Etta James, one of my absolute favorites, is dead. She was 73 years old and a music legend.

I heard her the first time on a black radio station in Los Angeles, her birthplace, in the early 60’s, and saw her the last time ten years ago at the House of Blues on Sunset Strip, also in Los Angeles. She was ill already then and sang sitting in a wheelchair. But she sang!

Her most famous song is perhaps her version of “At Last,” that Glenn Miller and his orchestra first recorded back in the beginning of World War II. But I like her best in the blues, “I’d Rather Go Blind.” Here it is: