Lost souls | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

WORLD BEAT

Two giants of popular music in the US, bandleader, drummer, disc jockey and talent scout Johnny Otis and singer Etta James, passed away recently, Otis at 90 and James in her eighties. Both were colossal figures in the development of r'n'b and soul music and both crossed over to international fame and, late though it came for James, success.

I only saw Etta James perform once but it remains etched in my memory. Summer, 1981 and my first ever night in New Orleans. Picked up by a friend of a friend at the airport, we were whisked off to Tipitina's, a live music club made famous by a song of the same name by Professor Longhair. The Dixie beers flowed as we waited for the great lady to make her entrance, which wasn't until one-thirty in the morning! By the time, she sashayed onto the stage in a skin-tight fake leopard-skin catsuit, the joint was rocking.

Her powerful voice sent shivers down the spine and she and the band seemed to drive every song to a mad climax. Then she would take it down, changing the mood with one of her trademark sad soul numbers. She sang one of my all-time favourite r'n'b hits, Good Rockin' Daddy. She teased us, picking out guys in the front to ask them about their love lives, all the while doing things with the microphone that could only have been appreciated by an adult audience.