Esther Phillips was an exceptional blues singer but could and did sing just about everything over the course of her rocky career, tackling R&B, soul, jazz, pop, disco, and even country with equal conviction. Underscoring this versatility was the fact that Phillips was voted the No. 1 female blues singer in Ebony magazine's first Black Music Poll, nominated in both R&B and Jazz categories. This versatility was also something of a curse as record labels simply didn't know what to do with her. Unfortunately this was the least of her troubles which also included a career beset by personal problems plus a life long addiction to alcohol and heroin that began in her teens and finally ended her life prematurely before her fiftieth birthday.

 Esther Phillips was born Esther May Jones on December 23, 1935 in Galveston, Texas and the family soon moved to Houston. "My mother moved to Watts when I was five," Phillips related. "So I went to school out in Watts, and my mother and father were separated, so I went back to Houston to live with him when I was around nine. I would go in the summer and visit my mother. So this particular summer I started singing. I was out there so I just stayed. I was raised in church, in the sanctified church, and that's where I started singing, when I was about six."

  In 1948, she won an amateur contest in Los Angeles, singing Dinah Washington's "Baby Get Lost" at a nightclub belonging to bluesman Johnny Otis. As she recalled: "I started singing in 1949 for Mr. Johnny Otis--Johnny Otis's band out of Los Angeles, out of Watts, actually. I slipped into this nightclub; and my sister and her friend, at that time she was a teenager, you know. In Watts they had a drink called White Port Lemon Juice. They didn't have any money for the White Port Lemon Juice, so they came home and got me and dressed me up like I was older and slipped me into the club so I could sing and win the contest. So I won first prize which was $10, and they gave me a dollar and took the nine. ...After that Johnny started to look for me, and so when he found me he just told my mother that he heard I could sing and that he was interested and then we started recording for Savoy." Otis recalls her debut at his club The Barrelhouse hosted by popular disc jockey Hunter Hancock: "As the talent show began, Hunter called me to the microphone. Johnny he said, All week long you've been raving to me about a new young girl singer you've discovered. Yeah, Hunter, I found her singing down on 103rd. Street at the Largo Theatre. I want you all to hear her tonight, here she is, Little Esther Jones. Esther sang the blues, the crowd went nuts, and that night, thirteen-year-old Little Esther began her historic, bittersweet career. ...She instantly became the teenage favorite among Black music lovers. Everywhere we went, from coast to coast, thousands of adoring fans lined up to see and hear Little Esther."

 Otis brought the 13-year-old into the studio for a recording session with Modern Records and added her to his live revue. Billed as "Little Esther," and sounding mature beyond her years, she recorded "Double Crossing Blues" with Johnny Otis, selling 400,000 copies before her 14th birthday. The record hit number one on the charts making Little Esther the youngest female singer to have a #1 hit on the R&B charts. More successful singles followed including "Mistrustin' Blues" (#1 R&B), "Misery," "Cupid Boogie" (#1 R&B), and "Deceivin' Blues" (#4 R&B). A traveling review called the Savoy Records Barrelhouse Caravan of Stars hit the road for a series of one nighters across the South in early 1950 drawing huge crowds. The show included The Johnny Otis band, The Robins, Little Esther, Mel Walker, and Redd Lyte. Proving the sudden star power of Little Esther, she came in number one in a poll of the national juke box operators for best jazz and blues performer for the year of 1950.

 Controversy arose almost immediately after the new year began. On January 5, 1951, the Superior Court of California appointed Esther's mother as her legal guardian and upheld the new contract for her to record for King Records of Cincinnati. Syd Nathan of King said he planned to release Esther's records on his Federal label in the 45rpm format. The first release is "Other Lips Other Arms" and a tune with The Dominos called "The Deacon Moves In" which was a big seller. She recorded infrequently through the remainder of the 1950s: six sides for Decca in 1953, three for Savoy in 1956, and then three more in 1959. By the late '50s her records had stopped selling well and her experiments with hard drugs had developed into a heroin addiction.

  Little Esther worked in small nightclubs around the South, and continued to battle her addiction which led her to frequent hospital stays. In 1962, she was rediscovered while singing at a Houston club by future country star Kenny Rogers, who got her signed to his brother's Lenox label. She renamed herself Esther Phillips and recorded a country-soul reading of the soon-to-be standard "Release Me," which was released as a single. "Release Me" hit big, topping #1 on the R&B charts and hitting the Top Ten on both the pop and country charts. She recorded a country-soul album of the same name, but Lenox went under in 1963. The record was a top ten smash across the country and Phillips was back in the limelight if only temporarily. Esther appeared on the BBC television show "Ready, Steady, Go" along with The Beatles in 1965. She was presented as a featured performer on stage at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island in 1966, but soon once again drifted into relative obscurity. Lenox sold her contract to Atlantic where she had success in 1965 with The Beatles' "And I Love Him" which hit #11 on the R&B charts, staying on the charts for nine weeks. A reading of Percy Sledge's "When a Woman Loves a Man" also made the R&B charts. Atlantic recorded Phillips in many different styles, but none of the resulting singles really caught on and the label dropped her in late 1967.

 Phillips checked into a rehab facility in the late 60's and cut some sides for Roulette in 1969 and re-signed with Atlantic. A late-1969 live gig at
L. A.'s Freddie Jett's Pied Piper club produced the album "Burnin'", a highly acclaimed live set (Atlantic issued more material from this same engagement on the "Confessin' the Blues" album issued in 1975). Despite that success, Atlantic still wanted her to record pop tunes and when these failed to hit she was let go for good.

 In 1971, she signed with the Kudu label, a subsidiary of CTI. Her debut album , "From a Whisper to a Scream", was released in 1972 to strong sales and highly glowing reviews, particularly for her performance of Gil Scott-Heron's candid heroin-addiction tale "Home Is Where the Hatred Is." Aretha Franklin so admired the album that when the Queen of Soul was awarded a Grammy she graciously gave her Grammy to Phillips, saying that she deserved it more. She recorded several more albums for Kudu over the next few years and achieved long overdue success, performing in high-profile venues and numerous international jazz festivals. In 1975, she scored her biggest hit single since "Release Me" with a disco styled reading of Dinah Washington's "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" (Top Ten R&B, Top 20 pop), and the accompanying album of the same name became her biggest seller yet. Recognition also followed, at long last, when Esther won awards from Rolling Stone Magazine (Best R&B singer), Ebony Magazine (Best Female Blues Singer two years in a row), and the NAACP Image Award in 1975. Also in 1975 she appeared on Saturday Night Live singing "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" and also returned to her roots on a PBS special called "The Barrelhouse Reunion" reuniting with Johnny Otis and other R&B veterans such as Charles Brown and Pee Wee Crayton.

 In 1977, Phillips left Kudu for Mercury. She recorded four albums for the label, but with little commercial success and after 1981's "A Good Black Is Hard to Crack", she found herself without a record deal. Her last R&B chart single was 1983's "Turn Me Out," a one-off for the small Winning label. She continued to perform and record until 1984, when she was admitted into a hospital for liver and kidney failure. Johnny Otis recalls visiting her in the hospital during this period: "As I leaned towards her, my mind raced back in time. I remembered the bright-eyed, brash, talented little girl I had found in Watts years ago, and a big sob welled up in me. Don't cry, baby, she said softly, but I cried all the way home." She died soon after on August 7, 1984 at the age of 48. "I conducted her funeral service just as she instructed me", Otis recalled: "No crying and bullshit eulogies", she said. "Just my friends singing and playing and having a party."

Essential Listening

Johnny Otis Rhythm & Blues Caravan: Complete Savoy Recordings (Savoy): A fantastic 3-CD collection of vintage R&B from the early day of the Johhny Otis band. Includes early hits by Little Esther like "Cupid's Boogie", "Wedding Boogie" and "Double Crossing Blues."

The Best Of Little Esther (Collectibles): 25 tracks culled from the vaults of Federal, recorded between 1951 and 1953, after her break with the Savoy label. These tracks include background vocal duties by such R&B pioneers as Little Willie Littlefield and members of the Dominoes and the Robins, with the majority of production work credited to Johnny Otis. Includes classic R&B numbers like "The Deacon Moves In", "I'm a Bad, Bad Girl", "Ramblin' Blues" among several others.

Burnin'/Confessin The Blues (Collectibles): A great twofer collecting "Burnin'" and "Confessin' the Blues" on one CD. "Confessin' the Blues" dates from 1966 and 1970 and is perhaps her finest blues recording backed by all-star big band and produced by King Curtis. The aptly titled "Burnin'" is a scorching live album recorded at the Pied Piper in Los Angeles in 1970.

From A Whisper To A Scream (CTI): This 1972 date garnered a Grammy nomination but seems to be out of print. Phillips is at her mature best on the unflinching ""Home Is Where the Hatred Is", "Scarred Knees" and a fine reading of "How Blue Can You Get?."

The Best Of Esther Phillips (Rhino): This two-CD, 40-song set is an excellent overview of her work drawing from about half a dozen albums and numerous singles. Includes gems like "Release Me", "No Headstone on My Grave", "And I Love Him", "Cry Me a River Blues" and many others.

Home Is Where the Hatred Is: The Kudu Years 1971-1977 (Raven): 18-song disc that covers the period immediately following what was documented on the Rhino collection. Includes a number of fine lesser known blues items like "Cherry Red", "Baby I'm For Real", "'Til My Back Ain't Got No Bone" plus strong less classifiable material like the unflinching title cut and "Justified."

-O'Neal, Jim & Amy. Baby I'm For Real Living Blues no. 17 (1974), 13-17.

-Otis, Johnny, Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue, Wesleyan University Press, (1993).