Etta James: "Tell Mama"

The legendary Etta James, during her earlier years on Cadet.  I know that I’m always going on about the “Cadet Sound,” as it were, but this album sounds more like Stax or Atlantic, which isn’t surprising considering the whole thing was recorded in Muscle Shoals with the famed “Swampers” rhythm section.  There’s loads of classics here—“I’d Rather Go Blind,” “Steal Away,” “Security,” “Don’t Lose Your Good Thing,” the title track—all of them containing the unstoppable power of James’ gospel-blues voice, filtered through the lens of deep Southern soul groove, just as it was transforming itself from its down-home roots into something more complicated and layered, informed by the changes going on throughout the music world in 1967, the year it was made.  Shades of doo-wop mix with loud chicken-scratch guitars, rave-up soul runs up against grit-drenched horn sections, pre-funk rhythms are punctuated by electric pianos and organs.  Meanwhile, Etta James annihilates everything in her path with that VOICE, truly an unclassifiable instrument—she has the strength and presence of Aretha Franklin, the smoothness of Gladys Knight, the crackling splendor of Mavis Staples—and yet she transcends them all, she operates on her own level entirely, she takes the pain and brutality of the world and turns it into human sound.  Quite simply, there were none like her, nor shall there ever be again.  This LP captures a master at the peak of her prowess.