Playlist: The Very Best of Etta James [PA]

Performer: Etta James
Distributor: Sony Music Distribution (

Notes: This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files. Buyer beware: this is not nearly "the very best of Etta James"; the title of this addition to Sony Legacy's Playlist series is wildly misleading. James cut her best sides for Chess; that is the critical as well as the commercial view. In the late '90s and early part of the 21st century, she made a series of recordings for the Private Music and RCA imprints, and that's where the music on this 14-track set comes from -- including the version of "At Last" tacked on at the end, which is a live version from Burnin' Down the House. That is not to say that this music isn't worth hearing or isn't good; it's all quite good. One complaint is that her killer ballads album Love's Been Rough on Me is underrepresented here, but that's life. This set should be considered an adjunct to Etta James' Chess sides. If one has her true greatest hits already, this is a wonderful counterpart to fill out the portrait of the artist, but it is not what it claims to be. ~ Thom Jurek

Though Californian belter Etta James is widely known as one of the greatest blues singers, famed for her '60s Chess recordings and '70s Muscle Shoals work, her story is bigger than that. She started out with the Johnny Otis band in the '50s as a hard-edged R&B singer of the kind whose records would've been called rock & roll if made by a white singer. The tireless James never stopped working, and by the '90s, she'd covered everything from jazz standards to Steppenwolf and CCR.

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