Am I That Easy to Forget? remembering Little Esther Phillips, 1935-1984

Three things defined Little Esther’s life: the blues, her singing career, and heroin.

My husband advised me never to try the shit. He knew me better than anyone ever has, and he knew how many paralyzing anxieties I lived with. He said heroin felt like those anxieties were erased into oblivion. He’d been well acquainted with the stuff in his youth, in Eastern Europe’s war-fragmented world. In that endearing and guttural accent of his, he said, shaking his head, “Girl, it is a paradise.”

Like most of you- (but not like most writers) I already had a No Way Policy toward the Big H. Despite that ringing endorsement of a world without worry, I knew that my jumble of neuroses and anxieties had led me down enough rollercoaster roads. Untangling everything while half crocked on gin and trying to write a novel, three books, and my daily bread was proving to be an amusing and ambitious challenge. I did not need something to make a big ol’ mess of the small strides I’ve made toward quotidian order.

But then I don’t have the kind of pressures that child stars have. A phenomenon that’s relatively new historically, it’s becoming clear that every child star is totally fucked. Drew Barrymore, McCauley Culkin, Michael Jackson, “troubled pop star” Britney Spears- spin spin sugar. Shirley Temple may be the only one who escaped the insanity of fate unscathed- or maybe she was just the best actor.

Seven years after Shirley T. first opened her eyes, a live wire was born in Galveston, Texas. She was average in every way- not the richest by a long shot, but not the poorest little black girl in Texas. Not a beauty queen, but not homely, either. Esther Mae Jones grew up in the church so becoming a world famous blues diva hadn’t even entered her head. It all happened by accident, really. Esther was reluctant to hit a blues bar at age 14 but she did so anyways, because her sister really wanted to go. Her sister and a friend wanted to get drinks, but they had no money. There was a ten-dollar prize for the winner of a singing contest. Esther could sing, so she entered. And she won.

The nightclub she sang in was owned by bluesman Johnny Otis, and he was blown away. Soon she had a few massive hits: including Mistrustin’ Blues, which spent nine weeks at number one. She was living on a bus, dressing up, and touring with strange men. She was on heroin very soon into her unexpected career. There’s no way a poor little Christian black girl from Galveston knew what hit her. But there is no question of her fate, however it played out. It can’t possibly help her now, but some say Little Esther Phillips was the greatest blues woman of them all.

Esther Phillips’ career was a tempestuous struggle, with endless work and relatively splotchy successes. But her first year- scarcely a teenager, no less- had a string of hit records seldom, if ever, paralleled by a female musician of any genre or era. There were seven chart toppers on Billboard for her debut year, 1950, and three of them were number ones.

Esther’s voice has been called an acquired taste. Her distinctive vocals have a clear diction reminiscent of her idol Dinah Washington, with a gravelly, nasal quality that grated the skin just before she’d hook it underneath the open wound in a melting flow of stunning melancholy, a voice of beautiful agony, a drowsy epiphany in a smoky saloon. Her blues were right there stark naked in front of you, madness, darkness. Piercing at times, almost shrill, then shifting into lower registers that creep under your spinal cord with a seductive chill. Tears flow out against your will. Esther has a rare talent: she can run blazing hot and frosty cold at the same time.

These qualities transport you, with Esther seemingly right under your skin, through blues, rhythm and blues, country, jazz, pop and disco. It’s too bad this versatility made her a challenge to market. Her career was rocky and she got the short end of the stick more often than not. Regardless, it is one of the highlights of existence to hear her totally unique voice at its barest and most profound: songs like Alone Again (Naturally), I Can Stand a Little Rain, and Use Me are out of this world. Then there’s the unforgettable Am I That Easy to Forget? And How Blue Can You Get is in a realm of its own: few blues have dug this deep.

Esther produced a dedicated, extensive body of varied work, all stellar, shining most in deep blues and her smoldering, caustic interpretations of standards. Her success was erratic, starting off with a cannon with a number one record making her the hottest star of 1950, and the youngest star with an R&B number one hit.

Before today’s child star train wrecks hit the glossies, Little Esther was 13, dressed 25, to win first prize in a singing contest. The rest is history. She hurtled into the arms of heroin, naïve as any young girl would be in that era, suddenly on the road as a superstar virtuoso. School? Esther couldn’t study on the tour bus, where she spent all her time with older men. She spent her life on stage, and in and out of rehab for a lifelong heroin addiction and alcoholism. She sang her heart out, even when she was most sick. But only intermittently did she replicate the success of her first efforts.

Adding a bit of blackness, of blue velvet into country, was in vogue as the integration of black and white evolved. By a stroke of luck, Esther Phillips met, of all people, Kenny Rogers in the early ‘60s. He had a bright idea, and soon she was recording a country album for his brother, Leland. Her interpretation of Release Me is far and away the most magnificent one ever recorded. It was a hit, but the next few bombed miserably. A few years later, she was signed to Atlantic by Ahmet Ertegun, who said she had one of the best voices he’d ever heard. It was the era of the British Invasion and she recorded a ladies’ version of the Beatles’ And I Love Her.

Her stellar fire and ice vocal style that gave new life to old favourites and showcased a young woman’s old soul also coloured her reputation. Esther was known for being tough to deal with. Lord help you if you owed her money, whether you were a person or a company. Because Esther would come and get it. She did not like being ripped off and she loathed the way she was always used. She saw clearly how much she made for companies who gave her a pittance of proceeds. “You didn’t hear me,” she would roar to secretaries who gave her the rote “he’s not available” speech when she came for her pay. In one famous incident, according to blues writer David Nathan, she pulled a baseball bat from under her mink coat and hollered, “I’m not leavin’ ‘til I get a goddamn check!” But she was also famous for being funny, sly, and warm, and completely dedicated to her work. She could be extremely generous, known to cook southern fried chicken for entire crews by herself.

Now Esther’s career of highs and lows, never being able to quite get back the first blast of stardust, was perfect punctuation for a heroin habit. You spend your whole life chasing the first high, so they say, and never quite get it back. Esther was in and out of the hospital with her heroin and alcohol addiction. She even lived with her father during convalescence, enough to get sober, right before chance’s encounter with Kenny Rogers. But it always comes back. Her tumultuous battle with substances is metaphorical of her career’s rollercoaster successes and failures.

Esther’s dedication to her work never wavered, nor did the quality of her output and the measure of its soul. It was the market that fluctuated wildly, because today her lowest ebbs are the favourites of her fans and collectors. She recorded hundreds of songs, and some that never made hits are absolutely spellbinding. There was no pattern at all to ‘what worked’ in Esther’s career. It careened up and down of its own volition, though she worked tirelessly through sickness and health. After a series of bottom feeders and mild comebacks, 1972’s From a Whisper to a Scream became a classic album of her career. Featuring, among other gems, Home is Where the Hatred Is, a song about heroin, the record was nominated for several Grammy awards.

Esther Phillips took her only Grammy- but not because she won. Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, gave her own victory trophy to Esther, saying that it really belonged to her.

In the disco era, Esther, who was a good friend of Andy Warhol during this time, recorded a lively rendition of her idol Dinah Washington’s What a Difference a Day Makes. It was the best selling album of her career, and her disco diva sound gave her a new niche market that would last through the ‘80s and the gay ‘90s past the new millennium- the gay queens who loved the queens. But regardless of the constant work she did, the endless recordings, the feisty personality, and the many hits, outside of a few jazz or disco collectors who are rabid for her unmatchable voice’s beauty and sorrow, Esther is largely forgotten.

In personal matters, Esther was notoriously private, letting her volatile ups and downs conceal her true deepest feelings. These she revealed only in the heartbreaking soul of her songs. But sometime near the end of everything, she married C.B. Atkins, who’d previously been married to Sarah Vaughan. Etta James said Esther was in love with R&B singer Latimore, but married Atkins to fulfill a lifelong hope of stability, and bought a house around that time as well. It didn’t go well: it is said that Atkins spent most of Esther’s life savings, and then took off.

Of course, nothing could stop Esther Phillips, and despite terrible sales of her latest album, Good Black is Hard to Crack, she continued to tour throughout Europe and jazz clubs where she was loved. She recorded A Way to Say Goodbye, ironically, as her last call. It was released after her death.

In 1984, Esther was hospitalized with severe liver and kidney failure from the years of hard drinking and drug abuse. She was 48 years old when she died. Johnny Otis, who had discovered her at the singing contest at his Barrelhouse club, led the funeral ceremony.

Esther Phillips was a massive star with a massive drug problem by the time she was a teenager. She spent every moment from age 14 through to the evening of her life working, recording hundreds of songs and touring ceaselessly. She cut people open with her ragged, jagged vocals and weathered triumphs and failures by simply carrying on. She stormed through the studios in her furs, or conversely, her rags, stunning everyone who encountered her. Her singing could stop you in your tracks. It’s a fateful irony that a little girl who never wished to be a superstar was one of the world’s biggest. It’s another irony that she was truly one of the brightest, truest stars, but is now largely forgotten. Even many fans of blues and jazz have barely know her name. And the price was high- she never did live any of her own genuine dreams.

Doris Tray, another R&B diva, told writer David Nathan, “The thing about Esther was that she wanted to be just an everyday person, settle down with a man, have some kids.”

Lorette C. Luzajic is the girl at www.thegirlcanwrite.net. Writer, artist, editor- her various art creations are everywhere. You may also enjoy her feature food stories and spice column at Gremolata.com. Visit her site for biography, client testimonials, links, or to hire her for your next writing project. Please order her amazing poetry collection, The Astronaut’s Wife.

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