Etta James

About Etta James

Etta James (born Jamesetta Hawkins on January 25, 1938) is an American blues, soul, R&B, rock & roll and jazz singer and songwriter. James is the winner of four Grammys, 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 both in 1999 and 2008. In the 1950s and 60s, she had her biggest success as a blues and R&B singer. She is best known for her 1961 ballad "At Last", which has been classified as a "timeless classic"[citation needed] and has been featured in many movies and television commercials since its release.

Jamesetta Hawkins was born in Los Angeles, California to an unmarried 14-year-old African-American mother, Dorothy Hawkins. She claimed that her mother told her 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. As James was born in Los Angeles in 1938, at a time when Wanderone was known to be managing a pool hall in Washington, D.C. (and was not known to have been the cross-country traveler he became later in life) this seems unlikely, though it has not been definitively disproved.

She received her first professional vocal training at the age of five years old, from James Earle Hines, musical director of the Echoes of Eden choir at St. Paul Baptist Church in Los Angeles.