ETTA JAMES: “My mother always wanted me to be a jazz singer, but I always wanted to be raunchy,” she recalled in her book. She was doing just that when bandleader Johnny Otis found her singing on San Francisco street corners with some girlfriends in the early 1950s. Otis, a legend in his own right, died on Tuesday.

ETTA JAMES: “My mother always wanted me to be a jazz singer, but I always wanted to be raunchy,” she recalled in her book. She was doing just that when bandleader Johnny Otis found her singing on San Francisco street corners with some girlfriends in the early 1950s. Otis, a legend in his own right, died on Tuesday.

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