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Etta James, “I’d Rather Go Blind” | Tell Mama, 1968

In “I’d Rather Go Blind,” a 1968 B-side to her better-known hit “Tell Mama,” Etta James – who lived a full life of love, trouble, and redemption – shows her earthy, willful powers of delivery and vocal translation. A simple and short heartbreak song, in James’s rendering “I’d Rather Go Blind” becomes loose and uncertain. The fulfillment of the traditional love-ballad genre gives way to something nearer to a modernist poem in style. We’re handed the narrator’s spurned predicament, but James leaves us – before cliché or neatness sets in – with a few longing “babies” echoed by a fading chorus.