Etta James "The Dreamer" (2011)

As we all know it, it's Etta's last studio album and every single review I read had focused on that fact, making it sound like it was a dying woman breathing her last breath in the studio and building very dramatical story around it - nonsense - Etta James could sing serious ballads (as her Jazz detour proves) but she was big, sassy, funky mama who loved life and laughed, growled and basically had fun with her music. If you are looking for sad decay, look elsewhere - for the past 30 years she sounded like this singing with that huge voice over modernized versions of soul covers, often backed by her musician sons (Ma Baker of soul?) and her albums were more or less very much the same thing, admired and accepted not for being specially innovative but for keeping the old flame going.Often she would reach out for some old r&b nuggets and give them a little twist here and there, growling her way around them.

So what about the music here - yes, it true, James sounds a little weaker than before but spirit is still here. It is not a "pretty voice" as it never was anyway and she was around 73 at the time of recording. As expected she does her usual r&b covers: Bobby "Blue" Bland, Otis Redding, Ray Charles and couple of the blues guys she must have known personally way back than. Opening song "Groove Me" was actually recorded by James decades ago,so this is new version - "hey, I can still do it!" - perhaps the one unexpected cover is "Welcome to the Jungle" by "Guns N' Roses" but if you are familiar with her discography, its not so unusual because James used to do these kind of things and she even did songs by "Rolling Stones" with soulful twist. 

At the time of this recording James was one of the very last living musicians who connected early 1950s r&b with present time. As soulful ballad "Misty Blue" proves, she still had this magical power to stop listener dead in the tracks and even at 73 she had powerful voice, it would be wrong and it is wrong to focus only on the sad fact that this is her last studio album. She could groove,but at this point her biggest talent was in ballads where life experience showed to a great effect and this is probably all we can expect from such elderly musician.