Etta, You Were Amazing
1938-2012
A True Legend
My wife introduced me to the music of Etta James, back in 2000. She always played Etta’s Live from San Francisco CD, in her car when we were out. Over the years I’ve heard a good deal of her catalog, mainly her later career, from 1980 onward… and it’s all amazing.
Etta had been suffering from myriad diseases over the last few years, including dementia (a heartbreak) and leukemia. She lost the struggle today, and is gone. We are the poorer for it.
This song is one Etta wrote back in 1968, and sang constantly thereafter. I’d Rather Be A Blind Girl is soulful, powerful, strong, weak, and everything Etta was. This version if from one of her many appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1989. FYI – John Paul Jones played bass for her at the festival in 1974.
May she rest in a Soulful place…