Etta James
At Last

THE REVIEW

If Mahalia Jackson is "Lady Gospel," if Aretha Franklin is "Lady Soul," and Billie Holiday is "Lady Jazz," Etta James was surely "Lady Blues."

If you are looking for music and a voice capable of giving you chills with every listen, this album and especially this artist, who became famous in the '60s, is what you're searching for. A prodigy discovered by Johnny Otis, at a very young age, she was signed by "Chess Records," for which she produced her best (master)works, now landmarks of "black" music: among these stands out "At Last," her second and most famous studio album.

It's an album that spans and hybridizes Jazz, Blues, R&B, and even Pop, where the absolute protagonist is Etta James's voice: delicate, "soft," and incredibly deep in "Anything to say you're mine," a Jazz-Blues piece that opens the record; the same happens at the beginning of "My Dearest Darling," then it erupts in the chorus with incredible and intensely powerful high notes, and here, anyone who doesn't feel chills run down their spine is stone-hearted; and a constant shiver is offered, for all its 3 minutes, by the next piece, "Trust In Me," a superb, extremely touching, and intense Jazz-Blues ballad; it moves through the jazzy "A Sunday Kind of Love" and the bluesy "Though Mary"; "I Just Wanna Make Love To You" is one of the most famous R&B tracks ever (we all recognized it through the Coca Cola commercial that aired a few years ago), where James unleashes a raspy, sensual voice, I would dare to say sexy, as a provocative "Femme Fatale." It is followed by her most famous piece, and one of the most beautiful and deep "atmospheric" songs ever made, "At Last"; it continues with "All I Could Do Is Cry," a poignant Jazz-Pop ballad with a Southern flavor, the famous "Stormy Weather," and another piece with Pop undertones, "Boy Of My Dreams"; after which, four Bonus Tracks in duet with Harvey Fuqua: "My Heart Cries," the famous Blues "Spoonful," "It's a Crying Shame" and the poignant "If I Can't Have You," which closes the album.

A timeless album. An album that is a monument to one of the greatest voices of the 20th century: a voice that knew, or rather still knows how to move like very few others, an expressiveness and an interpretative ability that is timeless, able to engage and move, with its irresistible, devastating intensity and depth, then as now, in 1961 as in 2007 and surely even in 2071: a singer who transcends the years.