THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 9, 1995 TAG: 9508090057
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
FAR MORE THAN just another drug rehab veteran's memoirs, Etta James' autobiography ``Rage to Survive: The Etta James Story'' (Villard, 271 pp., $20) is an unflinching examination of the sources of this great rhythm and blues and jazz singer's artistry.
James, born Jamesetta Hawkins to a single mother in Los Angeles in 1938, made her mark early. At 15, she wrote ``Roll With Me Henry,'' an answer to the Midnighters' hot series of ribald singles which included ``Work With Me Annie'' and ``Annie Had a Baby.'' Like its inspirations, the record became an R&B smash. It also spawned one of the first whitewashed cover versions of a black hit, in the form of ``Dance With Me Henry'' by pop artist Georgia Gibbs.
Still in her teens, James had her first fling with heroin, an initiation to drug and alcohol problems that would haunt her into the 1980s before she finally got clean.
Now James is in a triumphant middle age: Her 1994 album of Billie Holiday-identified tunes, ``Mystery Lady,'' won a jazz-vocal Grammy, and its followup, another collection of mid-century chestnuts called ``Time After Time,'' has headed up the charts.
As in her music, James' candor, soul and sly, self-mocking humor serve her well in ``Rage to Survive.'' When collaborator David Ritz, a biographer of Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles, praises her storytelling gifts in his foreword, he's not just flattering her.
James tells revealing tales about friends such as Sam Cooke, wryly hip tales about Sly Stone and Janis Joplin, and passes on sharp opinions about everyone from her mother (whose liaison with Minnesota Fats led to James' conception, she believes) to her friends the Rolling Stones.
The line between the brutal and the sadly beautiful is painfully thin here; many of James' comrades are long since dead. Recalling her sole meeting with a crumbling Holiday, on the set of an early TV broadcast, James writes:
``Our eyes locked.
`` `Are you looking at me?' she asked in a voice that sounded very old.
`` `Yes,' I had to answer.
``She looked down at her own swollen hands and rubbed them together, as though in pain. `Just don't ever let this happen to you,' she said.''
The rage of the title isn't just boilerplate, either; the light-skinned James passes on ugly stories about racism on her early Southern tours. She describes a later series of shows as a cathartic scream from gig to gig. A full-fledged artist, she's able to cast a knowing eye in the direction of the joy and pain that feed her sound.
Like Holiday's troubles, James' stretched beyond substance abuse into the realm of nightmarish personal relationships. She recounts several horrific beatings, but also has a great love story to tell, that between herself and husband Artis Mills. Both junkies, they sank to robbing other addicts and passing bad checks in the early '70s. Finally, Mills took the rap for a heroin bust and served nearly a decade in prison.
That the two remain married speaks not only to Mills' integrity, but to James' ultimate redemption. She pulled through still more drug problems and several career lulls to emerge fully triumphant with her two albums of standards and a high visibility that has resulted in several of her Argo/Chess Records classics being used in TV commercials.
James is nowhere near through, to hear her tell it. She'd like to cut some country songs, she says near book's end. And unlike so many artists of her generation, her ears are receptive to the expressions of the young: ``Far as I'm concerned, soul music is safe and sound. Hip-hop has only added more flavors to the stew.''
It's that open-heartedness and open-mindedness that continue to make her a treasure, and which live at the heart of this deep, highly enjoyable book. MEMO: Rickey Wright is a staff writer and pop-music critic. by CNB