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At Last! - Etta James
James was a self-described "juvenile delinquent" when R&B band boss Johnny Otis took her under his wing and made her a precociously sexual teenage star with 1954's "Roll With Me, Henry." Seven years later, James bloomed into a mature, fiery interpreter on this spellbinding LP for Argo, a Chess subsidiary. Against Riley Hampton's meaty orchestrations, James wraps her husky voice around strange bedfellows such as "Stormy Weather" and Willie Dixon's "I Just Want to Make Love to You," injecting them with rock & roll heart. She hit the pop and R&B charts with three of the songs here and created a new vocal model: the crossover diva.
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