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From album
At Last!
Etta James · 2011 · Track 7
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The story behind
The first time At Last played in a movie theater, it was nothing more than background music for a dance scene. Mack Gordon and Harry Warren wrote it in 1941 for Sun Valley Serenade, but the studio shelved it, believing there were already "too many hits" in the film. The instrumental version remained, but the vocal part was removed. Glenn Miller and his orchestra performed it the following year in Orchestra Wives, with Ray Eberle singing, though the studio still didn’t see its potential. It wasn’t until 1942, when RCA Victor released it as a single, that it climbed into the top 5 of the charts, becoming a classic of the big bands.
Thirty-nine years later, Etta James revived it for her debut album. Leonard Chess of Chess Records saw in it the potential for an elegant ballad and tasked Riley Hampton with giving it a soulful twist. The result was the version we all know: a song that doesn’t sound like a remake but like a discovery. At Last!, the album where it was recorded, reached number 12 on the catalog albums chart in 1960. And in 1999, the Recording Academy inducted it into its Hall of Fame, acknowledging what many already knew: that this version wasn’t just a cover but a reinvention.