Singer Etta James battling Alzheimer's disease, says son

Singer Etta James has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, her son said this weekend. The American music legend is currently in hospital, receiving treatment for several conditions including a blood infection. "She's been in a pretty big battle," Donto James told Reuters on Saturday. The 72-year-old legend spent the last week in a Riverside, California hospital. She became sick while undergoing rehabilitation for an addiction to painkillers, her son said, and is now suffering from a blood infection and the MRSA superbug. The infection, which has been diagnosed as sepsis, reportedly began as a urinary tract infection. Doctors hope to discharge James "very soon", her son told CNN, following which she will be transferred to a nursing home. The singer was apparently diagnosed with Alzheimer's more than a year ago, although this was not made public. In hospital she has been combative, Donto said, and "right now she is very confused". The singer is also suffering from speech difficulties, the cause of which is unknown. James is one of the all-time great blues singers, performing scorchers like Trust In Me and At Last. She battled serious drug addictions from the 1960s through the late 1980s, spending 17 months in a psychiatric institution in 1974. She was inducted into the The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and scored a surprise UK hit in 1995, after her performance of Muddy Waters's I Just Wanna Make Love to You appeared in a Coca-Cola commercial. James has continued to tour, playing concerts as recently as last summer. In February 2009, James made headlines for insulting the newly elected US president Barack Obama and singer Beyoncé Knowles , who portrayed James in the film Cadillac Records. "She's going to get her ass whupped," James said, after hearing that Beyoncé sang At Last during Obama's inauguration ball. James's son now says that this outburst was a consequence of her Alzheimer's.