Cover of Etta James
Nice obituary from the New Yorker, but the absence of the one number that she’s most well-known for is glaringly conspicuous. It is called At Last, and here’s a not-so-great YT video of it:January 20, 2012Etta James, R.I.P.
The death of Etta James on Friday, at the age of seventy-three, came as no surprise. She had been suffering from dementia and leukemia for the past two years, had not performed in public for longer, and had, upon the release of “The Dreamer” last November, announced that it would be her final album.
Born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles to a mother who was rarely around and a father she never knew—later in life, she speculated that it might have been the pool player Minnesota Fats—James had a Dickensian childhood, shuttled from caregiver to caregiver, treated rough, forced to grow up fast. As a teen-ager, she began to sing doo-wop, and was soon discovered by the bandleader Johnny Otis (who died, in sad coincidence, just three days before James). Her first hit, “Dance With Me, Henry”—previously known as “Roll With Me, Henry” (too risqué) and later known as “The Wallflower” (after a hit version by George Gibbs)— was an answer song to Hank Ballard’s “Work With Me, Annie,” and found James already in possession of a cannon of an instrument. To say she belted it out was an understatement.
In 1960, at the still tender age of twenty-two, James moved from Modern Records to Chess, got involved with the songwriter and singer Harvey Fuqua, and launched the second phase of her career. There were ballads (“All I Could Do Was Cry”), duets (“If I Can’t Have You”), guest appearances (she sings backup on Chuck Berry’s “Almost Grown” and “Back in the USA”), but her most successful early moment was the title track of her début album: “At Last,” which was written by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren and recorded by Glenn Miller, among others. James’s shimmering, torchy version made the song a modern standard, not to mention a staple in commercials.
James recorded for many years, in many styles, some more successful than others. For most of that time, her power as a vocalist was never in question; rather, it was how that power was deployed. Her Muscle Shoals recordings from the late sixties (“Tell Mama,” “I’d Rather Go Blind”) show her at her best, as does “Deep in the Night,” a 1978 album produced by Jerry Wexler that included covers of rock songs like the Eagles’ “Take it to the Limit” and Alice Cooper’s “Only Women Bleed.” There were highlights of almost inexpressible power, like her 1964 live album “Etta James Rocks the House,” perhaps the rawest album ever recorded by a female R. & B. singer, and her barn-burning duet with Sugar Pie DeSanto, “In the Basement.” But many albums were uneven, in part because of poor choice of material, in part because of James’s ongoing struggles with drug addiction. In the mid-nineties, she revived herself as a Billie Holiday interpreter with “Mystery Lady,” and, while she didn’t have Holiday’s otherworldly ability to communicate pain, she sang beautifully, and set herself back on course. James became the rarest of things, a hard-working icon, reliably supplying album after album of well-sung R. & B., most with predictably left-field interpretations of rock songs—”The Dreamer,” from last year, includes a cover of Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle.”
It’s difficult to sum up James’s career, which was too sprawling, too erratic, too much. “Heart and Soul,” a four-disc box from last October, just scratched the surface. But here are five highlights.
“Seven Days Fool,” from “Etta James Rocks the House” (1964)
“In the Basement,” duet with Sugar Pie DeSanto (1966)
“I’d Rather Go Blind,” from “Tell Mama” (1968)
“Take It To The Limit,” live on the Tom Snyder Show (1980)
“Body and Soul,” from “Mystery Lady” (1994)
