Etta James Similar Artists

Aretha Franklin - 100% match to Etta James

25 March 1942, Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Aretha Franklin’s music is steeped in the traditions of the church. Her father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, was a Baptist preacher who, once he had moved his family to Detroit, became famous throughout black America for his fiery sermons and magnetic public appearances. He knew the major gospel stars Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward, who in Read more

Billie Holiday - 80% match to Etta James

Eleanor(a) Harris, 7 April 1915, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, d. 17 July 1959, New York City, New York, USA. ‘Lady Day’ taught herself to sing during her early teens in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was brought up until moving to New York in 1929. Factual inaccuracies and elements of myth and exaggeration have clouded the picture of her formative years despite Read more

Big Mama Thornton - 78% match to Etta James

11 December 1926, Montgomery, Alabama, USA, d. 25 July 1984, Los Angeles, California, USA. Willie Mae Thornton was the daughter of a minister and learned drums and harmonica as a child. By the early 40s she was singing and dancing in Sammy Green’s Hot Harlem Revue throughout the southern states. Basing herself in Texas, she made her first records as Big Mama Thornton fo Read more

Dinah Washington - 77% match to Etta James

Ruth Lee Jones, 29 August 1924, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA, d. 14 December 1963, Detroit, Michigan, USA. Raised in Chicago, Dinah Washington first sang in church choirs for which she also played piano. She then worked in local clubs, where she was heard by Lionel Hampton, who promptly hired her. She was with Hampton from 1943-46, recording hits with ‘Evil Gal Blues’, Read more

Ella Fitzgerald - 69% match to Etta James

Ella Jane Fitzgerald, 25 April 1917, Newport News, Virginia, USA, d. 15 June 1996, Beverly Hills, California, USA. Following the disappearance of her father, Fitzgerald was taken to Yonkers, New York by her mother and her new man Joseph da Silva. At school she sang with a glee club and showed early promise, but preferred dancing to singing. Even so, chronic shyness militated Read more

Otis Redding - 67% match to Etta James

9 September 1941, Dawson, Georgia, USA, d. 10 December 1967, Lake Monona, Madison, Wisconsin, USA. The son of a Baptist minister with the same name, Redding assimilated gospel music during his childhood and soon became interested in jump blues and R&B. After resettling in Macon, he became infatuated with local luminary Little Richard and began singing on a full-time basi Read more

Nina Simone - 66% match to Etta James

Eunice Kathleen Waymon, 21 February 1933, Tryon, North Carolina, USA, d. 21 April 2003, Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. An accomplished pianist as a child, Eunice Waymon made her public debut at the age of 10 in her native North Carolina. She later moved to Philadelphia and studied at New York’s Juilliard School Of Music but left in 1954 after struggling Read more

The Temptations - 63% match to Etta James

Wilson Pickett - 62% match to Etta James

18 March 1941, Prattville, Alabama, USA, d. 19 January 2006, Reston, Virginia, USA. The ‘wicked Pickett’ was one of the great southern soul singers to emerge during the 60s. Pickett moved to Detroit, Michigan in his early teens. He joined gospel group the Violinaires and embarked on church tours throughout North America. In his late teens he graduated to secular mu Read more

Ruth Brown - 58% match to Etta James

12 January 1928, Portsmouth, Virginia, USA, d. 17 November 2006, Henderson, Nevada, USA. Brown started her musical career singing gospel at an early age in the church choir led by her father. In 1948 she was singing with a band led by her husband Jimmy in Washington, DC, when Willis Conover (from the radio show Voice Of America) recommended her to Ahmet Ertegun of the newly Read more

Nancy Wilson - 57% match to Etta James

20 February 1937, Chillicothe, Ohio, USA. Wilson began singing in clubs in and around Columbus, Ohio. She attracted attention among jazz musicians, made her first records in 1956, and in the late 50s toured with a band led by Rusty Bryant. At the end of the decade she sang with George Shearing, with whom she recorded, and Cannonball Adderley. It was at Adderley’s insist Read more

Nancy Wilson - 57% match to Etta James

16 March 1954, San Francisco, California, USA. A gifted electric and acoustic guitarist and singer, Wilson first attracted attention in the early 70s when she and her sister, Ann Wilson, fronted the successful rock band Heart. After the band’s poorly received Rock The House Live! album, the Wilson sisters regrouped, revitalized themselves and embarked on a new phase of Read more

Percy Sledge - 56% match to Etta James

25 November 1941, Leighton, Alabama, USA. An informal, intimate singer, former hospital nurse Sledge led a popular campus attraction, the Esquires Combo, prior to his recording debut. Recommended to Quin Ivy, owner of the Norala Sound studio, Sledge arrived with a rudimentary draft of ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’. A timeless single, its simple arrangement hinged on S Read more

Sarah Vaughan - 55% match to Etta James

Sarah Lois Vaughan, 27 March 1924, Newark, New Jersey, USA, d. 3 April 1990, Los Angeles, California, USA. Although she was not born into an especially musical home environment (her father was a carpenter and her mother worked in a laundry), the young Sarah Vaughan had plenty of contact with music-making. As well as taking piano lessons for nearly 10 years, she sang in her c Read more

Solomon Burke - 54% match to Etta James

21 March 1940, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The former ‘Wonder Boy Preacher’, Burke’s first recordings appeared on the New York-based Apollo label. From 1955-59 he attempted various styles until a brisk rocker, ‘Be Bop Grandma’, attracted the attention of Atlantic Records. An eclectic performer, his reading of a sentimental country song, ‘Ju Read more