A freelance review

This is not going to be one of my elaborate reviews. Rather, it's going to be a rambling, enthusiastic recommendation to my readers to try something new and track down some Etta James. I myself only got around to her because of hearing about her recent death, so this appreciation is more in line with my earlier epitaph for Lena Horne than any of my usual reviews. Also, I hope some of my readers will appreciate my effort to keep up some level of activity on this blog.

If any of you ever want to send me fanmail or something....

The late Etta James was recording for Chess during the 1960s, when a singer's career was made or lost on the basis of singles. Albums scarcely entered the picture unless you were on the folk scene. Chess Records harboured musicians such as Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and Howlin' Wolf. From what I know about them, Etta James was really something else.

Etta James is basically uncategorizable. She'd try her hand at anything, starting in the doo-wop and R&B genres, covering old pop tunes, covering the blues, adapting to soul, rocking out and even succeeding with the GREAT funk-tinged All the Way Down. At the advent of disco, she threw in the towel. "...I wasn't about to try to be like Donna Summer," she later said. This puts her golden period squarely in the 60s, and the Chess 50th Anniversary Collection of Her Best (pictured) is the place to start.

Frankly, Etta's homelife has the sound of a prolonged car crash. Underage mother, unknown father, on the road in the music business as a teenager, putting up with a string of abusive men and stuck with a drug habit almost all her life, Etta was nevertheless tough enough to survive all of what life dished out - and reflect it in her songs. Her tough, wiry, "don't mess with me" voice rings with an assurance that makes you believe all those emotions were being pulled from somewhere in herself. With her best material, you tune in to the joy or pain or recklessness within seconds.

The early selections on this particular CD are mostly made of recycled standards from the 40s. Being meant for crooners, that meant only one thing: schmaltz. Her signature song, At Last, has enough strings on it to make Phil Spector blush. That hardly matters with Etta singing so soulfully, so peacefully. The other tunes, such as My Dearest Darling, A Sunday Kind of Love, Trust in Me and Don't Cry Baby have a similar quality: they should be rather mundane love songs, but Etta refuses to croon, emoting and suffusing each song with an individual aura. It's not all gold. All I Could Do Was Cry has backing doo-wop vocals that sound horrible to my ears, at least.

The jauntier material is nothing if not better yet. If you don't smile the first time you hear Something's Got a Hold on Me, I'll worry about you. What starts as a cheeky send-up of gospel quickly becomes an awesome slice of early rock and roll, while Next Door to the Blues scorches with a sense of defiance and near-flippancy.

The second half of the CD sports a changing sound as music evolved from year to year. Two Sides to Every Story uses the horns and backup singers of classic uptempo soul, rushing headlong through the usual three minutes designated to pop songs. Pushover (one of her biggest hits) takes the same tack but mixes it with a slapdown of a self-assured town "Romeo" that makes for a satisfying story.

With the exceptions of the dirges Stop the Wedding and Losers Weepers, Part One, the rest of the late material is really strong, but first I'll mention the two duets. The early duet was If I Can't Have You (with Harvey Fuqua), a brassy little number with two rather comically opposed voices - Harvey sounds rather fussy, while Etta's all fire and strength. The other duet, In the Basement, Part One (with Sugar Pie DeSanto), is a delightful ode to the party zone. Etta and Sugar Pie compliment each other perfectly and the song shares the verve that Something's Got a Hold on Me had. A fun track.

A live bonus comes with the cover of Jimmy Reed: Baby, What You Want Me To Do. Etta could handle pure blues and judging from this sample, she must have been great to hear live. Messy, simple, weary and fierce (Jimmy himself never could sound fierce, which is why I like him anyway, but Etta's spin is excellent). She uses her voice like a horn at the end, which is enough reason to be impressed by this song.

In 1967, Etta went down south to Muscle Shoals and again revitalized her sound. Tell Mama was her big hit from this era, a strong piece of material, but the real gems are around it. There's the epic (five minutes!) funk influenced All the Way Down, an elaborate tell-it-like-it-is track, all about "boys playing games/changing their names/pulling tricks/getting their kicks/all the way down..." A truly great song and justifiably on the CD. There's an excellent Otis Redding cover, Security, and then there's I'd Rather Go Blind.

I'd Rather Go Blind is probably going to get among my top ten sad songs (and I've heard an awful lot). Everything about this short song is perfectly balanced and it gives me chills, that's how good it is. If I had to choose her definitive song, this would be the one. She sounds like she means every word she's saying, and the simplicity of the words (written by Ellington Jordan, who was a man in prison at the time) strike at the center of sorrow, and I, at least, have never been able to keep any sort of defense in place when listening to it. I feel it every time.

My conclusion is that Etta James deserves to be heard, and so I'm doing my own bit to spread the word, get some people to investigate her so they don't do what I, for the longest time, did: get her confused with Ella Fitzgerald. Do yourself a favour, track her down, give her a few listens and learn what I just learned. A great song has nothing to do with lyrical or musical virtuosity and everything to do with soul. And Etta James had a lot of soul. God bless her for it.