Etta James - Rocks (CD)

With Etta James, Bear Family Records® finally dedicates itself to the most rocking recordings of one of the most important and successful Afro-American singers of her time! She was equally at home in R&B, jump, doo-wop, hard blues, languorous ballads and hot soul. Bill Dahl has written the detailed and exciting liner notes. The extensive booklet contains many photos and illustrations, and we used the best sources for the mastering. - Feisty from day one, Etta James amassed an incredible musical legacy by refusing to limit her vocal exploits to one genre. Jumping R&B, doo-woppish ballads, tough blues, smoldering torch ballads, sizzling soul - Miss Peaches did it all during her primordial days in the studio. 'Etta James Rocks' takes an in-depth gander at James' early years of rocking and rolling with 29 well-selected tracks from the Modern/Kent and Chess/Argo archives. Naturally, her 1955 debut R&B chart-topper The Wallflower - a sassy response to The Midnighters' Work With Me Annie - is here, along with the encore Hey! Henry, her second Modern hit Good Rockin' Daddy, and the New Orleans-cut scorcher Tough Lover, complete with a two-chorus Lee Allen sax solo (her Crescent City remake of The Wallflower is also aboard, retitled Dance With Me Henry). When Etta shifted her recording home from Los Angeles to Chicago-based Chess at the dawn of the '60s, she engaged in more rocking alongside her smoldering balladry, often with a soul-steeped edge: Seven Day Fool, the charming girl group-oriented Pushover, and Next Door To The Blues are splendid examples. Her snarling violin-enriched reprise of Willie Dixon's I Just Want To Make Love To You reset the song's parameters (ditto her duet rendition of Spoonful with her beau of the moment, Moonglows founder Harvey Fuqua). Add two selections from her seminal album 'Etta James Rocks The House,' done in late '63 at Nashville's New Era Club, and you know beyond all doubt that 'Etta James Rocks!'

Track List:

Disc: 1

1. Tough Lover
2. Dance with Me, Henry
3. If It Ain't One Thing
4. Seven Day Fool
5. W-O-M-A-N
6. Next Door to the Blues
7. Good Rockin' Daddy
8. I'm a Fool
9. Shortnin' Bread Rock
10. By the Light of the Silvery Moon
11. Spoonful
12. The Wallflower (Roll with Me Henry)
13. Plum Nuts
14. Something's Got a Hold on Me
15. Hickory Dickory Dock
16. I Just Want to Make Love to You
17. Tough Mary
18. Market Place
19. Good Lookin'
20. 'Baby, Baby' Everynight
21. Pushover
22. What'd I Say
23. Baby What You Want Me to Do
24. Strange Things Happening
25. Hey! Henry
26. The Pick-Up
27. Come What May
28. My One and Only
29. That's All