Etta James Quotes
"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
(Related: Car, Time, Country, Favorite, Guitar, Night, Road)
"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
(Related: Feeling, Songs)
"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
(Related: Mother, Song)
"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
(Related: Mother, Thought)
"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
(Related: Mother, Jazz, Play)
"Now I can stand up on the stage again like I used to after five years of sitting down while I sang."
- Etta James
(Related: Now, Years)
"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
(Related: Time, Control, First, Songs, Years)
"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
(Related: Time, People, Problems)
"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
(Related: People, Church, Lady, Old, Years)
"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
(Related: History, Music, Nothing, Songs)
"It's the same thing now. When I go onstage the young people scream and holler as much as the older generation."
- Etta James
(Related: People, Now)
"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
(Related: Songs)
"The only time that I am really truly happy - when I feel at my best - is when I'm on the stage."
- Etta James
(Related: Time)
"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
(Related: Thought, Help, Weight, Years)
"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
(Related: Women, Day)
"At the same time I was being given a Lifetime Achievement Grammy."
- Etta James
(Related: Time, Achievement, Being)
"Bobby Womack is always very real, both with his music and as a person."
- Etta James
(Related: Music)
"But even so, I still get nervous before I go onstage."
- Etta James
"I am so happy that I am alive and can walk."
- Etta James
"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
(Related: Artist, Care, Favorite)
"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
(Related: Dance, Want)
"I figured I could do It's A Man's Man's Man's World, because I believe it's the truth."
- Etta James
(Related: Truth, Man, World)
"I like to shop, but I don't like to go out to dances."
- Etta James
"I sing the songs that people need to hear."
- Etta James
(Related: People, Songs)
"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
(Related: Company, Mind)
"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
(Related: Music, American, Country, Culture, Jazz)
"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
(Related: People, Hollywood)
"It's not about battling the original artists when I record these songs, it's about paying tribute to them."
- Etta James
(Related: Artists, Songs, Tribute)