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.