Time After Time by Etta James

Time After Time found Etta James in 1995 still deep in the jazz songbook: her nineteenth studio album, out on RCA, is a dozen vocal standards sung by a woman who first worked the R&B clubs of Nashville back in 1954. It arrived the same year her Billie Holiday tribute, Mystery Lady, won her the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Female, and it climbed to number five on Billboard's Top Jazz Albums chart.

Don't come looking for the gutbucket roar of "Tell Mama". This is the uptown Etta, all late-night poise, the band tucked neatly behind her in arrangements credited to Walton, and that deep, earthy voice doing the heavy lifting on songs like "My Funny Valentine". Reviewers heard a singer who had lived with these songs a long time, and it shows in every unhurried phrase.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.