“Seven Year Itch”
Etta James

Talk about “born to sing the blues.”

She was named Jamesetta Hawkins. Her mother was 14 and completely uninterested in the parenting grind. She never knew who her father was (although, decades later, she was semi-reliably informed he was Minnesota Fats, the legendary pool hustler).

Her childhood, she said, was like a series of one-night stands; she was passed from relative to relative. The one constant was singing. At five, she joined a gospel choir in Los Angeles --- and was soon proclaimed a prodigy. At 15, she and two friends formed a vocal trio. They got noticed --- their recording of “Roll With Me, Henry” (a title so sexy it had to be renamed: “The Wallflower”) went to #2 on the R&B charts. Etta was, at 16, touring with Little Richard

Her follow-up single, “Good Rockin' Daddy,” was another hit. It took her only a few more years to get to Chess Records, the Chicago-based label that knew how to get great records out of blues artists. At 22, Etta James had a big voice --- and a big, brassy personality. And she had History; she'd been a professional musician for six years, she'd been around.

Leonard Chess liked “triangle” songs, and he found a great one for Etta's Chess debut: “All I Could Do Was Cry.” The set-up: Etta watching her lover marry another woman. The refrain: “I was losing the man that I loved, and all I could do was cry.” Etta needed only one take. When she was finished, she was crying --- and so were some of the engineers.

Success can be harder than failure, especially for musicians. Etta's response to busted romance was to take drugs. “Some people can't work high, but I can,” she boasted. “I may be one of those singers who has enough power to overcome the fog and filters of drugs.” She couldn't overcome the cost of drugs, however; she was arrested for writing bad checks. But she kept pumping out the hits: “ I'd Rather Go Blind ” and “Tell Mama.” After a few lost years, Etta re-connected with Chess Records. By 1978, she was the opening act for the Rolling Stones. 

Butler owns most of the Etta James catalogue. And he samples it often, for a woman who has lived this hard --- who loved and lost and paid the price for everything she got and a lot she didn't --- oozes the kind of wisdom you don't find in books. That's the thing about Etta: She has total credibility. She's lived the blues, and you'd best believe she's going to tell you about them, and in the bluntest (and thus, most poetic) way possible. (If you have ever seen Etta live, you know that she is, even in her 60s, a great deal raunchier than the new kids).

“The blues is my business, and business is good,” she sings, and that's true of all the CDs she has released since 1989. It's hard to pick one out --- there are nights when the Butlers must hear her more recent CDs, especially “Love's Been Rough on Me” or “Life, Love and the Blues” --- but the best place to start may be the 1989 CD that marked her creative rebirth: “Seven Year Itch.”

Jealousy, anger, revenge (“feel like breakin' up somebody's home”), lust --- this is Shakespearean stuff, and Etta makes every song her own. The band rocks. The production is superb.

So lower the lights. Stop all conversation. A presence is about to enter the room. And you --- oh, lucky you --- are about to be shaken. Thrilled. And enriched.

--- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com

To buy “Seven Year Itch” from Amazon.com, click here.

Copyright 2004 by Head Butler Inc.