leonard chess and etta james

These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Leonard Chess, decided James would . Hope West isamusic enthusiast and music photographer who has captured artists like B.B. James started adding gospel elements in her music the following year, releasing "Something's Got a Hold on Me", which peaked at number four on the R&B chart and was a Top 40 pop hit. Waters, recorded one day in the field by Alan Lomax (Tony Bentley), reckons he's got a future in the Big City and treads the tracks till he reaches Chicago. Roll With Me Henry was retitled The Wallflower Modern Records decided the original title was too explicit and Otis renamed his protege Etta James. [14] Within a couple of years, she began listening to doo-wop and was inspired to form a girl group, the Creolettes (so named for the members' light-skinned complexions). Before joining the cast, Adrien took home the 2003 Oscar Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the 2002 film The Pianist.After his fantastic portrayal of Leonard in Cadillac Records, he went on to star in a plethora of films and TV series that include Midnight in Paris, Clean . Well, thats a good question especially when Ms. Jamess book was published in 1995, 13 years before the release of the movie, Cadillac Records. It became a crossover hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100, which angered James. [19] Later that same year (1960), James released a second studio album, The Second Time Around. Teamed with Joplin's collaborator Gabriel Meckler in 1973, James began to record rock songs: mauling the Eagles, slugging Randy Newman. In 1950, Mama Lu died, and James's biological mother took her to the Fillmore district of San Francisco. [25] According to her account, she wrote the rest of the song with Jordan but for tax reasons gave her songwriting credit to her partner at the time, Billy Foster. So in conclusion, when I think of an artist whos invested 58 years in writing and singing songs that come from the real chapters of her life, it seems only fitting that she have the honor of a real depiction. However when you fully inhale the intricacies of Ms. Jamess defiant nature and understand the surrounding issues that followed her life and compare them to Beyonces persona and acting range, it just doesnt scream a perfect match. Fortunately, the best of those early recordings, all for Modern Records, have now been assembled in a single-disc collection. In 1995 James recorded Mystery Lady, the first in a series of jazz vocal albums where she channelled the influence of Billie Holiday. Thirty-six days after her death, her sideman Red Holloway also died.[63]. Between this internal tug of war and growing up in a business that didnt cater much to a growing teenager, Ettas life journey was surrounded by upheaval and survival. [3] He was buried at Westlawn Cemetery in Norridge, Illinois. Less than a year after selling their label, Leonard Chess was dead. Still, the parade of famous faces playing famous faces overstuffs the movie with subjects deserving of features but instead treated as footnotes. [2], James's deep and earthy voice bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll. Also along for the ride are Chess' and Waters' women, Revetta (Entourage's Emmanuelle Chriqui) and Geneva (Gabrielle Union), respectively, who do little other than quietly frown and tolerate their husbands' myriad dalliances. Rock 'n' Roll.) Although her father has never been identified,[9] James speculated that she was the daughter of pool player Rudolf "Minnesota Fats" Wanderone, whom she met briefly in 1987. Leonard Chess (March 12, 1917 October 16, 1969) was an American record company executive and the co-founder of Chess Records. Etta James, who has died at the age of of 73, had a rich, contralto voice that breathed life into a host of musical genres, from blues to jazz, R&B to soul. But so egregious are the deficiencies and distortions herein this universe, The Rolling Stones came to the United States and The Beach Boys ripped off Chuck Berry long before anyone had ever heard of Elvis Presleythat it's almost impossible to discern whether there's anything decent about the moviemaking itself. And, in 2008, Rolling Stone ranked her at number 22 in its rock-focused list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. During drunken poker games at home, he would awaken James in the early morning hours and force her with beatings to sing for his friends. [19] The first string-laden ballad James recorded was "My Dearest Darling" in May 1960, which peaked in the top five of the R&B chart. In more recent years,[when?] Her first hit singles with Fuqua were "If I Can't Have You" and "Spoonful". After beginning to date Harvey Fuqua, a singer for the Moonglows, James signed with Argo Records, a subsidiary of Chess Records. The title was changed to the less evocative The Wallflower and, despite its notoriety (or, more likely, because of it), it soared to number 1 on the R&B charts. [24] Also in 1989 James was filmed in a concert at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles with Joe Walsh and Albert Collins for the film Jazzvisions: Jump the Blues Away. Photograph: Sherry Rayn Barnett/Getty Images, Etta James: 'I was like a punker I'd spit in a minute' a classic interview from the vaults, Etta James - famous fans pay tribute on Twitter, Etta James to undergo court-ordered medical exam. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. Subscribe, 2023 Grown Folks Music. Record Producer, Music Executive. independent local journalism in Dallas. Shescored a surprising (and sole) UK top 10 hit in 1996 when her threatening reading of I Just Want to Make Love to You became the soundtrack to a Diet Coke advertisement. In 1992, she recorded the album The Right Time, produced by Jerry Wexler for Elektra Records. Like most of her tone-deaf predecessors, Martin feels the need to make the truth more entertaining and ends up desecrating the history books. A raunchy answer song to Ballards equally suggestive Work With Me Annie, the track was considered too racy for mainstream radio airplay. Very concisely written. [56] In 1969, she spent 10 days in jail for violating probation.[51]. I will make certain to bookmark your blog and will often come back She agreed, lied to him that she was 18 and, when he demanded her mother's signed consent, went home and forged it Dorothy was then in prison. Meet the Team No wonder Martin doesn't let the audience hear more than snatches of tunessave for Knowles' three extended numbers, clearly intended to sell the soundtrack. As Etta so candidly stated to the New York Posts Page Six in 2007, she is going to have a hill to climb, because Etta James aint been no angel!. It's all too much and not enough; either make the epic the story deserves or don't bother. Rock'n'Roll (1987), opened stadium dates for the Rolling Stones and was inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Submit Music As the 1960s progressed, Chess's recording enterprise branched out into other genres including gospel, traditional jazz, spoken word, comedy, and more. Her first solo hit was the doo-wopstyled rhythm-and-blues song "All I Could Do Was Cry", which was a number two R&B hit. The album took the same direction as her first, covering jazz and pop standards and with strings on many of the songs. I seriously enjoyed reading it, you Etta James and Leonard Chess never had a romantic or sexual relationship, as the film suggests (although James did have an affair with the married Harvey Fugua of the Moonglows, yet another Chess . Early life For all its copious flaws, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story perfectly nailed the trajectory of every single rockudrama that has tarnished a legend's legendthe big bang turned sad whimper. The true story is that the man who recorded under the pseudonym Howlin Wolf was a 300-pound farmer named Chester Burnette. The Chess brothers moved the company away from black pop and jazz and other genres into down home blues music with artists such as Muddy Waters. (Muddy Waters' first trip to the UK was in 1958, not 1967; it is also unlikely that Leonard Chess and Etta James had a love affair. [40] Her musical style changed during the course of her career. During her hospitalization, her son Donto revealed to the public that she had been previously diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2008. With Fuqua, Etta went on to sing songs like I Just Want to Make Love to You, If I Cant Have You and later became the duo Betty & Dupree on Kent Records while also recording on Chess due to the lack of money they were paid on Chess. James was once considered one of the most overlooked blues and R&B musicians in the music history of the United States. Beyonc was invited to sing At Last at Barack Obama's presidential inauguration in January 2009. Etta James was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles, California on January 25, 1938; her mother was just 14 years old at the time, and she never knew her father, though she would later say she had reason to believe he was the well-known pool hustler Minnesota Fats. December 4, 2008 Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. They're faint echoes of classics, soulless and gutless. He was 95. In fact, as truly great as that song is, James recorded another that was even betterand its one she co-wrote, although, for tax reasons, she gave songwriting credit to her then boyfriend. James continued to perform on occasion in the early 1980s, including two guest appearances at Grateful Dead concerts in December 1982. As a teenager on tours with Otis, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Ike and Tina Turner and Little Richard, James encountered and quickly embraced much debauchery. James ventured into rock and funk with the release of her self-titled album in 1973, with production from the famed rock producer Gabriel Mekler, who had worked with Steppenwolf and Janis Joplin. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. 1 What happened between Etta James and Leonard Chess? In time, Chess begins assembling his pieces: Howlin' Wolf, played with almost cartoonish ferocity by Eamonn Walker; Dixon, who here comes off as nothing more than a sideman; Chuck Berry, rendered as a savvy country boy who liked to show gals his ding-a-ling in the backseat of his car; and James, who already had a career before Chess signed the tormented torch singer in 1960, not that you'd know it here. It opens with James rather notorious Roll With Me Henry, recorded when she was just 16. Violence andsubstance abuse were now constants in James's life and she would maintain a difficult, combative relationship with her mother across many decades. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. [67] In 2020, James was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. Cadillac Records begins with Dixon laying the foundation of the story, introducing us to "one white boy from Chicago" (Chess, first seen mid-coitus) and "one sharecropper from Mississippi" (Waters, tilling the soil). Do you need underlay for laminate flooring on concrete? They quickly went to Chicago to join their father, Joseph, who was already engaged in the liquor business, which was illegal at the height of Prohibition and controlled in Chicago by Al Capone. 4:00AM. The film stars Adrien Brody as Leonard Chess, Cedric the Entertainer . In 2003, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She quickly became known for having an unusually strong voice for a child her age. James won six Grammy awards and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Typically, whenever the subject of the early architects of rock n roll arises, names like Howlin Wolf, Big Joe Turner, Hank Ballard, Bo Diddley and Big Mama Thornton are bandied about. He is portrayed by Rob Morrow on CMT's drama series titled Sun Records. Leonard Chess played bass drum on one of Muddy Waters' sessions in 1951, specifically on the tracks "She Moves Me" and "Still A Fool".[8]. These sessions yielded her comeback hit "Tell Mama", co-written by Clarence Carter, which reached number ten on the R&B chart and number twenty-three for pop. During this period, she became addicted to methadone and would mix her doses with heroin. Her 1963 album EttaJames Rocks the House was recorded live at the New Era club in Nashville and documents a formidable performer. [19] The album won James her first Grammy Award, for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Female, in 1994. The alterations are distracting and head-scratching and ultimately dismissive, to the point where Wright's Muddy Waters is reduced to a mere spectator in his own story, just some guy who hangs around the Chess studios to glower at Howlin' Wolf and panhandle Chess for money. The British pop singer Adele said that it was buying an Etta James CD when she was 13 that made her want to sing. James has received six Grammy Awards. Of these, Howlin' Wolf in particular became very popular, and Chess Records had to vie for him with other companies which had also been supplied with Wolf recordings by Phillips. Hail! Her husband Artis Mills accepted responsibility when they were both arrested for heroin possession, and served a 10-year prison sentence. All rights reserved. By 1998, with the release of Life, Love & the Blues, James had added as backing musicians her own sons, Donto and Sametto, on drums and bass, respectively. In 1954, she moved to Los Angeles to record The Wallflower. Her career had begun to soar by 1960, due in no small part to songs like Id Rather Go Blind and At Last.. Like the movie shows, Howlin Wolf did sing the song Smokestack Lightnin for Chess Records. In 1989, she signed with Island Records and with them released the albums Seven Year Itch and Stickin' to My Guns, both of which were produced by Barry Beckett and recorded at FAME Studios. [53] Both were musicians and eventually performed professionally with their mother; Donto played drums at Montreux in 1993, and Sametto played bass guitar circa 2003, among other performances and tours. [36] The film included "At Last," performed by Beyonce. I want to encourage that you continue your great posts, [24] The album did not produce any major hits, however, and neither did the follow-up album, Come a Little Closer, in 1974, though, like '73's Etta James before it, the album was also critically acclaimed. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. A Christmas album, Etta James Christmas, was released in 1998. During Ettas early days at Chess, she was very open in having a relationship with Harvey Fuqua, member of the Moonglows and later played a pivotal role in the formation of Motown Records. According to Marshall Chess, son of Leonard Chess, he had these words to say concerning the issue of this affair: Now, my father was no angel, but (he) was never caught in an affair, Chess said. In the early 1960s, Chess became involved in the broadcasting business as part owner of WVON-AM radio and later acquired WSDM-FM, both in Chicago. Her final album for Private Music, Let's Roll, released in 2005, won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Fabrications in the name of movie myth-making are, of course, to be expected from a genre that demands condensing lives into a handful of Defining Episodes; all biopics reduce and trivialize. That was in 1956. Now for a woman to confess her trials of domestic abuse, her mindset of being an addict and other uncensored tidbits, having an affair with the boss would have easily been a drop in the bucket unless it never happened. And listening to it today seems a fitting, if inadequate, tribute to Etta James. Money matters: Though Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody) . And he continues to record, it seems; here is his fledgling Facebook page. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. In her autobiography, Rage to Survive, she wrote that she heard the song outlined by her friend Ellington "Fugi" Jordan when she visited him in prison. Described as a soul enigma by MOJO magazine in 2002, Jordan has had a fascinating musical career of his own. I agree, the Etta James story needs no embellishment. The Slate Group LLC. James had been at Chess Records since 1960 and Leonard Chess wanted her to record a new album for his Cadet Records subsidiary. Hines abused James while she was under his tutelage; he often punched her in the chest while she sang to force her voice to come from her gut. While James was on tour with Richard, pop singer Georgia Gibbs recorded a version of her song and released it under the again-altered title "Dance With Me, Henry." Perhaps most intriguing are, however, James explosive reinvention of the traditional ditty Shortnin Bread (a song that Brian Wilson would subsequently become obsessed with) and the colorful short story The Pick Up, with a coolly assured Etta swapping salty lines with a blistering sax. (He is, however, a central player in Jerry Zaks' Who Do You Love, the other Chess bio that had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.) (You can hear his own, more psychedelic take on the song, called Id Rather Be a Blind Man, on YouTube.) From her first R&B hit, in 1955, the risqu Roll With Me Henry cut when she was only 15 through a series of classic 1960s soul sides (thelush ballad At Last, theraucous house rocker Tell Mama and the emotional agony of I'd Rather Go Blind), then a series of critically acclaimed 1970s and 1980s albums that won her a broad rock audience, to more recent albums of jazz vocals, James proved capable of developing and changing asan artist. [15] At this time Otis also gave James her stage name, transposing "Jamesetta" (her given first name) into "Etta James. The true story is that in 1928, Lejzor and Fiszel Czy moved to the U.S. with the rest of their family from a small village named Motal in what's Belarus today. An elite fanclub ensured James sang at the Los Angeles Olympics opening ceremony in 1984, appeared in Taylor Hackford's celebrated Chuck Berry feature Hail! have a nice afternoon! She added that she would have sung the song better. [58] In 1974, James was sentenced to drug treatment instead of serving time in prison. All rights reserved. James participated with the rap singer Def Jef on the song "Droppin' Rhymes on Drums", which mixed James's jazz vocals with hip-hop. Group, a Graham Holdings Company. FAQs James' 1973 album, exhibiting a mixture of musical styles, was nominated for a Grammy Award. [10] Her mother was frequently absent from their apartment in Watts, conducting relationships with various men, and James lived with a series of foster parents, most notably "Sarge" and "Mama" Lu. Privacy Policy [4] Around this time, she became involved in a relationship with the singer Harvey Fuqua, the founder of the doo-wop group the Moonglows. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. They renamed it Chess,. "My Foolish Heart" (Gene Ammons), "Rollin' Stone" (Muddy Waters), and "That's All Right" (Jimmy Rogers) were among the first releases on the new label. On October 16, 1969, a few months after selling his namesake label to General Recorded Tape, Leonard Chess died of a heart attack. Its also an opportunity to mention her friend and co-writer, the far less famous Ellington Fugi Jordan. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Since 1989 (notably rather late in her career, after nearly thirty years of prior recording), James has received over 30 awards and recognitions from eight different organizations, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum[64] and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences which organizes the Grammys.[65]. [27] and was a guest on John Mayall's Blues Breakers 1982 reunion show in New Jersey.In 1984, she contacted David Wolper and asked to perform in the opening ceremony of the 1984 Summer Olympics, at which she sang "When the Saints Go Marching In". Stevie Wonder and Christina Aguilera gave musical tributes. [20] In 1963, she had another major hit with "Pushover" and released the live album Etta James Rocks the House, recorded at the New Era Club in Nashville, Tennessee. But you always knew that Read More Kelly Sill, Several years ago, one of Danilo Prezs students was suffering from tendinitis. Under GRT and All Platinum In 1969, the Chess brothers sold the label to General Recorded Tape (GRT) for $6.5 million. [citation needed] In her autobiography, she noted how impressed she was with the young singer's manners. The album set a trend of incorporating more jazz elements in James's music. Now if youre looking for a name to sell movie tickets, I can definitely see the follow the money rationale. But Etta James was no one-hit wonder. Two other Berry tunes are included in this collection, the rollicking Number One (which cleverly references Henry as a bygone lover) and the stridently plaintive Im A Fool. James herself co-authored both the playfully sensual W-O-M-A-N and the high-octane Tough Lover, easily the equal of any of Little Richards thundering hits. Dallas' independent source of In 2001, she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, the latter for her contributions to the developments of both rock and roll and rockabilly. She was buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Los Angeles County, California. Eventually, the two men meetduring a never-happened brawl at the Macomba, instigated by hell-raising harp player Little Walter (Columbus Short)and form a partnership, then a friendship. Most notable are the growly, hulking Howlin' Wolf, blues-gone-pop belter Etta James and country-tinged rock-and-roller Chuck Berry. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. Leonard Chess (March 12, 1917 - October 16, 1969) was an American record company executive and the co-founder of Chess Records. [3] She also received a Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2003. Born in Los Angeles, California, on January 25, 1938, Etta James was a gospel prodigy. Hail! 2 What did Etta James say about Leonard Chess?

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