Etta James was an original punk rocker: “I’d spit in a minute”
Punk is as much about attitude as it is a specific musical style; a fact which will have no doubt been condescendingly explained to you upon visiting your first local punk show.
That rebellious attitude of the punk age stretches back long before The Clash or Black Flag arrived on the scene, and even somebody like Etta James could, at one point or another, identify with its revolutionary power.
At first glance, it is difficult to think of many people further away from the realm of safety pins and sneering frontmen than Etta James. After all, the legendary Californian vocalist had honed her craft during the days of gospel, blues, and jazz – genres not often noted for their anarchic output, at least not in the same way as punk rock. If you really dig into James’ extensive recording history, though, there is enough rock and roll rebellion to make even James Dean blush.
Particularly during her Chess years, back in the 1960s, James routinely immersed herself in the kind of anarchic R&B energy that would soon play a pivotal role in inspiring the likes of The Rolling Stones, who were about as close to punk rock as it was possible to be during the British invasion era. Inevitably, then, Mick Jagger took a core part of his own wild performance style from the inspiration of folks like Etta James and James Brown.
James, in turn, affirmed to the New Musical Express in 1978 that Jagger’s appreciation for her went both ways. “I find myself going crazy about the Stones just like the kids are in the audience,” she shared, around the same time as she embarked upon a tour supporting the iconic rockers.
“A lot of the stuff that I see him do on stage is stuff that I used to do. I mean when I was really jumping around an’ leaping an’ looking all crazy,” James added.
“I was originally like a punker,” she went on to declare. “Know what I mean, like the punks are today, I’d spit in a minute.”
While Etta James’ musical material might have sounded very different from the sounds emanating from the rat-infested walls of New York’s CBGB or Covent Garden’s Roxy Club, that wild jumping and spitting performance style that she pioneered, and had been followed by Mick Jagger, did bear some undeniable resemblance to those punk progenitors.
None of that should come as much of a surprise, though. Despite the popular idea that punk emerged from the ether back in the mid-1970s, the scene’s history stretches back much further than that. Even The Rolling Stones, who represented the pinnacle of mainstream rock during the punk age, had a not insignificant impact on the songwriters of the punk age, and without the R&B stylings of Etta James, we might never have known the sounds of the New York Dolls or Patti Smith, to name only a couple.
At the same time, of course, there was a lot more to punk rock than jumping around and spitting. Along with its staunch DIY ethos and distinctive sound, punk also revolved around a political counterculture, which is something else that Etta James can relate to, having joined the ranks of the Nation of Islam during the 1960s, and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.
Not only is Etta James one of the finest artists America has ever produced, then, but she also seems to have more of a claim to the ‘punk’ moniker than most spikey-haired songwriters, even if she was never likely to descend upon CBGBs with her R&B stylings.
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