Behind The Lyrics, "I'd Rather Go Blind"
After a number of albums produced by one or both of the Chess brothers, in the late summer of 1967, James went to Muscle Shoals, Alabama’s FAME Studios for an album produced by the studio’s owner Rick Hall. The album,
Tell Mama, produced one of her best songs, “I’d Rather Go Blind.”
James told the story behind the song in her autobiography,
Rage To Survive, a candid drug chronicle populated by junkies, dealers, and tales of trying to score (reminiscent of Keith Richard’s
Life).
The song was actually a co-write between James and a Detroit-based singer and songwriter named Ellington Jordan, who usually went by the nickname Fugi (sometimes alternately spelled Fuji), who was in prison. According to the book, James gave her co-writing portion to her partner at the time, Billy Foster, a member of the ‘50s Los Angeles doo-*** group The Medallions, for tax purposes. (“It bugs me to this day that he still receives royalties,” James wrote.)
While Fugi poured his grief from being incarcerated into the song—he
told an interviewer in 2006, “I got tired of losing and being down. I was in prison and didn’t know when I was going to get out. I sat in a piano room and began to write”—for James, the song was about being blind in her “love life” and her “personal ways,” she wrote.
For many listeners, the two and half minutes of “I’d Rather Go Blind”–James’ heartfelt performance, the subtle tremolo-picked electric guitar, hovering organ, and swaying horn lines—conveyed so much of the emotion the singer must have been feeling. When Leonard Chess heard the song for the first time, he had to leave the room, crying.
The complete article:
http://www.americansongwriter.com/2012/01/etta-james-id-rather-go-blind/
