Etta James

James and Johnny "Guitar" Watson worked the same rooms as young R&B players in 1950s Los Angeles, close enough that she made a habit of crediting him whenever she recorded a song he had written. She never softened the debt: "I got everything from Johnny," she said. "He was my main model... my whole ballad style comes from my imitating Johnny's style. He was the baddest and the best." No single record pairs their two names — they never share a writing credit on tape — but the phrasing she borrowed from him underlies every ballad she cut afterward.

listen: upstream & heresource: Daily Kos — "A True American Original, Johnny 'Guitar' Watson" (backs the Johnny "Guitar" Watson influence quote) ↗share

1957

Gangster of LoveJohnny "Guitar" Watson

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1962

Something's Got a Hold on MeEtta James

listen forPlay Watson's 1957 "Gangster of Love" first: a strutting, stop-time blues shuffle built for a singer to talk as much as sing over it. Then cue James's 1962 "Something's Got a Hold on Me" — the same stop-and-start push, horns punching into the gaps, her voice sliding from a growl into a gospel holler and back. It is not a cover; it is the swagger and phrasing she said she lifted wholesale from Watson, reshaped into one of her biggest uptempo sides.

Dinah Washington once flipped her own table over a song. James had opened her midnight set at a small Providence club with "Unforgettable," Washington's own hit, and Washington, watching from the room, erupted: "Bitch, don't you ever sing the Queen's songs when the Queen is right in front of you!" She apologized within the hour, but the lesson held, and so did the model. David Ritz, who co-wrote James's memoir, later named Washington outright as "her most dominant influence," tracing James's soft, jazz-tinged Chess-era ballads directly back to her.

listen: upstream & heresource: Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — 1993 induction essay by David Ritz, "Etta James" (bio; names Dinah Washington as her most dominant influence) ↗share

1959

What a Diff'rence a Day MakesDinah Washington

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1960

At LastEtta James

listen forCue Washington's 1959 "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" first — strings swelling under a voice that turns pop phrasing into something conversational and wise. Then James's "At Last," cut the following year at Chess: the same lush orchestral bed, the same unhurried, behind-the-beat delivery that lets a simple melody sound hard-won. Ritz's own essay names "At Last" itself as one of the recordings James built directly in Washington's image.

James traced her connection to Billie Holiday back to her mother, who hummed Holiday's songs while getting ready for bar work each night and put her own spin on them — "she would put different little runs in them," James remembered. It was Holiday's own phrasing, though, that stayed with her: "I really loved the way she put a song over." Three decades into her career, James made the connection explicit, recording a full album of Holiday's songbook, Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday (1994), which won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album.

listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone — "Etta James on Billie Holiday ↗share

1946

Don't ExplainBillie Holiday

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1994

Don't ExplainEtta James

listen forHoliday's 1946 "Don't Explain" is spare and devastating — she barely raises her voice, letting the lyric's quiet humiliation do the work. James's 1994 version, cut for Mystery Lady, keeps that restraint intact even though her own voice carries decades more weight and grain; she under-sings a song she could have belted, the clearest sign of how closely she studied Holiday's control rather than her volume.