Review
Packing a punch
By GINA VIVINETTO, Times Pop Music Critic
Published December 10, 2003
ST. PETERSBURG - R&B legend Etta James brought her saucy stage performance to Mahaffey Theater on Tuesday and fans ate it up. James, 65, began her career as a teenager with 1954's ribald Roll With Me Henry, which frightened enough skittish deejays into renaming it The Wallflower.
James has lost none of her penchant for sexiness since, and her voice has only grown richer and filled with more depth and passion with age. Dressed in a beaded purple shirt, black pants and long jacket, James sat center stage, backed by her impeccable nine-member band, including horn section and two keyboardists.
James began the evening letting it all hang out, jumping right into Come To Mama, a celebration of raunch if there ever was one. James growled out the lyrics, about having all the toys to "bring you joy." She licked her lips, she caressed her breasts, her crotch. She fondled her legs and inner thighs.
James ran her hand inside her pocket and poked it around as the audience whooped and clapped. To punctuate a lyric about a pacifier, James suggestively sucked her thumb.
Phew. All on the first song.
As if to demonstrate her odd scope, and the reason some argue that it's James and not Aretha Franklin who's more deserving of the Queen of Soul title, the singer next performed the stirring I'd Rather Go Blind, a blues ballad James wrote in 1967. The song, about a young woman who vows she'd rather lose her sight than see her lover walk away, is perfect fodder for James' husky alto.
For all her party girl antics, James knows pain. She sang the tune's simple words in throaty trills and moans, sometimes nearly gasps, sentiments only the gut knows:
I don't want to see you leave
Please don't go
I'd rather be a blind girl
James dished out an hour and a half of classics and special treats including a cover of Johnny "Guitar" Watson's I Wanna Ta Ta With You, Baby, which could have been written for James. The singer also belted out a spirited version of Otis Redding's Hard to Handle, punched up by trombone and trumpets.
Opening act Matt "Guitar" Murphy could not perform; his entire band was stuck in a snowstorm in the Northeast. The last minute fill-in, the Joey Gilmore Band from South Florida, was more than capable of delighting the crowd. Gilmore, a blues guitarist and vocalist in the vein of B.B. King, won new fans with his charming stage patter and original tunes including Before the Bullets Fly.
- Gina Vivinetto is the Times pop music critic. Write gina@sptimes.com
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