The Heart of a Woman
Late-night jazz standards delivered with a voice like velvet dragged over gravel. A smoky, sensuous tribute to the great divas of the mid-century.
1999 · Private Music
Late-night jazz standards delivered with a voice like velvet dragged over gravel. A smoky, sensuous tribute to the great divas of the mid-century.
1999 · Private Music
The Heart of a Woman finds Etta James stepping away from the raw, gut-bucket blues of her youth to embrace a sophisticated, 'cocktail cool' jazz persona. The album is a masterclass in atmosphere, featuring long, sensuous arrangements that allow James to inhabit the songs of her idols like Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan. Her voice, by 1999, had acquired a magnificent patina: it is thick, weathered, and deeply expressive, sounding like velvet that has been dragged over gravel. It is the sound of a woman who has seen it all and is finally ready to tell you the truth about love.
How does The Heart of a Woman sound next to the rest of Etta James's catalogue?
The instrumentation foregrounds saxophone notably more than the catalogue usually does.
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