My First Love Etta James

BLUES IN THE NIGHT, VOL. 1: THE EARLY SHOW

The rock’n’soul songstress on the power of Etta.

“When I was a teenager, every summer I’d go to Lake Tahoe with my best friend Ron. It was a long drive. I had a Big Joe Turner tape I kept playing, until Ron finally got sick of it and said: ‘You need to listen to this.’ He put on Blues In The Night, and it sent shivers down my spine like music never had before.

“I’d listened to all sorts of genres growing up, but there was something here about the songs, the musicians [Red Holloway, Eddie Vinson, Shuggie Otis, Jack McDuff], and Etta’s unbelievable voice. She’s in front of, like, fifty people at a supper club [Marla’s Memory Lane in LA] and she’s fricking amazing. They do a medley of At Last, Trust Me and Sunday Kind Of Love, and I love the way Etta phrases, there’s such feeling to it. She had all this technique, but that was secondary to her. She’s in her late forties here, and you can hear how much she’d grown. I bought her earlier stuff but it sounded like she had a white producer trying to get her on white radio. But on this you know she’s doing what she loves to do.

“I studied this record for years, put it on over and over, all day long… and I still can’t get enough of it.” GM

Beth Hart’s War In My Mind is out on September 27 via Provogue/Mascot.