Music Post: Remembering Etta James and "At Last"

Etta James died today of leukemia. She would have been 74 next Wednesday. The blues singer was best known for her 1960 rendition of "At Last," one of the few songs used in mass media as often as Bruddah Iz's "Over the Rainbow," and equally a part of our mass consciousness.

She was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles to a 14-year-old mother, and her father may have been the pool player known as Minnesota Fats. (Friends said he was; he told her he couldn't recall.) As a teenager she was part of a doo-wop group which had a hit record in 1955 and toured with Little Richard. She dated B.B. King.

Her recording of "At Last" charted in 1961. It was a cover of a song written by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren in 1941 for a movie musical called "Orchestra Wives," first performed and recorded by Ray Eberle and Pat Friday and backed up by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. Mack Gordon and Harry Warren also wrote the love songs "You'll Never Know," "The More I See You," and "There Will Never Be Another You," and the novelty hits "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" and "(I've Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo." Gordon also wrote the words to "You Make Me Feel So Young" and "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?" Frank Sinatra had a hit with the former; the latter was featured in a Popeye cartoon.

Etta James toured with the Rolling Stones in 1978 but her career was almost derailed by heroin and alcohol, which led to legal trouble from bad checks. In 1987 she appeared with Chuck Berry in the documentary "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll." She was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Hame in 1993 and the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2004 Rolling Stone magazine put her in its 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Beyonce played her in a movie. Sadly, her health broke soon after, with her leukemia complicated by Alzheimer's, an addiction to painkillers, and a 2010 MRSA infection.

It is a curious thing, but "At Last" was not that big a hit when new. Etta James had a bigger hit with "Dance With Me, Henry," under the title, "The Wallflower," a 1955 number one R&B hit that was covered so many times it appeared in such diverse places as "Back to the Future" and BBC Radio's "Goon Show" with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, and inspired the title of an Abbott and Costello movie.

Etta James progressed from being a teen talent to a cult favorite to a mature artist with a broad following, her rock-jazz-blues crossover style reflecting the increasingly broad musical interests of her fans.