[2] Etta James was persuaded by Chess Records' executive Leonard Chess to record her second album for his company (on the Cadet label) at the FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama: impressed by the studio's pedigree - FAME having generated a recent string of hits by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge - Chess was also motivated to send James to rural Alabama so as to remove her from the urban environment which had recently fostered the singer's substance abuse issues to the point of hospitalization and incarceration.
[3] In sessions produced by FAME owner Rick Hall, with personnel including Barry Beckett, David Hood, Roger Hawkins Spooner Oldham, and Marvell Thomas (many of whom had played on Clarence Carter tracks), James recorded the album Tell Mama between August and December 1967, with the title cut recorded in the inaugural 22–24 August sessions.
"[5][6] With the original version of "I'd Rather Go Blind" as B-side, "Tell Mama" was released on the Cadet label in October 1967 as its parent album's advance single.
'"[5] However the track's success evidently did not totally assuage James' misgivings: she would state in her 2003 memoir Rage to Survive:[8]"There are folks who think 'Tell Mama' is the Golden Moment of the Golden Age of Soul; they rant and rave about the snappy horn chart and the deep-pocket guitar groove, about how I sang the shit out of it.
Maybe it's just that I didn't like being cast in the role of the Great Earth Mother, the gal you come to for comfort and easy sex.