Review: Etta James - The Second Time Around (1961)
Tracks: 1) Don’t Cry Baby; 2) Fool That I Am; 3) One For My Baby; 4) In My Diary; 5) Seven Day Fool; 6) It’s Too Soon To Know; 7) Dream; 8) I’ll Dry My Tears; 9) Plum Nuts; 10) Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.
REVIEW
With an album title like this, you can be pretty sure we’re talking formula, and indeed, Etta’s sophomore effort feels like a minor variation on the debut, with no big news for anybody and no highlights that would help obliterate the memory of At Last! Even worse: the fluffy, sentimental stuff is getting more fluffy, and the harder-rockin’ R&B stuff is getting less catchy and infectious. The hit singles kept coming, but their impact got ever fainter, and the LP missed the charts completely — and the bulk of the blame lies on Phil and Leonard Chess, who kept insisting on marketing Etta as a romantic performer, instead of letting her voice shine on hardcore R&B material for which it was tailor-made.
Let’s see here: the first single to be included on this LP was ‘Fool That I Am’, an old Floyd Hunt composition from the mid-Fourties, previously recorded by artists like Dinah Washington and Georgia Gibbs. Granted, those were crooner versions, and Etta is a belter, but does it really make a lot of sense to belt out a tune that was originally written with crooning in mind? Besides, it’s just standard vocal jazz lounge fodder, no particularly memorable or interesting vocal moves there. The arrangement is a little more polished and modern, but mainly due to improved studio technology — the strings and pianos pretty much sound like they’d be expected to around 1946. I’d rather be interested in hearing what Billie Holiday might have done with the song (unfortunately, it seemed to have passed her by); Etta’s version is fairly hollow.
A little more reassuring is the second single, ‘Don’t Cry’, a rearrangement of an even earlier number by Bessie Smith, with a more rhythmic and bluesy take on life; here, the string melody creates more of an «emotionally perturbed» atmosphere, swirling around the firm and steady bassline, and the resulting effect is less maudlin, while Etta, perhaps somewhat elated to be paying tribute to the Empress of the Blues, gives it her all to sound soulful and seductive. The result was immediately obvious, as the song entered the R&B Top 10 and even moved a little higher on the general charts — this isn’t exactly «tough mama Etta», but it’s at least «sultry Etta», and it clearly works better than «sentimental Etta».
Unfortunately, just as we have gathered some evidence to praise public taste, all our efforts fall through: ‘Seven Day Fool’, one of the «toughest» and most fun songs on the album, was a total flop despite deserving to be the biggest hit of the three. Co-written by Billy Davis (the author of Jackie Wilson’s ‘Reet Petite’) and Motown owner Berry Gordy himself, it’s a loud, stomping pop rocker that tells us all we want to know about a woman’s sacrifice for her man — "And on a Monday / I scrub your dirty floor / On a Tuesday / I do a whole lot more / On a Wednesday / I wash your dirty clothes / To have a little lovin' 'fore the weekend goes" — no irony here, Etta is just being a good little housewife as long as her man delivers the required goods with regularity. It’s loud, it’s passionate, it’s catchy, and, of course, it did not chart. What was wrong with all you people? Too busy listening to ‘Hit The Road Jack’ and ‘Runaround Sue’ in those October days of 1961?
Of the two B-sides and five LP-only tracks that surround these three singles on Second Time Around, five are oldies that are of absolutely no interest; I can only state that even by 1961, the world had seen more than enough of its share of covers of ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore’, and that Etta James is one of the last persons on this Earth whom I want to hear singing ‘One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)’. She just isn’t the type, you know? The proverbial «suspension of disbelief» simply does not apply to a case like this. Can you imagine falling upon a gloomy Etta James at a quarter to three in some lonely barroom, drinking away her crushed heart and all? No, no, render unto Frank the things that are Frank’s, and unto Etta the things that are Etta’s.
Of those, very little remains, though. Her only songwriting credit on the album is ‘I’ll Dry My Tears’, another torch ballad that at least allows for a little more passion, and there is some sonic delight to be found on the stop-and-start sections, as the snakey strings wind their way along the steps. And then there’s the aptly titled ‘Plum Nuts’, aptly contributed by a certain «Robert Plummer» (no idea who that is), a novelty dance number that seems to alternately borrow melodic lines from The Coasters’ ‘Searchin’ and Ray Charles’ ‘Little Girl Of Mine’, but I don’t really mind as long as it gives Etta a pretext to display her whacko side — the same one that worked so well on ‘Tough Mary’ from the last album. It has nowhere near the Great Psychological Depth of all those oldies from the Songbook, but it has exuberance, and that’s the #1 thing I want from my Etta James: ELATION and EXUBERANCE. Thank you, Robert Plummer, whoever you are, for contributing this nonsensical piece of rubbish — along with ‘Seven Day Fool’ and, to a lesser extent, ‘Don’t Cry Baby’, it is pretty much the only thing I can bring myself to care about on this album.
Like I said, though, this is not so much a dig at Etta as a continuous expression of amazement at the poor judgement on the part of the Chess brothers — they weren’t putting the pressure on Muddy Waters to croon "love oh love oh careless love", so why would they want to lock Etta James in this completely incoherent image? The only possible explanation is the «spirit of 1961», with everybody encouraging everybody else to «go soft» and nostalgia for the vibes of the pre-rock’n’roll era pop music hitting audiences and record label owners alike. Had Etta James been signed to Chess just a couple years earlier, things might have been different, and maybe we wouldn’t have to wait for that Etta / Chuck Berry duet until frickin’ 1987!
Only Solitaire reviews: Etta James