Accidental good timing or purposeful, Speakers Corner’s decision to reissue this Etta James classic now, couldn’t have come at a better time.

If you’re a fan of the UK belter Adele you really need to hear this album because the similarities between her and Ms. James are striking. So much so, that it can’t be coincidental. I’d bet Adele Laurie Blue Adkins is a big Etta James fan.

Both are belters with husky voices and aggressive phrasing. James belts more intensely here, but I bet Adele could match her, were the heights James reaches here currently in vogue. They are not.

There’s a famous old “Little Rascals”/”Our Gang” episode where the kids try to win a radio show talent contest. A running gag in the episode has the bulging-eyed announcer’s hair standing straight-up when Alfalfa hits some high notes.

I couldn’t help but think of that hilarious image while listening to this record. James gets really loud a few times. So loud you can almost see the V.U. meters pinning.

You can hear the tape saturating during these great outbursts, particularly on “My Dearest Darling,” but it doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of listening to a 22 year old’s “comeback” album.

As the liner notes recount, James auditioned for, and mightily impressed the great Johnny Otis, who got her a recording contract that led to an immediate hit single with an “answer song” to Hank Ballard’s salacious “Work With me Annie,” called “The Wallflower,” better known as “Dance With Me Henry” (and so identified on this album’s liner notes). (Her nibs) Georgia Gibbs (real name Frieda Lipschitz—I’m not making this shit up!) later covered to song for the “white” market.

After a few more r&b hits James’s career quickly cooled off. She signed with Argo and built a pop career that transcended ghetto-ized charts as demonstrated by this album issued in 1960.

On it, James proves she’s a ferocious pop, jazz, rock, gospel, soul and blues singer rolled into one enormous voice. When Beyonce was chosen to sing “At Last” at an Obama inauguration event she was rightfully pissed off and wasn’t hesitant to let everyone know!

By today’s standards, Riley Hampton’s string-drenched arrangements are “luxury” extravaganzas that sound terribly dated but that shouldn’t diminish the enjoyment of listening to James’ belting. The arranging clichés are strewn throughout, from the baritone sax accents, to the pizzicato strings that were staples of that era’s pop albums.

The relatively early stereo recording puts James center with the orchestra “wide-stanced” hard-left and hard-right, making it easier to ignore in favor of the great vocals.

The songs range from soul (“Trust In Me”) adult ballads like “Sunday Kind of Love,” and teen party pap like “Tough Mary.” There’s a cover of Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” the 1941 Mack Gordon, Harry Warren classic “At Last,” “Stormy Weather” and a few others on what is a relatively short but enjoyable and timeless album.

The sound is okay, but not great, though James’s voice is fairly well recorded but bathed in an over-reverberant soup as was common at the time.

There’s some outright sonic weirdness on a few tracks (mostly the hit singles) that must have been recorded monaurally. The engineering solution (instead of leaving them alone) was to pan the sound from left to right and back again….

Ignoring those few tracks is easy (though it gets downright sea sick bizarre on "All I Could Do Was Cry")  in the presence of such  great vocal performances. It would be easy and true to say that this album is worth buying just for the title track, but there’s really not a bad track here thanks to Ms. James’s vocalizing, which can make even the mundane “Tough Mary” tolerable. I’m sure Adele (and Janis Joplin) would agree!