Seven Year Itch

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About Seven Year Itch

Product Description Seven Year Itch by Etta James Amazon.com The three albums Etta James made for Island Records in the late 1980s are quirky productions, but this compilation culled from those recordings is a winning alternative. The beauty and righteous anger she evokes in "Damn Your Eyes" is alone worth the price. Her romantic side gets tapped for "A Lover Is Forever" and "Out of the Rain." But the best numbers flex her raw vocal muscle. "Beware," "Feel Like Breakin' Up Somebody's Home," and her redo of "Come to Mama" are all fire-breathing performances, worthy of the still-reigning queen of rhythm & blues. --Ted Drozdowski Review Twenty years on, James records an unplanned companion album to Tell Mama with the organist at that storied session, Barry Beckett, now acting as producer. With her texturally rich voice she commandingly seizes hold of fine ballads and up-tempo numbers, making discretionary use of firiness and giving sure thought to interpretations of lyrics. Gone is the screaming and shouting of the 1970s and 1980s. She sings sassily and guardedly, full of shrewd insight and pent-up anger-hear, in particular, her rendering of Ann Peebles's "Breakin' Up Somebody's Home." Guitarist Steve Cropper and other Nashville cats tap a soul blues vein also plentiful in rock and R&B components. Island brain trust made a bottom-line decision. Los Angeles shlock rock and funk flourishes have been grafted onto Barry Beckett-produced soul blues tracks, and tough cookie Etta James has all the credibility of those toy pistols she brandishes in the cover photograph. Special guest: Def Jam, of rap notoriety. -- © Frank John Hadley 1993 -- From Grove Press Guide to Blues on CD