The year was 1968. The Jackson 5 was the opening act  for Etta’s Apollo Theater performance, Aretha Franklin received the cover of TIME magazine and Leonard Chess was looking for the right song to get Etta back on the charts. Created to pit against Aretha’s current success was the classic  soul, blues, pop single, Tell Mama. While Etta received much acclaim for this song and it posed her first Top 10 on Billboard since 1964, it was a song Etta NEVER liked and NEVER liked singing. She personally thought the song gave her the association of being “the gal you come to for comfort and easy sex.” Despite Etta’s disdain, the song was greatly admired by artists like Janis Joplin who highly esteemed Etta and later rerecorded the single.