Etta James

Jamesetta Hawkins recorded “At Last” for Argo in 1960, in a Riley Hampton arrangement that kept Warren’s melody but rebuilt everything around it — strings where the brass had been, and a vocal that treats the song as testimony rather than as a dance number. It became the title track of her debut album and, in April 1961, a number two R&B hit that crossed to the pop chart. The credit confusion is chronological only: her record is so completely her own that it is easy to assume nobody had a claim on the song before her.