-
A Political Obituary of Etta James
It's a damn shame that many people were introduced to Etta James in the years before her death last week through Beyonce's portrayal of her in the 2008 biopic "Cadillac Records."
No one understood the awkwardness of that casting choice better than James herself, who told The New York Post's Page Six in 2007, when she learned the film was already in production, that "she is going to have a hill to climb, because Etta James ain't been no angel!... I wasn't as bourgie as she is, she's bourgeois. She knows how to be a lady, she's like a model. I wasn't like that ... I smoked in the bathroom in school, I was kinda arrogant."
The woman born Jamesetta Hawkins on January 25, 1938, was far more than just a torch song singer, and was not at all the tragic mulatto with a white daddy complex that "Cadillac Records" constructed. In many ways, James's personal and artistic journey, as opposed to the film's caricature, has a lot to teach us about the shifting politics of race, class and feminist politics over the course of the last half century.
Etta James was born in Los Angeles, when many African Americans were moving due West to...
