(Image credit: Far Out / Alamy)
“I’m talking about singing and taking it on the stage for them, you know, driving people crazy and warming their ears. That’s the deal. That’s really the direction I want to go,” Etta James once said. Although she spent many nights crying, torn between her desire for success and her disdain for the bourgeoisie, there is one song that will always capture the essence of her soul laid bare, the moment her heart shattered into tiny, immortal pieces: “At Last.”
Although this song has become synonymous with her legacy and her fighting spirit to stay in control, James recorded “At Last” at a time when success was far from within reach. Chess Records co-founder Leonard Chess had just signed to Argo Records and saw James as a classical, sophisticated, jazz-oriented artist with the potential to score pop-level hits, so he brought in a range of string instruments so she could maintain the trademark eclecticism of her music.
As the title suggests, “At Last” finds James singing with the cathartic intensity you’d expect from someone who endured a difficult childhood. Raised by a series of foster parents, James was all too familiar with abuse from those she trusted, often for future financial gain. Many of her foster parents reportedly beat her if she refused to sing or didn’t perform to their liking, conditioning her from an early age into scary and toxic environments.
And you can hear how that all comes to the fore once she starts singing on the track. Although the words she says hint at a long overdue sense of redemption, “At last, my love has come along / My lonely days are over” And sounds incredibly euphoric, and it is, but it’s also delivered with a certain amount of humility. James isn’t boasting about her newfound appreciation for being given a chance. She’s delicately toying with the idea that maybe she deserves it.
For James, however, realizing that she deserves anything at all would probably mean accepting the possibility of failure, and Finally was meant to symbolize the beginning, not the end. “At Last” was recorded to symbolize reinvention, but it also came at a time when James had already grown up exponentially and nothing was set in stone. Especially not when it came to her career.
In her 1995 memoirs, she put it this way: Anger for survival: “I was no longer a teenager. I was 22 and sophisticated. Or at least I wanted to be sophisticated… Because of the way I phrased it, some people started calling me a jazz singer.” James probably never had reason to rest on her laurels, but “At Last” also beckoned with a safe haven, an indescribable place where taking risks and feeling safe could be the key to peace.
“Life is like a song,” she sings, her passionate vocals perfectly complementing the stirring orchestration. This makes it the ideal piece for quiet reflections on personal liberation or that first wedding dance where love and security are at the core of the next exciting chapter. As the music swells, her voice carries the weight of a lifetime’s worth of pain, hope and resilience, transforming the melody into an anthem for those who have endured hardship and come out stronger.
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