Though Californian belter Etta James is widely known as one of the greatest blues singers, famed for her '60s Chess recordings and '70s Muscle Shoals work, her story is bigger than that. She started out with the Johnny Otis band in the '50s as a hard-edged R&B singer of the kind whose records would've been called rock & roll if made by a white singer. The tireless James never stopped working, and by the '90s, she'd covered everything from jazz standards to Steppenwolf and CCR.