LOS ANGELES — Etta James, 73, the earthy blues and R&B singer whose anguished vocals convinced generations of listeners that she would rather go blind than see her love leave, then communicated her joy upon finding that love at last, died Friday morning, said her son Donto James.
She died of complications of leukemia at a hospital in Riverside, Calif., said Dr. Elaine James, her personal physician.
James had been in failing health for years. Court records in the singer’s probate case show she also suffered from dementia and kidney failure. Her two sons had battled their stepfather for control of her $1 million estate but in late December agreed to allow him to remain as conservator.
James spent time in a detox facility for addiction to painkillers and over-the-counter medications, Donto James told Reuters in 2010. And she had wrestled with complications since undergoing gastric bypass surgery in 2002 to remedy a lifelong struggle with her weight.
After that procedure, which actress Roseanne Barr had recommended to her, James lost 200 pounds. Before the surgery, her weight had gone past 400 pounds. When she performed, she often had to be escorted on and off the stage in a wheelchair.
“I thought I was going to die,” she told Ebony magazine in 2003. “I was constantly worried that I was going to have a heart attack.”
Perhaps the quintessential R&B diva, James, who was born and lived much of her life in Los Angeles, was equally at home singing unadulterated blues, searing R&B and sophisticated jazz, the latter receiving special attention in her recordings over the past decade.
“This is a huge loss,” singer Beyoncé said Friday in a statement on her website. “Etta James was one of the greatest vocalists of our time. … When she effortlessly opened her mouth, you could hear her pain and triumph. Her deeply emotional way of delivering a song told her story with no filter. She was fearless, and had guts. She will be missed.”
Despite her early commercial success, James struggled for much of her life with her weight, with addictions to heroin, cocaine and alcohol, and with her tumultuous relationship with her mother, who was just 14 when she gave birth to Jamesetta Hawkins on Jan. 25, 1938.
James’ six-decade recording career began at the top of the R&B charts when her bawdy 1955 single “The Wallflower,” better known as “Roll With Me Henry,” made her a star.
She is best known for “At Last,” the powerhouse ballad that became a hit in 1961 and which has been enshrined in the Grammy Hall of Fame.
The other song with which she became inextricably connected was “I’d Rather Go Blind,” which she said she co-wrote in 1968 with her friend Ellington Jordan while he was in prison. He outlined the song and James finished it, but for tax reasons she gave the co-writing credit to Medallions singer Billy Foster, to whom she was briefly married. The song conveys the desperation of a woman who prefers losing her sight to seeing her man with someone else.
In addition to sons Donto and Sametto James, Etta James is survived by Artis Mills, her husband of 42 years, and several grandchildren.
