It's About Damn Time

As 2006 nears its end, no one can argue that the world of country music isn't, at this moment, the most adventurous in the mainstream pop music industry and that Nash Vegas is taking more chances on its acts as the rest of the biz relies more on narrowing things into smaller and smaller niches that can easily be hyped and digested. Sure, as always, artist's images and many recordings are calculated to score big as in any pop industry. The difference is in approach. The country-listening audience/demographic has widened considerably; therefore, there is a need – as well as an opportunity – for experimentation to see what sticks. This is the most exciting the music's been since Willie and Waylon hit the charts in the '70s, or perhaps to be a bit more fair, when Garth Brooks turned them upside down in the early '90s…

Whoa. There are many Etta James collections out there. The standard-bearers thus far have been the Chess Box and the Essential Etta James. This set attempts to do something else and goes deep into her catalog to dig out the gems from her years with Modern, Argo, Cadet, Chess, Warner Brothers, Island, and Private Music/BMG, and presents the full spectrum of her five-decade career. As such, there are many different kinds of songs here revealing the complexity of the vocalist herself, and as such, thus becomes a real portrait of the artist. Juxtapose, for instance, early sides like "The Wallflower Dance (Dance With Me Henry)," with its wild R&B bravado and the deep soul-blues of "All I Could Do Is Cry," the balladry of "The Man I Love," the bone-crushing blues of "The Sky Is Crying," and the torch song ballad technique on "My Dearest Darling," and the despairing soul inherent in songs such as "All the Way Down," and the listener begins to get an idea of just how vast and deep James talent really is. These 23 cuts give a fine and full picture of all that diversity without sacrificing a note of quality.

So here’s one of the hardest things to reckon with as a critic: you find a debut album pretty much by accident on Bandcamp, the opening track and lead-off single blows your mind, and you happen to discover that the album itself is one of the best of its respective year…