We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago…..
Even a crushing heroin habit couldn’t stop the other Queen of Soul from turning out a very nice slice of tasty soul-funk-jazz-pop in 1971. What Aretha was to Detroit, so was Etta James to Chicago…although by the time she released “Losers Weepers”, it seemed like her hit making days were behind her.
She had hits that became standards like this one from 1961
and this one from 1967
James was one of those singers who rarely held back. She brought the heat even to romantic ballads. And when the song called for grit and throaty soul belting…she could bring it with the best. It didn’t matter the style of music, James could sing it…and she does here.
The hit on Losers Weepers was the title track…it moves from funky soul to gospel preaching. But there are other moments as well. Slow and soulful numbers like “Someone” and “Hold Back My Tears” shine and when the unnamed band goes uptempo James keeps up with songs like “Take Out Some Insurance” and “You’re The Fool”…even delivering a little reggae with “Look At The Rain”. The album closes with a cooking “Ease Away a Little Bit at a Time”. She even takes us back to her supper club crooning days with a cover of Duke Ellington’s “I Got It Bad, And That Ain’t Good”.
James would eventually kick her drug habit and have a renaissance from the 80’s until her death in 2012. She sang with the Grateful Dead and John Mayall. She sang at the Opening Ceremonies from the 1984 Summer Olympics. She won her first Grammy in 1994 for Best Jazz vocal, Female. Her work was sampled by many hip-hop artists . She suffered from leukemia and dementia in her later years and died in 2012.
You can dive back into her earlier career and the hits “At Last” and Tell Mama” or her later blues-oriented stuff is good too.
“Losers Weepers” is a solid mid-career postcard…sounding all the better when you know she was hitting the “horse” pretty hard at the time.
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