Quotes By Etta James

My mother was a jazz fanatic and she wanted me to play the piano so I could play jazz tunes. I wish I had learned but I was too busy getting into trouble!

My mother used to play nothing but Billie Holiday.

I am so happy that I am alive and can walk.

The only time that I am really truly happy - when I feel at my best - is when I'm on the stage.

Country music has the great stories.

I'm not a bourgeois person, never will be.

When I'm performing for the people, I am me, then. I am that little girl who, when she was five years old, used to sing at church. Or I'm that 15-year-old young lady who wanted to be grown and wanted to sing and couldn't wait to be smokin' a cigarette, you know?

A few years ago, I thought, I'll never make it. I started to go to the doctor to help me lose weight.

People always say 'Etta, you know what your problem is? You're neither fish nor fowl. There is no place to rack you.' When I would go in a record shop, you might find one or two records by me in different stacks.

All the things I used to like - cookies, ice cream, gumbo - I don't like anymore.

Jazz took too much discipline. You have to come in at the right place, which is different than me singing the blues, where I can sing, 'Oh, baby,' if there's a pause in the melody. With jazz, you better leave that space open, or put in something real cool.

Most of the songs I sing have that blues feeling in it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about. I don't.

Bobby Womack is always very real, both with his music and as a person.

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

To me, country music is like the blues, but it's something very hip and - I don't want to say commercial - but it's very worldly and good listening.

I talked to the record company about what I had in mind. They said they wanted something lush. I figured the best thing to do was let them hear what I had in mind.

I figured I could do 'It's A Man's Man's Man's World', because I believe it's the truth.

See, I don't like places where people can't dance - don't like clubs or theatres where a bunch of bourgeois people sit around tip, tip, tipping their fingers.

I like to shop, but I don't like to go out to dances.

It feels so good to be happy.

It's the same thing now. When I go onstage the young people scream and holler as much as the older generation.

Now I can stand up on the stage again like I used to after five years of sitting down while I sang.

That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn't even know was there until I let it out.

I'm not a braggart, but when I was a little girl people used to come from all over Hollywood to hear me sing.

I took back my life.

I'm not starry eyed, and I'm not money crazy.

You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

What happens is, when I perform, I'm somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am. I forget my troubles, my worries.

My mother always wanted me to be glamorous. When I thought about that, it really fired me up, and once I lost all those pounds, I started to feel really good about myself.

This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.