Fresh Air - Roots of R&B: Johnny Otis & Etta James

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

All week we're revisiting archival interviews with key figures in early rock and roll, rockabilly and R&B. Singer, songwriter, producer and talent scout Johnny Otis got his start leading a big band that had the 1945 hit “Harlem Nocturne.” Later, as a talent scout, he discovered such performers as Big Mama Thornton, Esther Phillips and Etta James. James' career took off in the '60s with hits including “At Last," “A Sunday Kind of Love” and “I’d Rather Go Blind."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Life is a mystery for those of faith or no faith. Ye gods with Scott Carter is the podcast that makes sense of how we make sense of life. Each week we talk to celebrities, scholars, and mere mortals to unearth what on earth we believe and what we don't. Listen to Ye gods with Scott Carter, part of the NPR Network wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today we continue our archive series, R&B, Rockabilly, and Early Rock and Roll. Before Elvis Presley recorded Hound Dog, it was recorded by Big Mama Thornton. The record's drummer and producer was Johnny Otis, whose interview were featuring today.

You ain't nothing but a hound dog, been snooping around the door. You ain't nothing but a hound dog. It's snooping around my door. You can wag your tail, but I ain't going to feed you. no more. You told me you was high glad, but I can see through that. Yeah, she told me you was high glad, but I can see through that. And Daddy, I know you ain't no real cool cat.

You ain't nothing but a horn dog. With snoopy around my door You just old hound dog With snoopy around my dog You can whine your tape But I ain't going to fit You know Oh, plet a third one

Oh, listen to them old hound dog Otis was also an R&B singer and musician, a bandleader nightclub owner, and talent scout. He started out leading a big band that had the 1945 hit Harlem Nocturn. Soon after, his band, like most of the big bands, broke up for financial reasons. Otis organized a smaller unit that played a hybrid of swing and blues

that became known as Rhythm and Blues. Otis' Rhythm and Blues caravan became the first R&B touring roadshow. Through his nightclub, talent shows, and road show, Otis discovered such singers as Esther Phillips, who first worked under the name Little Esther, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard, and Edda James, who will hear from later in the show. Otis had several R&B hits in the early 50s, and in 1958, his record Willie and the Handjive made it to the top 10 of the rock and roll chart. Although Otis is a pioneer of R&B, and played almost exclusively with black performers. He was a white Greek-American who grew up in a black neighborhood where his father

ran a grocery store. During the British invasion of the 60s, his style of music became decreasingly unpopular. Otis died in 2012 at the age of 90. When I spoke with him in 1989, he was back on the road and in the recording studio. His sessions from the 1950s had just been reissued. We began with his first hit, that 1945 instrumental recording of Harlem Nocturn. Ah. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Ah. And ah, ah. Oh. There's a great story behind recording this record, would you tell it?

Well, this goes back to the mid-40s, and it was my first record date with my own band, as I recall. And we did three things. I went to the producer after we had completed the third one. I said, well, Mr. Renee, that's it. Three songs in four hours, and we got plenty of time left. He said, no, you've got that wrong.

It's four songs in three hours. Now, get out there and get another song together. So we were the house band at the Club, Alabama, on Central Avenue here in L.A. at the time. And I remember when we would play this particular song, the chorus girls and the show girls would come out of the balcony out of their dressing rooms

and dance on the balcony and they would always ask us to play it and I thought it must have some charm the ladies like it that well so I said let's play that and it was a stock arrangement that had been recorded once before by Ray Noble

and an Earl Hagen tune but I slowed it down and I was a drummer then I went boom boom boom on the tom-toms and we recorded it and the songs that we had done previously with Jimmy Russian, the great Calum Basie singer, and some wonderful arrangements. They didn't do it, but Harlem Nocturn became an instant hit.

And when Harlem Nocturn became an instant hit, then you started touring with Lewis Jordan and with the ink spots, and they were some of the biggest black acts of the time. Can you describe a little bit what the atmosphere was like at the concerts, concerts in which you shared the bill? That same feeling you feel the day before the curtain opens that great anticipation. they're going to see Bill Kenny in the ink spots, they're going to see Louis Jordan, and we were lucky enough to be the band.

Did the audiences assume that you were black? Of course. In those days, many of the places we played, had they suspected I was white, we would have been arrested. Well, I remember when I interviewed Solomon Burke, he told a story about how when one of his records crossed over to the country charts,

he started getting invitations to play certain places in the South with white crowds who would have never asked him to play if they knew he was black and he showed up to one of these places and it was quite a scene. Did anything similar ever happen to you? No. We're talking now, I assume we're back in the 40s. If we are, it was much different

than the Solomon Burke days of the 50s or the 60s with Solomon Burke. You see, your life was on the line in those days when our bus would cross the Mason-Dixon line and the driver would say, well, we just crossed the Mason-Dixon line, A pall would fall over the entire show. We'd all get quiet because we knew we were down there where we had problems.

And many times we came close to being hurt. One time we stopped the bus to go to get some gas. And my little singer, Little Lester, who was only 13, jumped off and went to the restroom. And I looked up and there's a guy with a gun in my belly. And he's shaken and he's all excited because the little black girl went to the white woman's a bathroom. And I thought to myself, any death but this. So she came out and we went on down the road. But those things happened to us all the time. That was the open version of white racism as against the very subtle, pervasive, and institutionalized version that we have today.

Let me play one of the rhythm and blues records from the period that you made. And this was with the singer Little Esther, who we now know as Esther Phillips. And this was double-crossing blues. Do you want to say anything about this? You write the song? Well, I can give you a little anecdote about it. Yeah. I was leaving my little chicken ranch in Watts back in the 40s and with me were a group

of guys I had found at the barrel house where I had a nightclub there called the barrel house. And we were going to do their first record and they became known as the Robbins and later the coasters. But Little Esther was a neighborhood little girl who used to help me with the other children

catch my chickens when people would pick out the chicken they wanted. And then we would have refreshments later. And she ran and she said, Johnny, let me go. Let me go. So I said, oh, get in. So she got in. We went to Hollywood, to the studio. And when we got there, we did the four sides by the Robbins. And we had a few minutes left. So I told, I asked the producer, Ralph Bass, I said, man, we got some time. Let me, let me get these kids together. I got a song, I think would make sense. He said, well, hurry up, you've only got a couple minutes. So I taught it to him, and we did it. And it was called double-crossing blues and he said

I said can I do it one more time because she kind of giggled he said no that's it but anyhow that became the number one song of 1950 and it brought little Lester to stardom and it did an awful lot for us too and you're playing vibes yeah and I'm playing vibes

okay here we go been looking for you daddy I've just found you in time You ate some of the woman and you spoiled you were mine. What's the matter, daddy? Don't my kiss is satisfied.

If I don't thrill you, baby, goodness knows how I've tried. Folks say that you've been cheating And how I see it's true Well, I can't quit you, baby Because I'm going love with you What's the matter, Daddy? If you would only tell me why You find no thrill you, baby.

Goodness knows all I've tried. You stayed out last night. Say you were playing cards. Can't understand it, baby, would make your big fat head so hard. Johnny Otis is my guest. the way, he has a new album of some of his reissued recordings from the 1950s.

It's called the Capitol Years. We'll be hearing some of that in just a little while. You discovered a lot of talent, not just a little Esther, Esther Phillips. What was your way of scouting for people? Actually, my first singer was

Ernestine Anderson when she was just a little girl. Really? Yeah. And then came Esther Phillips. But after Esther Phillips' amazing success and became the big child star, of the African-American community nationally, then everywhere we played, people, they would bring me their sons and their daughters

backstage. I guess they figured I was an expert who knew how to make stars out of kids. And that's how it started. One day in Detroit at the Paradise Theater, I asked the manager, I said, during this week that we'll be here, how about me doing a talent show

to avoid having to have, have all these people coming around with their kids. He said, great. And we did. It was to have been one hour, but it stretched into two hours. And we found so many wonderful singers and players that day. I found Little Willie John, Jackie Wilson, and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters on that particular show. And there were probably others, but the record company I was scouting for King only wanted

to deal with three at the moment. And I thought, years later, when Barry Gordy formed his great Motown story, I said, no wonder, look at the reservoir talent here in Detroit. It must have been funny, though, when the parents were bringing you their children. You must have been exposed to a lot of really untalented kids also. Well, I learned quick. They would come and say, and they almost all had exactly, and I don't care if I was in Mississippi or Massachusetts,

they would say, now, Mr. Otis, we know that you know. And if Junior has any real talent, you'll tell us the truth. And if he doesn't, of course, you'll say, but they didn't mean that. I didn't know it. What they meant was, this is the world's answer to the great child star. This is it. And if I would dare to suggest they weren't, then I had an enemy on my hands. So I learned how to sidestep that and tell little fibs.

We've been talking about rhythm and blues. When there was the transition between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, did you find yourself changing the music or were maybe the audience is changing that you were playing your music too? Yeah, that's true. When I was dealing with the classic rhythm and blues that we developed back in the 40s, we did a lot of bluesy material because the black audience demanded it. As the transition occurred, we then had to play more animated jump blues,

boogie styles and put on an act for white folks because they wanted it to be, they wanted to see us, you know, work and sweat, and that's what they liked. The early black audiences wanted a more musical bluesy jazz. thing. The white audiences wanted that jump tune, boogie-woogie kind of thing. Well, I want to play a song that you had that was a hit on the rock and roll charts in 1958, and this is Willie in the Hand Jive. Let's play it, and then we'll talk about it. He got a cool little chick named Rockin' Billy. He can walk and stroll in Suzy Cube

and do that crazy handgives, too. Papa told Willie you'll ruin my home. You and that hand jive's got to go. Willie said, Papa, don't put me down. They're doing that hand-dive all over town. Hand-jive, hand-jive, hand-jave, doing that crazy hand-dive. That's hand-drive, which was a big hit for my guest, Johnny Otis, back in 1958. Tell me about writing the song.

my manager of the late Hal Ziger and partner back at that time we had a hit in 57 called Maiz-Macon Eyes at me with the great Marie-Adam singing and it became a hit not here in the States but in Europe, in England it was number one so he went over to set up the tour and when he got back he said listen I saw something interesting I saw the young people around the London area

in the venues where they couldn't dance at the concerts and the theaters as they sat there they would do a thing that you guys in the big black bands used to do with their hands you know while the band was playing and they call it hand jive

why don't you write a song called hand jive and maybe we'll do some good over in Europe well I did in it luckily it became a hit everywhere so the hand drive was basically kind of clapping and moving your hands yeah while you're sitting while you're sitting

when it became a whole dance later I want to play something that you're featured on from this new reissue called The Capital Years And this is Can't You Hear Me Calling? Okay And you're singing on this? Yeah And what are you playing?

After a fashion Oh, you sound really good on it Oh well, okay You and my mother think so Okay, well, let's give it a listen can't you hear me calling baby baby baby baby baby baby please don't go baby baby don't you know i love love love i love you so i love you got me all alone alone and blue and i'm sitting here crying over you can't you hear me calling babe baby baby please don't go don't go don't know don't

Can't you hear me calling, I, high, high, high, I can't go on. I can't go home. Now you know you've got me crying, crying, crying, I'm all alone. I'm all alone. Come on, baby, won't you tell me that you're coming home? Don't leave me crying here all alone. Can't you hear me calling, baby, baby, please don't go, don't go, don't go. In the morning.

Johnny Otis from the new album, the Capitol Years, you know, Ben Vaughn, wrote the liner notes for this record and in it he mentions that um in one of i guess there's a publicity shot that your your goatee was airbrushed out so that you would look less ethnic what was the story behind that oh halziger the late halziger god rest of soul he uh he was my partner at the time and he did these things well i didn't even asking me and what he you know he wanted me to look less black he wanted me to look less like a greek He wanted me to look like a nice Anglo-Saxon wasp Which is hard to do

But he tried So he airbrushed out the gouty Yeah I don't think that sold any records Now your family is Greek, was Greek? Yeah Your parents? Yeah, we're in our Yes

And your last name was Vili Otis? Vely Otis And when did you change it to Otis? The kids at school kind of made that decision for me. They decided not to deal with, try to remember how to pronounce that. They would say, Johnny Otis, and that's the way it stuck. So, I know that your father had a grocery store. Was that in the same neighborhood that you lived in? Oh, yes. The grocery store was

downstairs, and we lived upstairs. And this was in a black neighborhood? Yes, in the heart of the black neighborhood. So that, I guess, helps explain why you grew up with such black identification. And that's also the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. he might in fact put it in a wasp neighborhood then what would have happened to me did you not think of yourself as being white when you were growing up

I didn't think about that at all I had no concept about that luckily my father was absolutely wonderful in that respect and my playmates were I didn't know it then but they were black, African-American. I thought we were all the same thing.

And I don't think it's so unique in America for white kids to grow up with black youngsters and come up together as brothers and sisters. What might be unique is not to veer away. I could not veer away because that's where I wanted to be. Those were my friends. That's what I loved. It wasn't the music that brought me to the black community.

It was the way of life. I felt I was black. What was it about the way of life? Everything about it. You know, different cultures have different characteristics. And the characteristics of the African American community became my own. And I just wasn't willing to give that up to go become part of the mainstream community where people felt superior to black people and they oppressed black people.

And they practiced democracy and preached. racism. I didn't want to be part of that. I want to stay in that sweet, beautiful black place in the black community. My interview with Johnny Otis was recorded in 1989. He died in 2012 at the age of 90. After we take a short break, we'll hear from one of the singers he discovered, Eddie James. I'm Terry Gross, and this is fresh air. Let's continue our archive series R&B, Rockabilly, and Early Rock and Roll with Rhythm and blues singer Edda James. James. She got her start at the age of 15 when she was discovered by Johnny Otis, who we just heard from, and began performing with his traveling R&B review. By age 17, she had her first hit,

Roll with me Henry, an answer song to Hank Ballard's, Work with me, Annie. After establishing herself as a rhythm and blues star in the late 50s and early 60s, her career was eclipsed by changes in pop music. But later, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame. Younger generations became aware of her for her recording of At Last, after Beyonce sang that song at President Obama's first inaugural, while he and Michelle Obama had their first dance as President and First Lady. At last, my love has come along. My lonely days are over.

And life is like a song. Oh, yeah, yeah, at last. When I spoke with Eddie James in 1994, she had just released an album called Mystery Lady, paying tribute to jazz singer Billy Holiday. The album featured James doing songs Holiday had recorded, like this one, The Very Thought of You. The very thought of you.

And I forget to do the little ordinary things. Everyone ought to do I'm living in a kind of daydream I'm happy as a queen But foolish Though it may sing To me

That's everything The mirror Edda James, welcome to fresh air Tell me the story of why you wanted to record A Billy Holiday record Well, I thought that Since I grew up I did my teenage years in San Francisco

And my mother Was such a Billy Holiday And a jazz fan mostly Billy Holiday. And I kind of, all along, I said, what, jazz? You know, so to me, as a young kid, that was like, it was too disciplined, it was too confining, at least that's the way I thought.

And I thought you had to be really, really cool and had to be bourgeois, you know, to do that. And I didn't want to do that. I mean, I was a sloppy kid with tattoos all over. I wanted to be just wild. I really think that I had to mature. I got to the point where I'm 56 years old. I think it took me maturing.

Now, let me ask you this. You grew up in a foster home. I think when your mother had you, she was 14 years old. Right. She was a kid. And, you know, I had feelings about all that kind of stuff for years, and I went to therapy and all about it. But then as I got older, I realized that she really did the best for me.

She put me in a lovely home. The people were, you know, lovely to me. They never said that they were my real parents. I mean, I always knew I had this good-looking, you know, high-stepping mom, and she was, like, only 14 years old than me. And so she did the best for me, because if she had tried to take me with her, she was just a child, what would she have done with me? Would I have been singing today?

Would I have been anything, you know. What was your foster family like? They were lovely. They were older people, and they had property. and they lived in the east side, lower east side of Los Angeles. And my grandmother was a church lady, and they believed in, you know,

they gave me singing lessons at five. And so, you know. So when you were singing in the church choir, did your grandmother or anyone else in the family get upset if, on your own time, you sang blues or any kind of secular music? No, because when, as long as long as, My grandmother lived until I was...

My grandmother died when I was 12. So I sing gospel music from 5 until 12. And so my grandmother, she never... She wasn't one of those kind of people because I was already the prodigy child of the church. And, you know, and I did nothing but I loved church. I went to Bible camp and I was a little Christian girl. And until my grandmother passed away at 12,

that is when my mother came back, came to get me because I had nothing but my grandfather there in the house, and my grandmother, the mother wanted me to be with her. And she came the day of the funeral to pick me up to take me back to San Francisco. So that's at San Francisco. Oh, I was listening to little stuff on the slide, but I wasn't interested in secular music.

But once I got to San Francisco, I grew horns and the tail. I really turned into it. you know, the real street kid. I was kind of like a runaway, but I had a mother, you know what I mean? And I had a place to stay. We're listening to my 1994 interview with singer

Edda James. We'll hear more of it. After a break, this is fresh air. You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to play one of your rhythm and blues recordings. That has a very gospel sound to it. I want to play something's got a hold on me from 1961. Do you think of this as having a gospel sound? Matter of fact, it is a gospel song. We wrote

that song and we adapted it from a from a gospel song and the gospel song was something's got a hold on me it must be the Lord and in your song it must be love must be love right now now don't get me because I'm not the one who decided to to but I was one of the writers I just kind of said okay well let's go rock and roll this is edit James recorded in 1961 oh sometimes I get a good feeling, yeah. Yeah. I get a feeling that I never, never, never, never had before, no, no. Yeah.

I just want to tell you right now that I believe, I really do believe that something's got. a hole on me yeah oh something's got a hole on me right now child oh let me say now now i'm got a feeling i feel so strange everything about me seems to have changed step by step i got a brand new walk i even sound sweeter when i talk i said oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh Oh, oh, hey, yeah, oh, it must be love. You know, it must be love. Well, it wasn't too long after you moved in with your mother that you actually went on the road.

I mean, Johnny Otis, who had a now famous Rhythm and Blues touring review, got you into the show. He discovered you. But how did you audition for him? How did you find him or he find you? Well, kind of, yeah, I think it was kind of a little bit. bit of both, really, but he really found me because at that time, my mother, I had ran away from home. And I went and I stayed with two girls, one name Abby and Gene, who later became the

Peaches. You know, it used to be Eddie James and the Peaches. And we had, we had wrote an answer to the song Dan, wrote, Work with Me Annie. The Hank Ballard record. Right. So during those days, you know, Everybody would make an answer. You said, work with me, Annie. Then we said, roll with me, Henry. And so one night, the young girl and myself, we were the same age. We were both like 16. And the older sister was like 24.

And she went out to a dance in the Fillmore district, which was, you know, a heavy drag district of San Francisco. She went to see the Johnny Otis Band. And she was there because we couldn't go and we didn't want to go anyway. We were like, you know, different from her. We weren't like, she was kind of like a groupy kind of a chick. And we were kind of like scared, you know, to do that. So all of a sudden we got a call that night. And it was Abby calling us back to say, listen, guess who I'm with?

I'm with Johnny Otis. And we go, oh, Johnny Otis. And he said, yeah, Johnny Osk, I told him that we have a girl group and he says he wants to hear us. And I said, yeah, right. How does he want to hear us? We're out there in the project and the boonies, right? And she says, oh, he's at the hotel there and all the band and everything. And myself and the girl, we looked at each other and said, yeah, right.

Now we're 15-year-olds and we're going to go to the hotel with the band. And Johnny Otis, Johnny Otis was like about a 34, 35-year-old man. So we said, oh, no, that's all right. That's all right. We'll just, we'll cool that and everything. So Johnny Otis snatched the phone from her. And it was Johnny Otis. You know, we heard that voice, you know.

and he said hi how you doing it we said oh we're doing all right he says i hear you guys got a great group i hear you got a song a couple of songs and uh i'd like to hear you and he says how about catching a cab i'll pay the cab fare and i'll meet you out front and i said oh no now this is getting heavy this older man is gonna you know he sent us in a cab so we said okay let's go on And John, he sounded pretty sincere. And he said, don't worry. Nobody's going to bother. He says, okay, so we got up and got dressed, got in a cab,

and went down there, sure enough, as we pulled up, we saw this tall man. You know, we'd all seen pictures of Johnny Otis with the nice hair. And he looked like a tall, kind of like a creole man, with a nice mustache and a beard. And he had, you know, in the nice pompadour hair. And he was standing there all stately. And he had two or three more guys with him. One guy was his manager. and much older man.

And when we got this, oh, I'm glad to see you, and come on up and let's see what, let's hear you. So we went upstairs to his room and we sang, how deep is the ocean, and for all we know, and Street of Dreams. So you auditioned for Johnny Otis.

He liked your singing, I suppose, and invited you to go on the tour, but you were still in mine, or did you have to get your mother's permission? Well, that was a trick there. My mother, I knew my mother wasn't going to let me go, but I told him, he says, how old are you? I said, 18, which he knew that was a lie. And he says, well, you know what?

I would like to take you guys to Los Angeles tomorrow to make a record. And he says, can I speak with your mother? I said, no, I can't find her right now. She's working. And he says, well, can you go home and get permission from your mother, get something in writing, stating that you can travel and give me your mother's address and phone number and all this stuff

and saying that you can travel and you're allowed to travel with me and have her to sign it and date it. I said, oh yeah, I can do that. So sure enough, that's what I did. I went home, I wrote the note. Oh, I see, right. And I brought the note back

with a tiny little bag, a little plastic bag or something with some clothes in it and myself and the two girls got on Johnny's bus and we split to L.A. So why don't we hear the first song that you recorded, and this was the first thing recorded after going on the road with Johnny Otis, and it's

Roll with me, Henry, also called Wallflower. And called Dance With Me Henry. Yeah, called Dance With Me Henry also. And this is Edda James. Hey, baby! What do I have to do to make you love me too?

I got to roll with you. With me hand around, right, baby. Roll with me hand around. No, me, maybe. Roll with me hand around. Give me whole time. Roll with me hand around. Don't change my mind.

Roll with me and ride. All right. You better roll it while the rolling is on. Roll on, roll on, roll on, roll on. While the cats are falling, you better stop your stalling. No, oh, it's intermission in a minute So you better get with it Roll with me, Henry

You better roll while the running is on, roll on, roll on roll. No, after you recorded this, Georgia Gibbs did a cover recording of this called Dance With Me, Henry. And was that supposed to be the tamer version? Yeah, well, you know, during those days, You weren't allowed to say roll, because roll was like a vulgar word. You know what I mean? For sex, yeah. Yeah, think about it.

They would probably burn prints at the stake. But you couldn't say rolls. So rather than, they banned my record from the air. And what happened, what we had to do was sell it underground, and not only that, change the title to Wallflower. and then when Georgia Gibbs did it, she just made the dance with me, Henry, so that, you know, all the kids could go by it

and, you know, take it home and, you know, listen to it because their parents weren't going to go for no roll. Are you kidding? Roll with me? How do you roll with somebody? We're listening to my 1994 interview with singer Edda James. We'll continue the interview after a break. This is fresh air.

At some point in your career, you started dressing, and evening gones for performances and dyeing your hair blonde. Tell me how you created that on stage image for yourself. I think probably by me being so young and I was oversized like I

am now, but I mean I had a real nice figure and I was tall and I remember this singer Joyce Bryant. She was a black singer and I always admired her and I had two role models.

I liked Joyce Bryant because she wore fishtail gowns, sequin fish tail gowns, and she was black, and she had the nerve to wear platinum hair. And then I also loved Jane Mansfield, because Jane Mansfield had the blonde hair and had the like the poochy lips and the mold and all this. So I think what I did was kind of combined. My mother had bleached my hair carrot red at one point,

And then I said, well, maybe that's not flamboyant enough. So I just kind of went into Detroit one day, and one of the fellows over there said, oh, Miss James, oh, you would probably look fabulous with platinum hair. So he bleached my hair blonde, and it looked good. And so then I started, what I was doing was trying to be a glamour girl because I had been a tomboy most of the time. And I wanted to look grown.

You know, I wanted to wear tall, high-heel shoes. and fishtail gowns and big long rhinestone earrings, you know. So how long did you dye your hair? For how long? Yeah. I think, well, most of my career, it was blonde, platinum blonde, all the way I would think up into the 70s, maybe the 72 and 73, something like that. And why'd you stop?

Well, you know, I wanted to, I think, I think, one thing about it, I think things had changed. I know things had changed. And my career hadn't, hadn't, wasn't happening. And I didn't think that I needed to be that, you know, that, to track that much attention. Another thing, I was on drugs at that time. And I think I really wanted to. low profile. Was it difficult for you to give up drugs?

Not when I got down to, you know, I'd given it up many a time. You know, I'd kicked my habits many a time. But when I went in 1974, I gave heroin up. I was on methadone for maybe three or four years before that, so I had a couple of things to give up. Was it hard to make a comeback after you stopped using? No, not really. because when I stopped using, you know, I wasn't the kind that went around

and wanted people to pat me on the back about it. It's just that I just picked up, you know, picked up the ball and started running with it. The thing was, when I went to this rehabilitation center, I was around nothing but a lot of white kids. And the thing where they were all younger than I was. And I remember on Saturdays, they would play all these great rock and roll records. The thing was, I was doing R&B, remember. But the ZZ-Z-Tops and the Rod Stewards and the Rolling Stones and all those people, I never really, I was busy using drugs.

I wasn't there when Woodstock. I was there in New York when Woodstock was going on, but I didn't want to go to Woodstock. I would rather go to Harlem, you know. And when I was in the program on Saturdays, we'd be cleaning up. They would be playing songs from all these people. And I would say, oh, man, that music is really happening. And then what really made me think it is because my song, I'd rather go blind. They had a version of it by Rod Stewart.

And they kept saying, hey, this is the song you wrote, listen. And I said, all right. And then so while I was in that program, they would take me out kind of with support to kind of do little gigs here and there. We went to Africa to do the black festival there when Muhammad Ali and George. Farman was supposed to fight. We went to the American Song Festival. And so my therapist, you know, psychologist, was taking me around, trying to just, you know, dip me in a little bit to let me know, you know, this is the business here that you've been

in all your life. Now, what's going to be different about this when you come out? What are you going to do different? Because you're going to get thrown right back in there. So we would just do test runs and things. In 1978, you opened in some cities for the Rolling Stones on there. tour. Were the Stones fans of yours? Oh yeah, yeah. Matter of fact, when I was in rehab at the same rehab center in the 70s, 74, and 75, I got a letter from Keith Richards that had told, that had said to me

that they were getting ready to do a tour. You know, they had had Tina Turner, and they had B.B. King, and they had had different people on their tour, and they had wanted me on their tour. and the letter that they wrote came to the rehabilitation center and the therapist got the letter and he called me to his office and read the letter and the letter said that they... He said, we would like to have you on tour with us. We love your music.

And he says, but what you're doing right now is more important than what we could ever do with you but we'll be sure to come back and get you when you're ready. And that was really cool. That was when they came back in 78 and kept their word. I'd like to close our interview with another selection from your new album of songs that were recorded by Billy Holiday.

I thought we could play How Deep is the Ocean since this is one of the songs you sang many years ago when you auditioned for Johnny Otis. What do you think is the difference between what the song means to you now and what it meant to you then and how you sing it now and how you sung it then? I think probably it's because

now I really understand You know what I mean? I understand what I'm singing about. You know, songs that I get, any song that I decide to sing or a song that someone sends to me or recommends, I like to be able to relate to that song, not just, you know, have a song there that talks about come fly me to the moon, let me dangle on the stars.

That's not my cup of tea. That's not real. I want to sing real stuff. I want to know what I'm singing about. and I want to be able to really relate to that, and I think that's what I can do now. I think that's what I definitely do. Matter of fact, I know I do.

Eddie James, it's been a pleasure. I want to thank you a lot for talking with us. Thank you so much, Terry. My interview with Eddie James was recorded in 1994. How much do I love you? I'll tell you no lie. how deep is the ocean how high is the sky

how many times a day do I think of you How many roses are sprinkled with dew? Ooh, how far would I travel to be where you are. How far is the journey from here to a star? And if I've ever lost you, how much would I cry? I, how deep is the ocean? Baby, how high is the sky?

Tomorrow, as we continue our archive series, R&B, Rockabilly, and Early Rock and Roll, will feature interviews with two R&B singers from the 50s and 60s, Ruth Brown, whose recordings include Mama He Treats Your Daughter Me, and Laverne Baker, whose hits included Bumblebee, Tweedley D, and Jim Dandy. I hope you'll join us. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Rie Baudenado, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaliner, Susan Yucundi, Anna Bauman, and John Sheehan. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shorok directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. How far would I travel to be where you are? How far is the journey.

from here to a star