[Dixielandjazz] Etta James (Wall Street Journal)

[Robert Ringwald]

Constant Troublemaker
by Will Friedwald
Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2012
Etta James, one of the most influential female blues and soul singers of the past
50 years, was famously mimicked by Beyonce Knowles both in the 2008 film "Cadillac
Records" and, a year later, at the Inaugural Ball. YouTube and iTunes are so rife
with imitators of James and the beneficiaries of her enormous musical legacy that
it becomes difficult to find the real thing.
Her publicized diva-style hissy fit, in which she fretted over Ms. Knowles's ultimately
flattering imitation, seemed to indicate a fit of insecurity, as if her imitators
could somehow overshadow the original. But the real Etta James, the legendary Los
Angeles diva (born Jamesetta Hawkins) whose career spanned more than five decades
(before her death last week at the age of 73) and multiple generations of successive
musical genres, was most recently documented in a new boxed set from Universal Musical.
"Heart and Soul: A Retrospective," containing 84 tracks on four discs, is the first
comprehensive anthology of James's prodigious output, and it shows how her work helped
define American music in the second half of the 20th century.
>From 1955's "The Wallflower" (her breakthrough hit and the set's opening track) to
the most recent song in the collection, "Ashes by Now" (recorded in 2008, the year
that James turned 70), her sound is remarkably consistent: strong, direct, intense;
saturated with the spirit of the blues (even when she's singing of good times or
romance); a deep, throaty contralto full of passion and fire. But while her sound
barely changed over that 53-year span, the music around her was continually shifting:
The tracks recorded early in her career, when she worked for Modern Records and with
bandleader and talent scout Johnny Otis (who, coincidentally, also died last week),
are mostly in a classic rhythm-and-blues style comparable to Louis Jordan's -- even
in "W.O.M.A.N.," a 1956 single clearly based on Muddy Waters. "Tough Lover" is nascent
rock 'n' roll, with wailing tenor, hand claps like Little Willie John, and James
whooping and growling like Little Richard.
>From the beginning, James contributed to her consistency by playing the role of a
bad girl, a troublemaker, the kind of woman your mother warned you about, the one
who might respond favorably to the advances of the charmer seducing her via saxophone
in "The Pick Up." As the title of a 1997 album proclaimed, "Love's Been Rough on
Me." The parallels between James and Billie Holiday were noted by Buzzy Jackson in
her book "A Bad Woman Feeling Good." Both women were "children raised by children"
(her mother was 14 at the time James was born) and had comparable heroin habits.
(James recorded one of the best-ever tribute albums to Holiday, 1994's "Mystery Lady,"
from which "Don't Explain" is included in the new box.) Yet where Holiday always
came across as a victim, James presents herself as anything but -- defiant and unrepentant,
even if that wasn't always the case in real life.
At the time that James switched from Modern Records to Chess Records in Chicago,
she rode the wave of blues divas recording traditional love songs with orchestrations
that combined high-pitched strings and doo-wop-style 16th-note triplets. Dinah Washington
launched the trend with "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" in 1959, but James capped
it with "At Last" two years later. The delightful surprise is that James recorded
a whole album's worth of similarly soulful standards, like "Trust in Me" and the
surprisingly tranquil "A Sunday Kind of Love."
By the late 1960s -- when James was barely 30 -- most of her colleagues from 10 years
earlier were no longer relevant, yet James continued to land hits, now with a distinctly
Motownlike flavor; "The Soul of a Man," "Miss Pitiful" and "Tell Mama" sound exactly
like what Gladys Knight and Diana Ross were concurrently cutting in Detroit. However,
some of the most rewarding moments are on the set's final disc: Between 1989 and
2006, James released 14 generally excellent albums, many of which could be considered
"jazz" and nearly all of which draw on the Great American Songbook. Like Bing Crosby
in his final years, James no longer sought to compete in the pop stakes -- she wasn't
going Gaga for a hit single -- but was, admirably, trying to make the best music
she could, with quality arrangements of first-rate songs.
Many of the most rewarding moments on the box come from James's later period. The
compilers left out my favorite track (her essential reading of Bob Dylan's "Gotta
Serve Somebody" from 2000) but compensate with an amazing "St. Louis Blues," clearly
patterned after Bessie Smith's 1929 choral arrangement. More than any diva of comparable
stature or other generation -- Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Nancy Wilson --
James did much of her very best work in her 50s and 60s. Thankfully, the new package
is more than a "greatest hits" collection. It's a true career overview.
The set ends with a previously unreleased track from three years ago, in which she
sings "I should be ashes by now."
Her legacy was indelibly established long before anyone had heard of Ms. Knowles,
and will remain a permanent monument in American culture. Etta James never had to
worry about any competition, either from her fellow living legends or from her copious
professional progeny.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
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