Etta James – The Montreux Years – Double Vinyl Record

Description

Etta James – The Montreux Years – Double Vinyl Record

Etta James could make a familiar song feel as though its meaning was being discovered in front of the audience. The Montreux Years captures that ability through performances drawn from several visits to the Swiss festival, bringing blues, soul, and ballad singing into a thirteen-track double album. Released in 2021 as part of the Montreux Jazz Festival and BMG archive series, it lets the concerts provide the context. James has a band behind her and an audience to address, and those circumstances give the material room to become something different from its studio counterpart.

The recordings come from the extensive collection preserved by festival founder Claude Nobs. James was a recurring presence at Montreux, and the selection draws on that long relationship rather than presenting one evening's complete set. Breakin' Up Somebody's Home opens the program with the kind of material she could inhabit forcefully, while I Got the Will and Damn Your Eyes bring in songs associated with a later period of her recording career. The changes in date and repertoire give the album breadth, but her phrasing and stage presence make the connection between the performances easy to follow.

The best-known songs still carry plenty of life in these settings. I'd Rather Go Blind gives James room to work with a ballad's emotional pressure, while Tell Mama puts a more assertive soul performance beside it. Something's Got a Hold on Me offers another link to her early repertoire. Her voice can move from a direct statement into a rougher, more emphatic phrase without losing the melody. That flexibility is especially valuable onstage, where a held note, a pause, or a response from the musicians can change the shape of a song as it unfolds.

The medley of At Last, Trust in Me, and Sunday Kind of Love gathers three familiar selections into one extended performance. Elsewhere, A Lover Is Forever and Beware add different shades to the ballad material, while Running and Hiding Blues, Come to Mama, and I Sing the Blues for You keep the collection grounded in the blues. Those songs make clear how much of James' range depended on interpretation rather than on a strict genre boundary. A blues feeling could remain present in a soul arrangement, and a ballad could carry the same authority as the more forceful numbers.

Baby What You Want Me to Do closes the double LP with an encore built around the Jimmy Reed song. It is a fitting destination for a collection so attentive to James as a live performer, able to turn established material into an exchange with the room. The Montreux Years gives listeners a concentrated view of that work, with thirteen performances selected for the vinyl program. It brings the familiar songs together with material that broadens the picture, showing a singer whose musical vocabulary was large and whose personality could make all of it recognizably her own.

Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic

Release Details

Artist

Etta James

Album

The Montreux Years

Format

Double Vinyl Record

Number of vinyl records

2

Original album release

2021

Label

BMG

Track Listing

Side A

Breakin' Up Somebody's Home

I Got the Will

I'd Rather Go Blind

A Lover Is Forever

Side B

Damn Your Eyes

Tell Mama

Running and Hiding Blues

Something's Got a Hold on Me

Side C

Beware

Come to Mama

Medley: At Last / Trust in Me / Sunday Kind of Love

Side D

I Sing the Blues for You

Baby What You Want Me to Do (Encore)