Etta James obituary | Music | The Guardian:
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Etta James's approach to singing and to life was one of wild, desperate engagement. Photograph: Sherry Rayn Barnett/Getty Images
Etta James, who has died aged 73 after suffering from leukaemia, was among the most critically acclaimed and influential female singers of the past 50 years, even if she never achieved huge popular success.
From her first R&B hit, in 1955, the risqué Roll With Me Henry – cut when she was only 15 – through a series of classic 1960s soul sides (the lush ballad At Last, the raucous 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 as an artist.
Her approach to both singing and life was throughout one of wild, often desperate engagement that included violence, drug addiction, armed robbery and highly capricious behaviour.
James sang with unmatched emotional hunger and a pain that can chill the listener. The ferocity of her voice documents a neglected child, a woman constantly entering into bad relationships and an artist raging against an industry and a society that had routinely discriminated against her.
As a teenager on tours with Otis, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Ike and Tina Turner and Little Richard, James encountered and quickly embraced much debauchery. Although there were no more 50s hits, she was a popular attraction in black America's working-class "chitlin' circuit" clubs.
In 1959 James signed with the Chicago blues label Chess, which began marketing her as the "Queen of Soul".
She notched up such hits as All I Could Do Was Cry, If I Can't Have You and At Last. Here her powerhouse contralto voice was matched with the sumptuous, bluesy string arrangements of Riley Hampton, and James truly came into her own as a singer.
Her 1963 album Etta James Rocks the House was recorded live at the New Era club in Nashville and documents a formidable performer.
That year, James's influence was everywhere, with a variety of black female singers (including Turner, Gladys Knight and Candi Staton) employing her defiant, abrasive vocal style. Janis Joplin modelled her singing closely on James and covered Tell Mama.
James was a star, yet one seemingly set on self-destruction. Addicted to heroin and bad men, she lived a criminal lifestyle and was jailed several times.
After leaving jail in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1969, she met and married Artis Mills. When, in 1971, the couple were arrested in San Antonio, Texas, on narcotics charges, Mills took the fall. On his release in 1981, the couple reunited.
James never again enjoyed a major US hit, although she continued to record strong material. Perhaps her voice, so raw and emotionally expressive, was too fierce for the general public.
Indeed, hurt, anger and self-destructive behaviour boiled beneath the surface of her vocals. Once asked to describe her style, she responded that singing allowed her to vent "all this bitch shit inside of me".
The 1974 album Come a Little Closer, recorded while she was in rehab at a psychiatric hospital, features James at her best.
A shift to Warner Brothers in 1978 did not return her to a wide audience and, although she often worked with major producers, James remained beloved more by critics and blues-soul aficionados than a mass audience.
James sang at the Los Angeles Olympics opening ceremony in 1984,
appeared in Taylor Hackford's celebrated Chuck Berry feature Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll (1987),
opened stadium dates for the Rolling Stones and was inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
James won six Grammy awards and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Having finally conquered her drug addiction in 1988, she began to struggle with her weight – in 2002, weighing more than 400lb, she had gastric bypass surgery and lost 200lb, which allowed her to return to active singing and performing.
The film Cadillac Records, a heavily fictionalised biopic about Chess Records, attracted wide attention due to Beyoncé's appearance as James. The young superstar made a decent job of portraying her as a foul-mouthed, two-fisted singer, yet lacked 
the raging bull quality that made James so unforgettable.
