Etta James Lashes Out at Obama, Beyonce

As we reported last month, pop superstar Beyoncé Knowles was tapped to serenade Barack and Michelle Obama for their first dance as President and First Lady. Her choice of song? The Etta James standard "At Last."

Well, apparently no one ever checked in with Etta James on that one, because at a recent concert, she ripped into both Obama and Beyoncé ...

"You guys know your president right? You know the one with the big ears. Yeah, wait a minute, he ain't my president, he might be yours. I tell you that woman he had singing for him, singing my song, she gonna get her ass whipped. The great Beyonce! Now like I said, she ain't mine. I can't stand Beyonce! She had no business up there singing. Singing on a big ole, big ole president day and going be singing my song that I've been singing forever."

Presumably, James was miffed that she hadn't been asked to sing at the Inaugural Ball. But still, to declare that Obama isn't her president and threatening to "whip" the ass of the woman who portrayed her in the movie "Cadillac Records" is pretty harsh.

James later claimed that she was joking. But just for the record, although the song is pretty closely identified with James, she doesn't exactly own the rights to it. In fact, it was written in 1941, when James was three years old, by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren.

Conclusion: If there was any justice in this world, neither Etta nor Beyoncé, but rather Gordon and Warren would have been the ones crooning on inauguration night. (And if John McCain had won, they probably would have.)