmother - my mother wanted me to be with her. And she came the day of the funeral to pick me up to take me back to San Francisco. So that's - at San - oh, I was listening to little stuff on the sly, but I wasn't interested in secular music. But when - once I got to San Francisco, I - like, I grew horns and a tail.

GROSS: (Laughter).

JAMES: And I really turned into, you know, the real street kid. I was kind of like a runaway, but I had a mother. You know what I mean? And...

GROSS: But...

JAMES: ...I had a place to stay.

GROSS: We're listening to my 1994 interview with singer Etta James. We'll hear more of it after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF COOTIE WILLIAMS' "RINKY DINK")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my 1994 interview with the late R&B singer Etta James.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to play one of your rhythm and blues recordings that has a very gospel sound to it. I want to play "Something's Got A Hold On Me" from 1961. Do you think of this as having a gospel sound?

JAMES: Matter of fact, it is a gospel song. We wrote that song, and we adapted it from a gospel song. And the gospel song was "Something's Got a Hold On Me, It Must Be the Lord."

GROSS: And in your song, it must be love.

JAMES: Must be love. Right, right.

GROSS: (Laughter).

JAMES: Now, don't get me because I'm not the one who decided to, but I was one of the writers. I just kind of said, OK, well, let's go, rock 'n' roll.

GROSS: (Laughter) This is Etta James recorded in 1961.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOMETHING'S GOT A HOLD OF ME")

JAMES: (Singing) Oh, oh, sometimes I get a good feeling, yeah. (Yeah). I get a feeling that I never, never, never, never had before. No, no. (Yeah). I just want to tell you right now that (ooh) I believe, I really do believe that something's got to hold on me here. (Oh, it must be love). Oh, something's got to hold on me right now, child. (Oh, it must be love). Let me think it now, I've got a feeling. I feel so strange. Everything about me seems to have changed. Step by step, I got a brand-new walk. I even sound sweeter when I talk. I said, oh, (oh), oh, (oh), oh (oh), oh, (oh). Hey, hey, yeah, oh, it must be love. (You know it must be love). Let me tell you now...

GROSS: Well, it wasn't too long after you moved in with your mother that you actually went on the road. I mean, Johnny Otis, who had a now-famous rhythm and blues touring review, got you into the show. He discovered you. But how did you audition for him? How did you find him or he find you?

JAMES: Well, kind of, yeah, I think it was kind of a little bit of both, really, but he really found me because I - at that time, my mother - I had ran away from home. And I went and I stayed with two girls, one named Abby and Jean, who later became The Peaches. You know, it used to be Etta James and The Peaches. And we had wrote an answer to the song, "Work With Me, Annie."

GROSS: The Hank Ballard record.

JAMES: Right. So during those days, you know, everybody would make an answer. You said, work with me, Annie, then we said, roll with me, Henry. So one night, the young girl and myself that were - we were the same age. I think we were both like 16, and the older sister was like 24. And she went out to a dance in the Fillmore District, which was, you know, a heavy drag district of San Francisco. She went to see the Johnny Otis band.

And she was there 'cause we couldn't go, and we didn't want to go anyway. We were, like, you know, different from her. We weren't like - she was kind of, like, a groupie kind of a chick. And we were kind of, like, scared, you know, to do that. So all of a sudden, we got a call that night, and it was Abby calling us back to say, listen, guess who I'm with? I'm with Johnny Otis. And we go, oh, Johnny Otis. And she said, yeah, Johnny Otis. I told him that we have a girl group, and he says he wants to hear us. And I said, yeah, right. How does he want to hear us? We're out there in the project in the boonies, right? And she says, oh, he's at the hotel there, and all the band and everything. And we - myself and the girl, we looked at each other and said, yeah, right. Now, we're 15-year-olds, and we're going to go to the hotel with the band and Johnny Otis?

GROSS: (Laughter).

JAMES: Johnny Otis was, like, about a 34-, 35-year-old man. So we said, oh, no, that's all right. That's all right. We'll just - we'll cool that and everything. So Johnny Otis snatched the phone from her. And it was Johnny Otis. You know, we heard that voice, you know? And he said, hi, how are you doing? And we said, oh, we're doing all right. He says, I heard - I hear you guys got a great group. I hear you got a song, a couple of songs, and I'd like to hear you. And he says, how about catching a cab? I'll pay the cab fare, and I'll meet you out front. And I said, oh, no. Now, this is getting heavy. This older man is going to, you know, take us in a - send us in a cab. So we said, OK, let's go on. Johnny - he sounded pretty sincere. And he said, don't worry, nobody's going to bother you. He says, OK.

So we got up and got dressed, got in the cab and went down there. Sure enough, as we pulled up, we saw this tall man. You know, we'd all seen pictures of Johnny Otis with the nice hair, and he looked like a tall kind of a, like, a Creole man with a nice mustache and a beard, and he - you know, and the nice pompadour hair. And he was standing there all stately, and he had two or three more guys with him. One guy was his manager, was a much older man. And when we got there, oh, I'm glad to see you. And come on up, and let's see what - let's hear you. So we went upstairs to his room, and we sang, "How Deep Is The Ocean" and "For All We Know" and "Street Of Dreams." And...

GROSS: So you auditioned for Johnny Otis. He liked your singing, I suppose.

JAMES: Right.

GROSS: And invited you to go on the tour. But you were still a minor. Did he have to get your mother's permission?

JAMES: Well, that was a trick there. My mother - I knew my mother wasn't going to let me go, but I told him. He says, how old are you? I said 18, which he knew that was a lie. And he says, well, you know what? I would like to take you guys to Los Angeles tomorrow to make a record. And he says, can I speak with your mother? I said, no, I can't find her right now. She's working. And he says, well, can you go home and get permission from your mother, get something in writing, stating that your - that you can travel, and give me your mother's address and phone number and all this stuff and saying that you can travel, and you're allowed to travel with me and have her to sign it and date it. I said, oh, yeah, I can do that. So sure enough, that's what I did. I went home. I wrote the note (laughter).

GROSS: Oh, I see. Right. I see.

JAMES: And I brought the note back with a tiny little bag, a little plastic bag or something with some clothes in it, and myself and the two girls got on Johnny's bus, and we split to LA.

GROSS: So why don't we hear the first song that you recorded? And this was the first song recorded after going on the road with Johnny Otis. And it's "Roll With Me, Henry," also called "Wallflower" (laughter).

JAMES: And called "Dance With Me, Henry."

GROSS: Yeah, called "Dance With Me, Henry" also. And this is Etta James.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ROLL WITH ME HENRY")

RICHARD BERRY: (Singing) Hey, baby. What do I have to do to make you love me, too?

JAMES: (Singing) You got to roll with me, Henry.

BERRY: (Singing) All right, baby.

JAMES: (Singing) Roll with me, Henry.

BERRY: (Singing) Don't mean maybe.

JAMES: (Singing) Roll with me, Henry.

BERRY: (Singing) Any ole time.

JAMES: (Singing) Roll with me, Henry.

BERRY: (Singing) Don't change my mind.

JAMES: (Singing) Roll with me, Henry.

BERRY: (Singing) All right.

JAMES: (Singing) You better roll it while the rolling is on. Roll on, roll on, roll on. While the cats are balling, you better stop your stalling. It's intermission in a minute, so you better get with it. Roll with me, Henry. You better roll it while the rolling is on. Roll on, roll on, roll on.

GROSS: Now, after you recorded this, Georgia Gibbs did a cover recording of this called "Dance With Me Henry." And...

JAMES: Right.

GROSS: Was that supposed to be the tamer version, the...

JAMES: Yeah, well, you know, during those days, you weren't allowed to say roll because roll was, like, a vulgar word. You know what I mean? Think about it.

GROSS: For sex? Yeah.

JAMES: They - yeah. Think about it. They would probably burn Prince at the stake, right?

GROSS: (Laughter).

JAMES: But you couldn't say roll. So rather than - they banned my record from the air. And what happened - what we had to do was sell it underground, and not only that, change the title to "Wallflower." And then when Georgia Gibbs did it, she just made the "Dance With Me Henry" so that, you know, all the kids could go buy it. And they - you know, they could take it home and, you know, listen to it, because their parents weren't going to go for no roll. Are you kidding? Roll with me? How do you roll with somebody?

GROSS: We're listening to my 1994 interview with singer Etta James. We'll continue the interview after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my 1994 interview with the late R&B singer Etta James.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: At some point in your career, you started dressing in evening gowns for performances and dying your hair blonde. Tell me how you created that on-stage image for yourself.

JAMES: I think probably by me being so young. And I was oversized, like I am now, but, I mean, I had a real nice figure and I was tall. And I remember this singer Joyce Bryant. She was a Black singer, and I always admired her. And I had two role models. I liked Joyce Bryant because she wore fishtail gowns, sequined fishtail gowns, and she was Black and she had the nerve to wear platinum hair. And then I also loved Jane Mansfield because Jane Mansfield had the blonde hair and had the - like, the poochy lips and the mole and all this.

So I think what I did was kind of combined. My mother had bleached my hair carrot red at one point, and then I said, well, maybe that's not flamboyant enough. So I just kind of went into Detroit one day, and one of the fellows over there said, oh, Miss James. Oh, why, you would probably look fabulous with platinum hair. So he bleached my hair blonde, and it looked good. And so then I started - what I was doing was trying to be a glamour girl because I had been a tomboy most of the time, and I wanted to look grown. You know, I wanted to wear tall, high-heeled shoes and fishtail gowns and big, long rhinestone earrings, you know?

GROSS: So how long did you dye your hair?

JAMES: How - for how long?

GROSS: Yeah.

JAMES: I think, well, most of my career. It was blonde, platinum blonde all the way, I would think, up into the '70s. Maybe the '72 or '73, something like that.

GROSS: And why'd you stop?

JAMES: Well, I - you know, I wanted to - I think I - I think - one thing about it, I think things had changed. I know things had changed. And my career hadn't - wasn't happening. And I didn't think that I needed to be that - you know, that - to attract that much attention. Another thing - I was on drugs at that time, and I think I really wanted a low profile.

GROSS: Was it difficult for you to give up drugs?

JAMES: Not when I got down to - you know, I had given it up many a time. You know, I'd kicked my habits many a time. But when I went in 1974, I gave heroin up. I was on methadone for maybe three or four years before that. So I had a couple of things to give up.

GROSS: Was it hard to make a comeback after you started - stopped using?

JAMES: No, not really, because when I stopped using, I - you know, I wasn't the kind that went around and wanted people to pat me on the back about it. It's just that I just picked up the - you know, picked up the ball and started running with it. The thing was, when I went to this rehabilitation center, I was around nothing but a lot of white kids. And the thing were, they were all younger than I was. And I remember on Saturdays, they would play all these great rock 'n' roll records. The thing was, I was doing R&B, remember. But the ZZ Tops and the Rod Stewarts and The Rolling Stones and all those people - I never really - I was busy using drugs. I wasn't there when Woodstock - I was there in New York when Woodstock was going on, but I didn't want to go to Woodstock. I was - I'd rather - I would rather go to Harlem, you know?

And when I was in the program, on Saturdays, we'd be cleaning up. They would be playing songs from all these people, and I would say, ooh, man, that music is really happening. And then what really made me think it is because my song "I'd Rather Go Blind" - they had a version of it by Rod Stewart. And they kept saying, hey, this is the song you wrote. Listen. And I said, all right. And then when - so when - while I was in that program, they would take me out to kind of - with support to kind of do little gigs here and there. We went to Africa to do the Black Festival there when Muhammad Ali and George Foreman were supposed to fight. We went to the American Song Festival. And so my therapist, you know, psychologist was taking me around, trying to just you know, dip me in a little bit to let me know, you know, this is the business here that you've been in all your life. Now, what's going to be different about this when you come out? What are you going to do different? Because you're going to get thrown right back in there. So we would just do test runs and things.

GROSS: In 1978, you opened in some cities for The Rolling Stones on their tour. Were the Stones fans of yours?

JAMES: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Matter of fact, when I was in rehab at the same rehab center in the '70s, '74 and '75, I got a letter from Keith Richards that had told - that had said to me that they were getting ready to do a tour. You know, that they had had Tina Turner, and they had had B.B. King, and they had had different people on their tour. And they had wanted me on their tour. And the letter that they wrote came to the rehabilitation center, and the therapist got the letter. And he called me to his office and read the letter. And the letter said that they - he said, we would like to have you on tour with us. We love your music. And he says, but what you're doing right now is more important than what we could ever do with you, but we'll be sure to come back and get you when you're ready. And that was really cool. That was when they came back in '78 and kept their word.

GROSS: I'd like to close our interview with another selection from your new album of songs that were recorded by Billie Holiday. I thought we could play "How Deep Is The Ocean," since this is one of the songs you sang many years ago when you auditioned for Johnny Otis. What do you think is the difference between what the song means to you now and what it meant to you then, and how you sing it now and how you sung it then?

JAMES: I think probably it's because now I really understand. You know what I mean? I understand what I'm singing about. You know, songs that I get - any song that I decide to sing or a song that someone sends to me or recommends, I like to be able to relate to that song. Not just, you know, have a song there that talks about, come fly me to the moon, let me dangle on the stars. That's not my cup of tea. That's not real. I want to sing real stuff. I want to know what I'm singing about, and I want to be able to really relate to that. And I think that's what I can do now. I think that's what I definitely do. Matter of fact, I know I do.

GROSS: Etta James, it's been a pleasure. I want to thank you a lot for talking with us.

JAMES: Thank you so much, Terry.

GROSS: My interview with Etta James was recorded in 1994.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN")

JAMES: (Singing) How much do I love you? I'll tell you no lie. How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky? How many times a day do I think of you? How many roses are sprinkled with dew? Ooh. How far would I travel to be where you are? How far is the journey from here to a star? And if I ever lost you, how much would I cry? How deep is the ocean, baby? How high is the sky?

GROSS: Tomorrow, as we continue our archive series R&B, rockabilly, and early rock 'n' roll, we'll feature interviews with two R&B singers from the '50s and '60s - Ruth Brown, whose recordings include "Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean" - and LaVern Baker, whose hits included "Bumble Bee," "Tweedlee Dee" and "Jim Dandy." I hope you'll join us. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and John Sheehan. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN")

JAMES: (Singing) Ooh. How far would I travel to be where you are? How far is the journey from here to a star? And if I ever lost you...

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.