Etta James Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Etta James:
The only time that I am really truly happy - when I feel at my best - is when I'm on the stage.
~Etta James
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I was a sloppy kid, wanted to be just wild.
~Etta James
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I sing the songs that people need to hear.
~Etta James
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I'm not a braggart, but when I was a little girl people used to come from all over Hollywood to hear me sing.
~Etta James
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My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that.
~Etta James
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It feels so good to be happy.
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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Bobby Womack is always very real, both with his music and as a person.
~Etta James
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Now I can stand up on the stage again like I used to after five years of sitting down while I sang.
~Etta James
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My mother used to play nothing but Billie Holiday.
~Etta James
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I figured I could do 'It's A Man's Man's Man's World', because I believe it's the truth.
~Etta James
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I don't care who's playing. Even if it's my favorite artist, I'm probably not gonna go and see him.
~Etta James
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When I look out at the people and they look at me and they're smiling, then I know that I'm loved. That is the time when I have no worries, no problems.
~Etta James
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I like to shop, but I don't like to go out to dances.
~Etta James
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Most of the songs I sing, they have that blue feeling to it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about.
~Etta James
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I really turned into, you know, the real street kid. I was kind of like a runaway, but I had a mother, you know what I mean, and I had a place to stay.
~Etta James
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I am so happy that I am alive and can walk.
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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I was originally like a punker, know what I mean, like the punks are today, I'd spit in a minute.
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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I'm not starry eyed, and I'm not money crazy.
~Etta James
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All the things I used to like - cookies, ice cream, gumbo - I don't like anymore.
~Etta James
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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!
~Etta James
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When I sing for myself, I probably sing for anyone who has any kind of hurt, any kind of bad feelings, good feelings, ups and downs, highs and lows, that kind of thing.
~Etta James
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It's the same thing now. When I go onstage the young people scream and holler as much as the older generation.
~Etta James
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It's not about battling the original artists when I record these songs, it's about paying tribute to them.
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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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?
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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And as I started reaching deeper I realized that most of the blues of that day was done by men. Women just didn't have the nerve.
~Etta James
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I took back my life.
~Etta James
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Once you lose the weight, you're really anxious to eat healthy.
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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I'm not a bourgeois person, never will be.
~Etta James
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Johnny Guitar... just one of my favorite singers of all time. I met him when we were both on the road with Johnny Otis in the '50s when I was a teenager. We traveled the country in a car together. I would hear him sing every night.
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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Even as a little child, I've always had that comedian kind of attitude.
~Etta James
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But even so, I still get nervous before I go onstage.
~Etta James
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A few years ago, I thought, I'll never make it. I started to go to the doctor to help me lose weight.
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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Country music has the great stories.
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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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.
~Etta James
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They said that Etta James is still vulgar. I said, Oh, how dare them say I'm still vulgar. I'm vulgar because I dance in the chair. What would they want me to do? Want me to just be still or something like that? I've got to do something.
~Etta James
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Long as I was riding in a big Cadillac and dressed nice and had plenty of food, that's all I cared about.
~Etta James
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