ETTA JAMES
ROCKS

Feisty from day one, Etta James amassed an incredible musical legacy by refusing to limit her vocal exploits to one genre. Jumping R&B, doo-woppish ballads, tough blues, smoldering torch ballads, sizzling soul - Miss Peaches did it all during her primordial days in the studio. ‘Etta James Rocks’ takes an in-depth gander at James’ early years of rocking and rolling with 29 well-selected tracks from the Modern/Kent and Chess/Argo archives. Naturally, her 1955 debut R&B chart-topper The Wallflower - a sassy response to The Midnighters’ Work With Me Annie - is here, along with the encore Hey! Henry, her second Modern hit Good Rockin’ Daddy, and the New Orleans-cut scorcher Tough Lover, complete with a two-chorus Lee Allen sax solo (her Crescent City remake of The Wallflower is also aboard, retitled Dance With Me Henry). When Etta shifted her recording home from Los Angeles to Chicago-based Chess at the dawn of the ‘60s, she engaged in more rocking alongside her smoldering balladry, often with a soul-steeped edge: Seven Day Fool, the charming girl group-oriented Pushover, and Next Door To The Blues are splendid examples. Her snarling violin-enriched reprise of Willie Dixon’s I Just Want To Make Love To You reset the song’s parameters (ditto her duet rendition of Spoonful with her beau of the moment, Moonglows founder Harvey Fuqua). Add two selections from her seminal album ‘Etta James Rocks The House,’ done in late ’63 at Nashville’s New Era Club, and you know beyond all doubt that ‘Etta James Rocks!’