ETTA JAMES – The Montreux Years [VINYL]

Montreux Media/BMG BMGCAT460DLP (two discs; 180g vinyl)

For those of us who cannot get enough of Etta and who rate her as the only soul or R&B singer equal to Aretha, this is an unalloyed gift from the archives of the late Claude Nobs. As with the Nina Simone title in this series [HFN Jan ’22], the two LPs contain tracks culled from five concerts, this set’s dating from 1977-93, and they leave you begging for whole gigs. Many of her stellar tracks are included – ‘Tell Mama’, ‘At Last’, ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’, ‘Sunday Kind Of Love’, and nine more. But the shock is the recording quality: whoever mastered this makes it sound like one continuous gig despite the 16 year span, hence the high score. If you didn’t see the sleeve, you’d think that’s just what it was.