Roots of R&B: Johnny Otis & Etta James

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Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Today we continue our archive series R ⁇ B, Rockabilly, and Early Rock and Roll. Before Elvis Presley recorded Hound Dog, it was recorded by Big Mama Thornton.

Speaker 2 The record's drummer and producer was Johnny Otis, whose interview we're featuring today.

Speaker 3 told me you was high cat,

Speaker 3 but I can see through that.

Speaker 3 Yes, you told me you was hot cat,

Speaker 3 but I can see through that.

Speaker 3 And daddy, I know

Speaker 3 you ain't no real cool cat.

Speaker 3 You ain't nothing but a hound dog

Speaker 3 with snoop around my door.

Speaker 3 You just old hound dog

Speaker 3 with Snoopy round my door.

Speaker 3 You can wag your tail.

Speaker 3 Come on,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 all play the flame.

Speaker 3 Oh, listen, no how do you

Speaker 2 Otis was also an R ⁇ B singer and musician, a band leader, nightclub owner, and talent scout. He started out leading a big band that had the 1945 hit Harlem Nocturne.

Speaker 2 Soon after, his band, like most of the big bands, broke up for financial reasons. Otis organized a smaller unit that played a hybrid of swing and blues that became known as Rhythm and Blues.

Speaker 2 Otis's Rhythm and Blues Caravan became the first R and B touring roadshow.

Speaker 2 Through his nightclub, talent shows and road show, Otis discovered such singers as Esther Phillips, who first worked under the name Little Esther, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard, and Edda James, who we'll hear from later in the show.

Speaker 2 Otis had several RB hits in the early 50s, and in 1958, his record Willie and the Hand Jive made it to the top 10 of the rock and roll chart.

Speaker 2 Although Otis is a pioneer of RB and played almost exclusively with black performers, he was a white Greek American who grew up in a black neighborhood where his father ran a grocery store.

Speaker 2 During the British invasion of the 60s, his style of music became decreasingly unpopular. Otis died in 2012 at the age of 90.

Speaker 2 When I spoke with him in 1989, he was back on the road and in the recording studio. His sessions from the 1950s had just been reissued.

Speaker 2 We began with his first hit, that 1945 instrumental recording of Harlem Nocturne.

Speaker 2 There's a great story behind recording this record. Would you tell it?

Speaker 3 Well, this goes back to the mid-40s, and it was was my first record date with my own band, as I recall.

Speaker 3 And we did three things.

Speaker 3 I went to the producer after we had completed the third one. I said, well, Mr.
Rene, that's it. Three songs in four hours, and we got plenty of time left.
He said, no, you've got that wrong.

Speaker 3 It's four songs in three hours. Now get out there and get another song together.

Speaker 3 We were the house band at the Club Alabama on Central Avenue here in L.A. at the time.

Speaker 3 And I remember when we would play this particular song, the chorus girls and the showgirls would come out of the balcony, out of their dressing rooms and dance on the balcony.

Speaker 3 And they would always ask us to play it. And I thought it must have some charm.
The ladies like it that well.

Speaker 3 So I said, let's play that. And it was a stock arrangement that had been recorded once before by Ray Noble

Speaker 3 and an Earl Hagen tune. But I slowed it down and I was a drummer.

Speaker 3 Did it went boom, boom, boom on the Tom-Toms, and we recorded it.

Speaker 3 And the the songs that we had done previously with Jimmy Russian, the great Con Basie singer, and some wonderful arrangements, they didn't do it. But Harlem Nocturne became an instant hit.

Speaker 2 And when Harlem Nocturne became an instant hit, then you started touring with Louis Jordan and with the Inkspots. And they were some of the biggest black acts of the time.

Speaker 2 Can you describe a little bit what the atmosphere was like at the concerts. concerts in which you shared the bill?

Speaker 3 That same feeling you feel today before the curtain opens, that great anticipation. They're going to see Bill Kenny in the ink spots.
They're going to see Louis Jordan.

Speaker 3 And we were lucky enough to be the band.

Speaker 2 Did the audiences assume that you were black?

Speaker 3 Of course. In those days, many of the places we played, had they suspected I was white, we would have been arrested.

Speaker 2 Well, I remember when I interviewed Solomon Burke, he told a story about how when one of his records crossed over to the country charts, he started getting invitations to play certain places in the South with white crowds who would have never asked him to play if they knew he was black.

Speaker 2 And he showed up to one of these places and it was quite a scene.

Speaker 3 Did anything similar ever happen to you? No, we're talking now,

Speaker 3 I assume we're back in the 40s. If we are, it was much different than the Solomon Burke days of the 50s or the 60s with Solomon Burke.

Speaker 3 You see, your life was on the line in those days when our bus would cross the Mason-Dixon line and the driver would say, well, we just crossed the Mason-Dixon line, a pall would fall over the entire show we'd all get quiet because we knew we were down there where we had problems and many times we came close to being hurt one time we stopped the bus to go to get some gas and my little singer little Esther who was only 13 jumped off and went to the to the restroom and I looked up and there's a guy with a gun in my belly And he's shaking and he's all excited because the little black girl went to the white woman's bathroom.

Speaker 3 And I thought to myself, any death but this.

Speaker 3 So she came out and we went on down the road. But those things happen to us all the time.

Speaker 3 That was the open version of white racism as against the very subtle, pervasive, and institutionalized version that we have today.

Speaker 2 Let me play one of the rhythm and blues records from the period that you made, and this was with the singer Little Esther, who we now know as Esther Phillips.

Speaker 2 And this was Double Crossing Blues. Do you want to say anything about this?

Speaker 3 You write this. Well, I can give you a little anecdote about it.

Speaker 3 I was leaving my little chicken ranch in Watts back in the 40s, and with me were a group of guys I had found at the Beryl House, where I had a nightclub there called the Berrel House.

Speaker 3 And we were going to do their first record, and they became known as the Robins and later the Coasters.

Speaker 3 But little Esther was a neighborhood little girl who used to help me with the other children catch my chickens when people would pick out the chicken they wanted.

Speaker 3 And then we would have refreshments later. And she ran up.
She said, Johnny, let me go, let me go. So I said, oh, get in.
So she got in. We went to Hollywood to the studio.

Speaker 3 And when we got there, we did the Four Sides by the Robins. And we had a few minutes left.
So I told her, I asked the producer, Ralph Bass, I said, man, we got some time.

Speaker 3 Let me get these kids together. I got a song I think would make sense.
He said, well, hurry up. You've only got a couple of minutes.
So I taught it to him and we did it.

Speaker 3 And it was called Double Crossing Blues. And he said, I said, can I do it one more time? Because she kind of giggled.
He said, No, that's it. But anyhow, that became the number one song of 1950.
And

Speaker 3 it brought Lil Esther to stardom, and it did an awful lot for us, too.

Speaker 2 And you're playing vibes?

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I'm playing vibes. Okay, here we go.

Speaker 3 Been

Speaker 3 looking for you, Daddy.

Speaker 3 I just found you in time.

Speaker 3 And just wore that you must

Speaker 3 was metadid.

Speaker 3 Don't my kisses satisfy

Speaker 3 if I don't thrill you, baby.

Speaker 3 Goodness knows how

Speaker 3 to die.

Speaker 3 Folks say that you've been cheating,

Speaker 3 and how I see it's true.

Speaker 3 Well, I can't quit you, baby, cause I'm so in love with you.

Speaker 3 What's the matter, Daddy?

Speaker 3 If you would only tell me why

Speaker 3 your fire don't thrill you, baby,

Speaker 3 goodness knows I

Speaker 2 Johnny Otis is my guest, and by the way, he has a new album of some of his reissued recordings from the 1950s. It's called The Capital Years.
We'll be hearing some of that in just a little while.

Speaker 2 You discovered a lot of talent, not just little Esther, Esther Phillips.

Speaker 2 What was your way of scouting for people?

Speaker 3 Actually, my first singer was Ernestine Anderson when she was just a little girl. Really? Then, yeah, and then came Esther Phillips.

Speaker 3 But after Esther Phillips' amazing success and became the big child star of the African-American community nationally, then everywhere we played, people, they would bring me their sons and their daughters backstage.

Speaker 3 I guess they figured I was an expert who knew how to make stars out of kids. And

Speaker 3 that's how it started.

Speaker 3 One day in Detroit at the Paradise Theater, I asked the manager, I said, during this week that we'll be here, how about me doing a talent show to avoid having to have all these people coming around with their kids?

Speaker 3 He said, great.

Speaker 3 And we did. It was to have been one hour, but it stretched into two hours.
And we found so many wonderful singers and players that day.

Speaker 3 I found Little Willie John, Jackie Wilson, and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters on that particular show.

Speaker 3 And there were probably others, but the record company I was scouting for, King, only wanted to deal with three at the moment.

Speaker 3 And I thought years later when Barry Gordy formed his great Motown story, I said, no wonder. Look at the reservoir of talent here in Detroit.

Speaker 2 It must have been funny, though, when the parents were bringing you their children. You must have been exposed to a lot of really untalented kids, also.

Speaker 3 Well, I learned quick.

Speaker 3 They would come and say, and they almost all had exactly, and I don't care if I was in Mississippi or Massachusetts, they would say, now, Mr. Otis, we know that you know.

Speaker 3 And if Junior has any real talent, you'll tell us the truth. And if he doesn't, of course, you'll, but they didn't mean that.
I didn't know it.

Speaker 3 What they meant was, this is the world's answer to the great child star. This is it.
And if I would dare to suggest they weren't, then I had an enemy on my hands.

Speaker 3 So I learned how to sidestep that and tell little fibs.

Speaker 2 We've been talking about rhythm and blues.

Speaker 2 When there was the transition between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, did you have to, did you find yourself changing the music or were maybe the audiences changing that you were playing your music too?

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's true. When I was dealing with the classic rhythm and blues that we developed back in the 40s, we did a lot of bluesy material because the black audience demanded it.

Speaker 3 As the transition occurred, we then had to play more animated jump blues boogie styles and act, put on an act for white folks because they wanted it to be, they wanted to see us, you know, work and sweat, and that's what they liked.

Speaker 3 The early black audiences wanted a more musical, bluesy, jazz thing. The white audiences wanted that jump tune, boogie woogie kind of thing.

Speaker 2 Well, I want to play a song that you had that was a hit on the rock and roll charts in 1958. And this is Willie and the Hand Jive.

Speaker 2 Let's play it and then we'll talk about it.

Speaker 2 I know a cat named Way Heart Willie.

Speaker 3 He got a cool little chick named Rockin' Billy.

Speaker 3 He can walk and stroll and sue the queue

Speaker 3 And do that crazy hand jive too

Speaker 3 Papa told Willie you'll run my home

Speaker 3 You and that hand jive has got to go

Speaker 3 Willie said Papa don't put me down

Speaker 3 They're doing that hand jive all over town

Speaker 3 Hand jive

Speaker 3 hand jive

Speaker 2 This hand drive, which was a big hit for my guest, Johnny Otis, back in 1958.

Speaker 2 Tell me about writing the song.

Speaker 3 My manager, the late Hal Zeiger and partner back at that time, we had a hit in 57 called Molly's Making Eyes at Me with the Great Marie Adams singing, and it became a hit not here in the States, but in Europe.

Speaker 3 In England, it was number one. So he went over to set up the tour, and when he got back, he said, listen, I saw something interesting.

Speaker 3 I saw the young people around the London area in the venues where they couldn't dance, at the concerts and the theaters. As they sat there,

Speaker 3 they would do a thing that you guys in the big black bands used to do with their hands, you know, while the band was playing. And they call it Handjive.

Speaker 3 Why don't you write a song called Hand Jive and maybe we'll do some good over in Europe? Well, I did, and it luckily became a hit everywhere.

Speaker 2 So the Hand Jive was basically just kind of clapping and moving your hands.

Speaker 3 Yeah, while you're sitting. While you're sitting.

Speaker 3 And it became a whole dance later.

Speaker 2 I want to play something that you're featured on from this new reissue called The Capital Years. And this is Can't You Hear Me Calling?

Speaker 2 Okay. And you're singing on this?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And what are you playing on?

Speaker 3 After a fashion.

Speaker 2 Oh, you sound really good on it.

Speaker 3 Oh, well. Okay.
You and my mother think so.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, let's give it a listen.

Speaker 3 Can't you hear me calling, baby, baby, baby? Baby, please don't go. Baby, please don't go.
Baby, don't you know I love, I love, I love, I love you so.

Speaker 3 I love you so. But now you got me all alone, alone and blue.
And I'm sitting here crying over you.

Speaker 3 Can't you hear me calling, baby?

Speaker 3 Baby, please don't go.

Speaker 3 Can't you hear me calling I, I, I, I, I, I can't go home. I can't go home.
And now you know you got me crying,

Speaker 3 crying, I'm all alone.

Speaker 3 I'm all alone. Come on, baby, won't you tell me that you're coming home? Don't leave me crying here all alone.
Can't you hear me calling, baby?

Speaker 3 Please don't go. Don't go, don't go

Speaker 2 Johnny Otis from the new album The Capital Years, you know, Ben Vaughan wrote the liner notes for this record and in it he mentions that

Speaker 2 in one of your, I guess it was a publicity shot that your goatee was airbrushed out so that you would look less ethnic. What was the story behind that?

Speaker 3 Oh, Hal Zager, the late Hal Zager, God rest his soul,

Speaker 3 he was my partner at the time, and he did these things without even asking me. And while he, you know, he wanted me to look less black.
He wanted me to look less like a Greek.

Speaker 3 He wanted me to look like a nice Anglo-Saxon wasp,

Speaker 3 which is hard to do. But he tried.

Speaker 2 So he airbrushed out the goatee?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I don't think that sold any records.

Speaker 2 Knew your family is Greek? Was Greek? Yeah. Your parents? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, were and are.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 And your last name was Veliotis?

Speaker 3 Veleotis.

Speaker 2 And when did you change it to Otis?

Speaker 3 The kids at school kind of made that decision for me.

Speaker 3 They decided not to deal with, try to remember how to pronounce that. They would say, Johnny Otis.
And

Speaker 3 that's the way it stuck.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I know that your father had a grocery store. Was that in the same neighborhood that you lived in?

Speaker 3 Oh, yes. The grocery store was downstairs, and we lived upstairs.

Speaker 2 And this was in a black neighborhood?

Speaker 3 Yes, in the heart of the black neighborhood.

Speaker 2 So that, I guess, helps explain why you grew up with such a city.

Speaker 3 But that's also the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 So.

Speaker 3 He might, in fact, have put it in a wasp neighborhood. Then what would have happened to me?

Speaker 2 Did you not think of yourself as being white when you were growing up?

Speaker 3 I didn't think about that at all. I had no concept about that.
Luckily, my father was absolutely wonderful in that respect. And

Speaker 3 my playmates were, I didn't know it then, but they were black, African-American. I thought we were all the same thing.
And

Speaker 3 I don't think it's so unique in America for white kids to grow up with black youngsters and come up together as brothers and sisters. What might be unique is not to veer away.

Speaker 3 I could not veer away because that's where I wanted to be. Those were my friends.
That's what I loved. It wasn't the music that brought me to the black community.
It was the way of life.

Speaker 3 I felt I was black.

Speaker 2 What was it about the way of life?

Speaker 3 Everything about it.

Speaker 3 You know, different cultures have different characteristics. And the characteristics of the African-American community became my own.

Speaker 3 And I just wasn't willing to give that up to go become part of the mainstream community where people felt superior to black people and they oppressed black people and they

Speaker 3 practiced democracy and preached racism. I didn't want to be part of that.
I want to stay in that sweet, beautiful black place in the black community.

Speaker 2 My interview with Johnny Otis was recorded in 1989. He died in 2012 at the age of 90.
After we take a short break, we'll hear from one of the singers he discovered, Eddie James.

Speaker 2 I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 Let's continue our archive series, R ⁇ B, Rockabilly, and Early Rock and Roll with Rhythm and Blues singer Etta James.

Speaker 2 She got her start at the age of 15 when she was discovered by Johnny Otis, who we just heard from, and began performing with his traveling R ⁇ B review.

Speaker 2 By age 17, she had her first hit, Roll With Me, Henry, an answer song to Hank Ballard's Work With Me, Annie.

Speaker 2 After establishing herself as a rhythm and blues star in the late 50s and early 60s, her career was eclipsed by changes in pop music.

Speaker 2 But later, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame.

Speaker 2 Younger generations became aware of her for her recording of At Last, after Beyoncé sang that song at President Obama's first inaugural, while he and Michelle Obama had their first dance as president and first lady.

Speaker 2 My lonely days

Speaker 3 are over

Speaker 3 And life is like a song

Speaker 3 Oh yeah, yeah,

Speaker 3 at last

Speaker 2 When I spoke with Etta James in 1994, she had just released an album called Mystery Lady, paying tribute to jazz singer Billie Holiday.

Speaker 2 The album featured James doing songs Holiday had recorded, like this one, The Very Thought of You.

Speaker 3 The very thought of you,

Speaker 5 and I forget to do

Speaker 3 the little ordinary

Speaker 5 things

Speaker 5 that everyone ought to do.

Speaker 3 I'm living in

Speaker 3 a kind of daydream.

Speaker 3 I'm

Speaker 3 happy as a queen,

Speaker 3 but foolish

Speaker 5 though it may seem

Speaker 3 to me

Speaker 3 that's everything.

Speaker 2 The music. Better James, welcome to Fresh Air.
Tell me the story of why you wanted to record a Billie Holiday record.

Speaker 5 Well, I thought that since I grew up in, I did my teenage years in San Francisco, and my mother was such a Billie Holiday and jazz fan, mostly Billie Holiday.

Speaker 5 And I kind of, all along, I said, what, jazz? You know, so to me, as a young kid, that was like, it was too disciplined. It was too confining.
At least that's the way I thought.

Speaker 5 And I thought you had to be really, really cool and had to be bourgeois and be bourgeois, you know, to do that. And I didn't want to do that.
I mean, I was a sloppy kid with tattoos all over.

Speaker 5 I wanted to be just wild. I really think that I had to mature.

Speaker 5 I got to the point where I'm 56 years old. I think it took me maturing.

Speaker 2 Now let me ask you this.

Speaker 2 You grew up in a foster home. I think when your mother had you, she was 14 years old.

Speaker 5 Right. She was a kid.
And, you know,

Speaker 5 I had feelings about all that kind of stuff for years. And I went to therapy and all about it.
But then as I got older, I realized that she really

Speaker 5 She really did the best for me. She put me in a lovely home.
The people were, you know, lovely to me.

Speaker 5 They never said that they were my real parents. I mean, I always knew I had this good looking, you know, high-stepping mom, and she was like only 14 years older than me.

Speaker 5 And so she did the best for me because if she had tried to take me with her, she was just a child. What would she have done with me? Would I have been singing today?

Speaker 5 Would I have been anything, you know?

Speaker 2 What was your foster family like?

Speaker 5 They were lovely. They were older people, and they had property, and they lived in the east side, lower east side of Los Angeles.
And

Speaker 5 my grandmother was a church lady, and they believed in,

Speaker 5 you know, they gave me singing lessons at five. And

Speaker 5 so, you know,

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 when you were singing in the church choir,

Speaker 2 did your grandmother or anyone else in the family get upset if on your own time you sang blues or any kind of secular music?

Speaker 5 No, because when as long as my grandmother lived until I was, my grandmother died when I was 12. So I sang gospel music from five until 12.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 so my grandmother, she never, she wasn't one of those kind of people because I was already the prodigy child of the church. And,

Speaker 5 you know, and I did nothing but, and I loved church. I went to Bible camp and I was a little Christian girl.

Speaker 5 And until my grandmother passed away at 12, that is when my mother came back, came to get me because I had nothing but my grandfather there in the house.

Speaker 5 And my grandmother, my mother wanted me to be with her. And she came the day of the funeral to pick me up to take me back to San Francisco.
So that's at San Francisco.

Speaker 5 Oh, I was listening to little stuff on the slide, but I wasn't interested in secular music.

Speaker 5 But once I got to San Francisco, I like I grew horns and the tail.

Speaker 5 I really turned into, you know,

Speaker 5 the real street kid. I was kind of like a runaway, but I had a mother, you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 And I had a place to stay.

Speaker 2 We're listening to my 1994 interview with singer Edda James. We'll hear more of it after a break.
This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to play one of your rhythm and blues recordings that has a very gospel sound to it. I want to play Something's Got a Hold On Me from 1961.

Speaker 2 Do you think of this as having a gospel sound?

Speaker 5 Matter of fact, it is a gospel song. We wrote that song and we adapted it from

Speaker 5 a gospel song. And the gospel song was Something's Got a Hold On Me.
It must be the Lord.

Speaker 2 And in your song, song, it's it must be love.

Speaker 3 Must be love, right?

Speaker 5 Right. Now, now, don't get me because I'm not the one who decided to,

Speaker 5 but I was one of the writers. I just kind of said, Okay, well, let's go rock and roll.

Speaker 2 This is Eda James, recorded in 1961.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 3 sometimes I get a good feeling. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I get a feeling that I never, never, never, never had before.

Speaker 3 No, no,

Speaker 3 yeah.

Speaker 3 I

Speaker 5 just wanna tell you right now that

Speaker 3 I believe,

Speaker 3 I really do believe that

Speaker 3 something's got a hold on me here.

Speaker 3 Something's got a hold on me right now, child.

Speaker 3 be love. Let me tell you now.

Speaker 3 I've got a feeling I feel so strange.

Speaker 3 Everything about me seems to have changed. Step by step, I got a brand new walk.

Speaker 3 I even sound sweeter when I talk. I said, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, hey, hey, yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh, it must be love. Oh, it must be love.

Speaker 2 Let me tell you. Well, it wasn't it wasn't too long after you moved in with your mother that you actually went on the road.
I mean, Johnny Otis, who had

Speaker 2 a now-famous Rhythm and Blues touring review,

Speaker 2 got you into the show. He discovered you, but how did you audition for him? How did you find him or he find you?

Speaker 5 Well, kind of, yeah, I think it was kind of a little bit of both, really, but he really found me because

Speaker 5 at that time, my mother,

Speaker 5 I had ran away from home. And I went and I stayed with

Speaker 5 two girls,

Speaker 5 one named Abby and Jean, who later became the Peaches. You know, it used to be Eddie James and the Peaches.
And we had wrote an answer to

Speaker 5 the song

Speaker 5 Work With Me Annie.

Speaker 3 The Hank Ballard record.

Speaker 5 Right. So during those days, you know, everybody would make an answer.
You'd said, Work with me, Annie. Then we'd said, Roll with me, Henry.
And so one night,

Speaker 5 the young girl and myself,

Speaker 5 we were the same age.

Speaker 5 We think we were both like 16 and the older sister was like 24 and she went out to a dance in in the fillmore district which was you know a heavy a drag district of san francisco she went to see the johnny otis band and uh she was there because we couldn't go and we didn't want to go anyway we were like you know different from her we weren't like she was kind of like a groupie kind of a chick and uh we were kind of like scared you know to do that so all of a sudden we got a call that night and it was uh abby calling us back to say listen uh guess who I'm with I'm with Johnny Otis and we go oh Johnny Otis and he said yeah Johnny I told him I told him that we have a girl group and he says he wants to hear us and I said yeah right

Speaker 5 How does he want to hear us? We're out there in the project and the boonies, right? And she says, oh, he's at the hotel there and all the band and everything.

Speaker 5 And we looked, myself and the girl, we looked at each other and said, yeah, right.

Speaker 5 Now we're 15 year olds and we're going to go to the hotel with the band and Johnny Otis. Johnny Otis was like about a 34, 35 year old man.
So we said, oh, no, that's all right. That's all right.

Speaker 5 We'll just, we'll cool that and everything. So Johnny Otis snatched the phone from her.
And it was Johnny Otis. You know, we heard that voice, you know.
And he said, hi, how you doing?

Speaker 5 And we said, oh, we're doing all right. He says,

Speaker 5 I hear you guys got a great group. I hear you got a song, a couple of songs, and I'd like to hear you.
And he says, how about about catching a cab? I'll pay the cab fare and I'll meet you out front.

Speaker 5 And I said, Oh, no, now this is getting heavy. This older man is going to, you know, take us in a, send us in a cab.
So we said, okay, let's go on. Johnny, he sounded pretty sincere.

Speaker 5 And he said, don't worry, nobody's going to bother. He says, okay, so we got up and got dressed, got in the cab, and went down there.
Sure enough, as we pulled up, we saw this tall man.

Speaker 5 You know, we'd all seen pictures of Johnny Otis with the nice hair. and he looked like he looked like a tall, kind of like a Creole man with a nice mustache and a beard.

Speaker 5 And he had, you know, the nice pompadora hair. And he was standing there all stately.
And he had two or three more guys with him. One guy was his manager, was a much older man.

Speaker 5 And when we got there, he said, Oh, I'm glad to see you. And

Speaker 5 come on up, and let's see what let's hear you. So we went upstairs to his room and we sang

Speaker 5 How Deep is the Ocean

Speaker 5 and For All We Know and Street of Dreams.

Speaker 2 So you auditioned for Johnny Otis. He liked your singing, I suppose,

Speaker 2 and invited you to go on the tour, but you were still a minor. Did you have to get your mother's permission?

Speaker 5 Well, that was a trick there. My mother, I knew my mother wasn't going to let me go, but I told him, he says, how old are you? I said, 18.
Which he knew that was a lie.

Speaker 5 And he says, well, you know what? I would like to take you guys to Los Angeles tomorrow to make a record. And he says, Can I speak with your mother? I said, No, I can't find her right now.

Speaker 5 She's working.

Speaker 5 And he says, Well, can you go home and get permission from your mother, get something in writing stating that you can travel and give me your mother's address and phone number and all this stuff and saying that you can travel and you're allowed to travel with me and have her to sign it and date it.

Speaker 5 I said, Oh, yeah, I can do that. So, sure enough, that's what I did.
I went home, I wrote the note.

Speaker 2 Oh, I see, right.

Speaker 5 And I brought the note back with a tiny little bag, a little plastic bag or something with some clothes in it. And myself and the two girls got on Johnny's bus and we split to LA.

Speaker 2 So, why don't we hear the first song that you recorded? And this was

Speaker 2 the first thing recorded after going on the road with Johnny Otis. And it's

Speaker 2 Roll with Me Henry, also called Wallflower.

Speaker 5 And called Dance With Me, Henry.

Speaker 2 Yeah, called Dance With Me, Henry, also. And this is Etta James.

Speaker 3 Hey, baby,

Speaker 3 what do I have to do

Speaker 3 to make you love me, too?

Speaker 3 You got to roll with me and Rick. All right, baby.
Roll with me, Henry. Roll me, baby.

Speaker 3 Roll with me, Henry.

Speaker 3 Roll with me, Henry.

Speaker 3 Change my mind.

Speaker 3 Roll with me, Henry.

Speaker 3 You better run while the running is on, roll on, roll on, roll on.

Speaker 3 While the cats are falling,

Speaker 3 you better stop your stalling.

Speaker 3 It's intermission in a minute.

Speaker 3 So you better get with it.

Speaker 3 Roll with me and red.

Speaker 3 You better run while the runnin' is on, roll on, roll on.

Speaker 2 No, after you recorded this, Georgia Gibbs did a cover recording of this called Dance With Me, Henry. And was that supposed to be the tamer version?

Speaker 5 Yeah, well, you know, during those days,

Speaker 5 you weren't allowed to say roll

Speaker 5 because roll was like a

Speaker 5 vulgar word. You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 Yeah, think about it. They would probably burn Prince at the stake.

Speaker 5 But you couldn't say roll. So rather than

Speaker 5 they banned my record from the air. And what happened, what we had to do was sell it underground.
And not only that, change the title to Wallflower.

Speaker 5 And then when Georgia Gibbs did it, she just made the dance with me, Henry, so that, you know, all the kids could go buy it and

Speaker 5 take it home and listen to it. Because their parents weren't going to go for no roll.

Speaker 3 Are you kidding? Roll with me?

Speaker 5 How do you roll with somebody?

Speaker 2 We're listening to my 1994 interview with singer Etta James. We'll continue the interview after a break.
This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 At some point in your career, you started dressing in evening gowns for performances and dyeing your hair blonde. Tell me how you created that on-stage image for yourself.

Speaker 5 I think probably by me being so young and I was oversized like I am now, but I mean I had a real nice figure and I was tall and I remember this singer,

Speaker 5 Joyce Bryant. She was a black singer and I always admired her and I had two role models.

Speaker 5 I liked Joyce Bryant because she wore fishtail gowns, sequin fishtail gowns, and she was black and she had the nerve to wear platinum hair.

Speaker 5 And then I then also loved Jane Mansfield because Jane Mansville had the blonde hair and had the like the poochy lips and the mold and all this. So I think what I did is kind of combined.

Speaker 5 My mother had bleached my hair carrot red at one point and then I said, well, maybe that's not flamboyant enough.

Speaker 5 So I just kind of went into Detroit one day and one of the fellas over there said, oh, Miss James, oh, you would probably look fabulous with block platinum hair.

Speaker 5 So he bleached my hair blonde and it looked good.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 5 so then I started.

Speaker 5 What I was doing was trying to be a glamour girl because I had been a tomboy most of the time.

Speaker 5 And I wanted to look grown, you know, I wanted to wear tall, high-heel shoes and fishtail gowns and big long rhinestone earrings, you know.

Speaker 2 So, how long did you dye your hair?

Speaker 5 How, for how long? Yeah,

Speaker 5 I think, well, most of my career. It was blonde,

Speaker 5 platinum blonde, all the way,

Speaker 5 I would think, up into the

Speaker 5 70s,

Speaker 5 maybe the 72

Speaker 5 and 73, something like that.

Speaker 2 And why'd you stop?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 5 I wanted to, I think, I think one thing about it, I think things had changed. I know things had changed.
And my career

Speaker 5 wasn't happening. And

Speaker 5 I didn't think that I needed to be that, you know, that, to attract that much attention.

Speaker 5 Another thing, I was on drugs at that time, and I think I really wanted a low profile.

Speaker 2 Was it difficult for you to give up drugs?

Speaker 5 Not when I got down to, you know, I'd given it up many a time. You know, I'd kicked my habits many a time.
But when I went in 1974, I gave heroin up.

Speaker 5 I was on methadone for maybe three or four years before that, so I had a couple of things to give up.

Speaker 2 Was it hard to make a comeback after you

Speaker 2 stopped using?

Speaker 5 No, not really, because when I stopped using, you know, I wasn't the kind that...

Speaker 5 went around and wanted people to pat me on the back about it. It's just that I just picked up, you know, picked up the ball and started running with it.

Speaker 5 The thing was, when I went to this rehabilitation center, I was around nothing but a lot of white kids. And the thing where they were all younger than I was.

Speaker 5 And I remember on Saturdays, they would play all these great rock and roll records. The thing was, I was doing R ⁇ B, remember? But the Z-Z-Tops

Speaker 5 and the Rod Stewarts and the Rolling Stones and all those people, I never really,

Speaker 5 I was busy using drugs. I wasn't there when Woodstock, I was there in New York when Woodstock was going on, but I didn't want to go to Woodstock.

Speaker 5 I would rather go to Harlem, you know.

Speaker 5 And when I was in the program on Saturdays, we'd be cleaning up. They would be playing

Speaker 5 songs from all these people. And I would say, oh man, that music is really happening.
And then what really made me think it is because my song, I'd Rather Go Blind,

Speaker 5 They had a version of it by Rod Stewart. And they kept saying, hey, this is the song you wrote.
Listen. And I said, all right.

Speaker 5 And then, so while I was in that program, they would take me out

Speaker 5 kind of with support

Speaker 5 to kind of do little gigs here and there. We went to Africa to do the Black Festival there when Muhammad Ali and George Foreman were supposed to fight.
We went to the American Song Festival.

Speaker 5 And so my therapist, you know, psychologist was taking me around, trying to just, you know, dip me in a little bit to let me know, you know, know, this is the business here that you've been in all your life.

Speaker 5 Now, what's going to be different about this when you come out? What are you going to do different? Because you're going to get thrown right back in there. So we would just do test runs and things.

Speaker 2 In 1978, you opened in some cities for the Rolling Stones on their tour. Were the Stones fans of yours?

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 Matter of fact, when I was in rehab at the same rehab center in the 70s, 74, and 75, I got a letter from Keith Richards that had told, that had said to me that they were getting ready to do a tour.

Speaker 5 You know, that they had had Tina Turner and they had had B.B. King and they had had different people on their tour.
And they had wanted me on their tour.

Speaker 5 And the letter that they wrote came to the rehabilitation center and the therapist got the letter and he called me to his office and read the letter and the letter said that they he said we would like to have you on tour with us we love your music and uh he says but what you're doing right now is more important than what we could ever, ever do with you.

Speaker 5 But we'll be sure to come back and get you when you're ready. And that was really cool.
That was when they came back in 1978 and kept their word.

Speaker 2 I'd like to close our interview with another selection from your new album of songs that were recorded by Billie Holiday.

Speaker 2 I thought we could play How Deep is the Ocean, since this is one of the songs you sang many years ago when you auditioned for Johnny Otis.

Speaker 2 What do you think is the difference between what the song means to you now and what it meant to you then, and how you sing it now and how you sung it then?

Speaker 5 I think

Speaker 5 probably it's because

Speaker 5 now

Speaker 5 I

Speaker 5 really understand, you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 I understand what I'm singing about. You know, songs that I get.

Speaker 5 Any song that I decide to sing or a song that someone sends to me or recommends, I like to be able to relate to that song, not just, you know, have a song there that talks about, come fly me to the moon, let me dangle on the stars.

Speaker 5 That's not my cup of tea, that's not real. I want to sing real stuff, I want to know what I'm singing about, and I want to be able to really relate to that.
And I think that's what I can do now.

Speaker 5 I think that's what I definitely do. Matter of fact, I know I do.

Speaker 2 Eddie James, it's been a pleasure. I want to thank you a lot for talking with us.

Speaker 5 Thank you so much, Terry.

Speaker 2 My interview with Eddie James was recorded in 1994.

Speaker 3 How much

Speaker 3 do I love you?

Speaker 3 I'll tell you no lie.

Speaker 3 How deep is the ocean,

Speaker 3 how high is the sky?

Speaker 3 How many

Speaker 3 times a a day

Speaker 3 do I

Speaker 3 think of you?

Speaker 3 How

Speaker 3 many

Speaker 3 roses

Speaker 3 are sprinkled

Speaker 3 with dew?

Speaker 3 Ooh,

Speaker 5 how far would I travel

Speaker 5 to be

Speaker 5 where you are?

Speaker 3 How far is the journey

Speaker 3 from here

Speaker 3 to a star

Speaker 3 and if I

Speaker 3 ever lost you

Speaker 3 how much would I cry?

Speaker 3 How deep is the ocean?

Speaker 3 Baby,

Speaker 3 how high is the sky?

Speaker 2 Tomorrow, as we continue our archive series, RB, Rockabilly, and Early Rock and Roll, will feature interviews with two RB singers from the 50s and 60s, Ruth Brown, whose recordings include Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean, and Laverne Baker, whose hits included Bumblebee, Tweedly Dee, and Jim Dandy.

Speaker 2 I hope you'll join us. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.

Speaker 2 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Bodonato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yacundi, Anna Bauman, and John Sheehan.

Speaker 2 Our digital media producer is Molly C. V.
Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson.
Roberto Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.
I'm Terry Gross.

Speaker 5 How far would I travel

Speaker 3 to be

Speaker 3 where you are?

Speaker 5 How far is the journey

Speaker 3 from here

Speaker 3 to a star?

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