📍Fillmore District, San Francisco, CA, USA
1950 – 1954“I was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles in January 1938. My mother, Dorothy, was fourteen when she had me and was often away, so I was raised by foster parents, Mama Lu and Sarge, and at five I was singing gospel at St. Paul Baptist Church, where the choir director, James Earle Hines, gave me lessons. When Mama Lu died in 1950, I went north to San Francisco, to live with my mother in the Fillmore District, a lively, mostly Black neighbourhood of Victorian houses, jazz clubs and churches, known as the Harlem of the West. The Fillmore was full of music, but I was a wild teenager, with little supervision, running with gangs and getting into trouble. I loved doo-wop, and with my friends Jean and Abye I started singing at the recreation centre, and we called ourselves the Creolettes. We were good, and we started performing around the city. In 1954, when I was about sixteen, the bandleader Johnny Otis came to San Francisco, and we went to his hotel and persuaded him to hear us. He liked our answer song to Hank Ballard's Work With Me, Annie, and he took us to Los Angeles to record it. The song, The Wallflower, originally Roll With Me, Henry, reached number one on the rhythm and blues chart in 1955, and Otis turned my name around to make Etta James. I went on to Chess Records and recorded At Last, I'd Rather Go Blind and Tell Mama, becoming one of the greatest singers of my time. The Fillmore remembers the tough girl from the rec centre with the voice of an angel.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today