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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on January 21, 2012 8:16 PM. The previous post in this blog was Wheels coming off Vestas. The next post in this blog is The next oppressed minority group: hipsters. Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

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Saturday, January 21, 2012

A change in the weather

Etta was a road warrior and kept up a heavy touring schedule despite her health issues. I was lucky enough to see her many times, and it was thrilling to watch her, all 300-plus pounds of her, command the room and wield her sexuality so deftly, leaning on a stool for support sometimes but so playful and confident, man she was sexy and she knew it, and she knew you knew it. Then she would get serious and let loose on a blues that would wrench the soul out of you and leave you stunned. It's easy to think of her as someone with a deep well of loneliness, knowing about her precarious childhood and her history of addictions. You just had to look at her in those years to see that her hunger was larger than her ability to satisfy it. If she was singing to quench an unquenchable longing, then we all know something of that longing, and its expression in her music was a kind of magic. To transform an absence of love into an expression of love that resounded in so many of us.

The whole thing, here, is worth a read.

Comments (1)

Jack,
Thanks for another thread on Etta James.
I checked you tube and my Saturday evening was spent listening to Etta...many I had not heard before.
One of her later performances where her artistry was acknowledged nationwide was on Dancing with the Stars, 2009. She looked great, and I thought happy and at peace, at last.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPBGIBc3YV4&feature=related
A nice production, it did feature her “signature” song, but as those in the link said, many others to hear and I did last night...good listening from the rock period on and the various stages of her career and stages of recording production as well.




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