Bettye LaVette Recent News

BETTYE LAVETTE'S ROAD TO THE GRAMMYS PUNCTUATED WITH YEAR-END RAVES AND JANUARY 16 'CONAN' PERFORMAN

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:01:00 -0800

Next stop for BETTYE LaVETTE on her 40-year journey to the GRAMMYs? Late Night with Conan O'Brien on January 16.

BETTYE, who recently scored the first GRAMMY nomination of her career - for Best Contemporary Blues Album for her CD THE SCENE OF THE CRIME (Anti- Records) - brings her fiery performance to the TV airwaves on the heels of three 2008 Blues Music Award nominations (including Album of the Year and B.B. King Entertainer of the Year) and inclusion on countless critics' year-end lists.

The tireless LaVETTE cracked the top 10 in Entertainment Weekly's Records of the Year (coming in at #9), and landed the top spot in No Depression's critics' poll. THE SCENE OF THE CRIME clawed its way onto best of '07 lists from major newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune; music magazines including Mojo, Paste, and Harp; and online outlets including All Music Guide, Pop Matters, Metromix, and Living In Stereo - among many others.

"What a gloriously well-schooled and savage voice," enthuses No Depression. "Nothing left to hold back."

"A track like 'Talking Old Soldiers'...gets to the essence of despair the way great blues does," adds Entertainment Weekly. "Even if it's actually an Elton John cover. Enlisting the Drive-By Truckers as her rowdy, ragged backup band, LaVette continues to imbue her other borrowed tracks (from Don Henley, George Jones, and Willie Nelson) with grit, anguish, and even some serious sex appeal. She's a force of nature we'll just have to settle on labeling as awesome."

The Boston Globe's Siddhartha Mitter calls SCENE "Inquisitive, vulnerable, and raw. It's retro-soul without an ounce of pastiche," while fellow Globe scribe James Reed describes BETTYE's CD as "A resilient and resplendent soul nugget, with Southern rockers Drive-By Truckers giving her room to exorcise her demons and heal."

Pop Matters dubs the disc "An instant classic," Harp begs, "Don't ever change, Bettye," and Gibson Lifestyle - putting SCENE atop its list of best blues albums of 2007 - adds that "LaVette's dynamic silk-and-sandpaper singing...turns numbers like 'Jealousy' and 'You Don't Know Me At All' into epic soul testimonials."

Meanwhile, BETTYE recently joined host Terry Gross on NPR's Peabody Award-winning Fresh Air to talk about her 40-year career and her winding road to redemption on her intensely cathartic latest disc. That interview can be heard streaming online at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17311075.

BETTYE LAVETTE CAN BE HEARD ON NPR DEC 17!

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:12:00 -0800

A BREATH OF 'FRESH AIR': GRAMMY NOMINATED BETTYE LaVETTE CAN BE HEARD ON NPR's PEABODY AWARD-WINNING TALK SHOW
MONDAY, DECEMBER 17; BETTYE GRABS THREE BLUES MUSIC AWARD NOMINATIONS

BETTYE LaVETTE - who recently scored a GRAMMY nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album for her CD THE SCENE OF THE CRIME (Anti- Records) - joins host Terry Gross on NPR's Peabody Award-winning Fresh Air on Monday, December 17. The weekday magazine program airs on over 450 NPR stations nationwide, and is available online and as a podcast at www.NPR.org.

On the show, BETTYE talks about her 40-year career and her winding road to redemption on her intensely cathartic latest disc.

It was 35 years ago in Muscle Shoals - a decade after she scored a top-ten hit with her debut single "My Man - He's A Lovin' Man" that BETTYE recorded the career-defining masterpiece that never was: Atlantic Records inexplicably shelved the record. Scarred but not broken, BETTYE persevered as a tireless performer, honing her craft and focusing her heartbreak.

Now THE SCENE OF THE CRIME - featuring Southern rockers Drive-By Truckers as BETTYE's backing band - has indisputably become the career-defining masterpiece that is.

In addition to earning BETTYE her first ever GRAMMY nomination, SCENE has landed BETTYE nonstop rave reviews, and three 2008 Blues Music Award (formerly the W.C. Handy Awards) nominations - for Album of the Year, Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year, and the B.B. King Entertainer of the Year.

Not surprisingly as the year winds down, BETTYE is already finding her way onto many critics' best of '07 lists, including Mojo, Paste, Pop Matters, All Music Guide, Metromix.com, and Harp, which sagely counsels, "Don't ever change, Bettye."

BETTYE LaVETTE'S 'THE SCENE OF THE CRIME' EARNS GRAMMY NOM FOR "BEST CONTEMPORARY BLUES ALBUM"

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:12:00 -0800

BETTYE LaVETTE continues her bold ascent with a GRAMMY nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album for her CD THE SCENE OF THE CRIME (Anti- Records). Joined by the Drive-By Truckers as her backing band, BETTYE's essential new entry into the soul music canon channels more than 40 years of blood, sweat, and shattered dreams into one glorious catharsis.

"I haven't been this happy since 1962 when this whole thing started," declares an elated BETTYE.

It was 35 years ago in Muscle Shoals - a decade after she scored a top-ten hit with her debut single "My Man - He's A Lovin' Man" - that BETTYE recorded the career-defining masterpiece that never was: Atlantic Records inexplicably shelved the record. Scarred but not broken, BETTYE persevered as a tireless performer, honing her craft and focusing her heartbreak.

Now THE SCENE OF THE CRIME has indisputably become the career-defining masterpiece that is. On the heels of her critically lauded Anti- debut (2005's I've Got My Own Hell To Raise), SCENE has been garnering nonstop rave reviews - and not a few rhetorical questions:

NPR asks, "Is there any soul singer who brings more guts, more conviction and more emotion to her singing?" and Entertainment Weekly wonders, "Is there a more wrenching soul singer alive than Bettye LaVette?"

Elsewhere, the praise has been every bit as assertive as BETTYE herself is in redefining cuts like Elton John and Bernie Taupin's "Talking Old Soldiers," Willie Nelson's "Somebody Pick Up My Pieces," and Don Henley's "You Don't Know Me At All" on THE SCENE OF THE CRIME:

"LaVette's nuanced singing evokes prime Tina Turner with even more command," says Rolling Stone. Adds USA Today, "This album - ¦just rips, with some truly sublime peaks." "The Scene of the Crime is a smoldering revelation displaying an artist nearly a half century into her career who is only now approaching the peak of her considerable powers," notes Paste. And the All Music Guide: "It gets better with each listen, and stands so far outside the realm of anything her better-known peers are doing today that it's almost scary."

Bettye LaVette is covered by The Lexington Herald-Leader

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 00:10:00 -0700

She raised her own hell for 40 years
By Walter Tunis
CONTRIBUTING MUSIC CRITIC
"Oh, I'm holdin' on, baby."

That's the honest, concise and disarmingly soulful reply Bettye LaVette gives when presented with an interview opening "How are you?"

And, true to her words, this veteran Detroit-area singer has been holding on for close to 40 years. That's roughly how long it took for anyone other than the most learned and dedicated of R&B fans to pick up on her regal brand of traditional soul.

"I use to have these 10 people in every major city all over the world that always liked me," LaVette said. "Now those 10 people are standing along the sides looking pretty frightened -- much like I am.

"There's a blues idiom that I've been able to collect from. And now there's a whole college group also listening to my music. So my audience looks pretty weird."

For that, you can thank LaVette's I've Got My Own Hell to Raise, a 2005 career comeback album that matched the singer with 10 songs written by champion female singer-songwriters Joan Armatrading, Rosanne Cash, Dolly Parton, Lucinda Williams and Fiona Apple. It also enlisted an acclaimed producer and soul-music aficionado (Joe Henry) and a celebrated record label (Anti) that is home to stylistic giants Tom Waits, Daniel Lanois and Michael Franti.

But the recording differs little from the soul-stirring R&B LaVette cooked up in Detroit during the '60s and then cut for a series of major and indie labels over the next three decades.

"Everybody that heard them liked them," LaVette said of her early records. "But, really, nobody got to hear the damn things."

Enter Anti with an offer to record -- and, more important, promote -- a new album. But singing the tunes of other women didn't thrill LaVette, at least not initially.

"I rejected the idea at first because I don't usually do songs by women," she said. "I tend to have a little stronger thing with my relationships and my career. I didn't think a woman would be able to write words that would enable me to interpret that strength as well as I would like to."

Nonetheless, LaVette agreed to sift through 100 songs by some of today's top songsmiths. Some came from country backgrounds, others from contemporary pop. But such origins mattered little to the singer.

"I think people are too hung up over genres of songs," LaVette said. "There really aren't genres of music, only genres of singers. The song by Dolly Parton (Sparrow) was only considered country because she sang it that way. Had I sung it first, it would have been R&B.

"I tend to be a very arrogant singer. I don't even hear or acknowledge the other singer with the songs I do. I don't care who sang it before me, whether it's Caruso or Tiny Tim. If I like it, I sing it. The person who sang the song first doesn't intimidate me."

Neither did working with producer Henry, a noted songwriter who also has overseen several traditionally minded soul music projects over the past year (most notably, a 2005 collaboration with Allen Toussaint, Mavis Staples and Irma Thomas titled I Believe to My Soul).

"I went to Joe's house, sat on the floor and sang these songs to him a cappella exactly the way I was going to record them, which kind of thwarted his notion as a producer," LaVette said.

"He was saying, 'We'll get into the studio, and the magic will happen.' I said, 'Joseph, honey, I need a record real, real bad. I cannot depend on the magic to happen. Here is how I will sing the songs. Find me people who can play them well and interestingly.' It took about a day for everyone to understand how this was going to go."

If LaVette sounds all business when it comes to music, she is. One listen to I've Got My Own Hell to Raise reveals how sagelike the soulfulness of her singing remains. But at age 60, she sees little sense of ceremony in her work.

Ask about her feelings on covering What's Happening Brother? for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band's new remake of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On album, and LaVette all but shrugs her shoulders. That's hardly a sign of disrespect. It's just that artists like Gaye were people she grew up with. She deflated her own celebrity myths about such performers long ago.

"People know Marvin Gaye as a legend," she said. "To me, he's somebody I've known drunk, naked or broke. Or all three. This is one of the things about being this age. There isn't any black in this business who is over 40 -- and I don't care how rich they are now -- that I don't remember being broke. That's because I was right there with them."

What does excite LaVette, though, is how the critical success of I've Got My Own Hell to Raise, along with a W.C. Handy Blues Award in 2004 and a Pioneer Award earlier this year from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, has finally pushed her name alongside Gaye and other greats.

In short, after 40 years of working in comparative obscurity, LaVette has arrived.

"Just to be considered in the same conversation as these people is gratifying. I don't have to stand around someone else's dressing-room door anymore and say, 'Do you remember me?' Those were the humiliating things.

"But the gratification has come. When I got this Rhythm and Blues Foundation, I was there with Smokey Robinson, who used to live across the alley from me. I was with Patti LaBelle, who I saw open shows at the Apollo for a dozen people. Just to be there and have my name in print alongside theirs ... I mean, it just made me feel so absolutely legitimate."

LaVette

Hear an exclusive interview with Bettye LaVette!

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:06:00 -0700

This week, you can hear an exclusive Bettye LaVette interview on American Routes! She will be talking about her new album, I�ve Got My Own Hell To Raise and much more. Dates, times and stations vary according to location, so please use the links below to find out when and where you can hear this interview with a true legend.

www.americanroutes.org

www.americanroutes.org/stations

Bettye LaVette still collecting much praise and playing SXSW!

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:02:00 -0800

BETTYE LaVETTE has earned a high spot on the annual Village Voice �Pazz & Jop� poll, coming in at #20. In editor Robert Christgau�s essay on the poll, he states: �Bettye LaVette outdoes herself.�

Elsewhere, in a review of a Joni Mitchell tribute show at Carnegie Hall, Jon Pareles closed his review with this: �Bettye LaVette turned �Last Chance Lost,� a terse and bitter breakup song, into an intense, wrenching soul lament that seemed to encompass a lifetime of disappointments. She made the song her own�no easy feat.�

Bettye�s music could even be heard on the pre-game telecast of the Superbowl, when Pittsburgh Steelers running back and fellow Detroit native Jerome Bettis was being interviewed. Her version of Lucinda Williams �Joy,� could be plainly heard with Bettye singing, �I started in Detroit looking for my joy�� words which proved prophetic for Bettis and the Steelers.

LaVette continues to garner praise and gather new fans with each show she performs. She will be performing at SXSW at La Zona Rosa on March 17, has been added to the Jammies April 20 in New York City at the Theatre at Madison Square Garden, as well as the Bonaroo Festival June 16 in Manchester, TN.

Upcoming US and European tour dates are listed below:

DATE VENUE CITY/STATE or CITY/COUNTRY
2/24/2006 Kalamazoo State Theatre Kalamazoo, MI
3/16/2006 B.B. King Blues Club & Grill New York, NY
3/17/2006 SXSW Music Festiva/La Zona Rosa Austin, TX
3/19/2006 Zeiterion Theater New Bedford, MA
3/24/2006 Massey Hall Toronto, ON, CANADA 3/25/2006 Centre in The Square Kitchener, ON, CANADA
4/20.2006 Madison Square Garden New York, NY
4/22/2006 Arden Concert Guild Arden, DE
4/23/2006 New Legacy Series Ringwood, NJ
4/29/2006 Triptych Festival Edinburgh, Scotland
4/30/2006 Triptych Festival Glasgow,Scotland
5/3/2006 Berns Stockholm,Sweden
5/4/2006 Kulturbolaget Malmoe,Sweden
5/5/2006 Jazzhouse Dexter Odense,Denmark
5/6/2006 Bergen Music Fest Bergen,Norway
5/7/2006 Amager Bio Copenhagen,Denmark
5/9/2006 Kaufleuten Zurich,Switzerland 5/10/2006 Ancienne Belgique Brussels, Belgium
5/12/2006 LaCigale Paris,France
5/13/2006 Waerdse Tempel Heerhugoward,Holland 5/15/2006 Jazz Cafe UK London,England
6/4/2006 Long�s Park Ampitheatre Lancaster PA
6/8/2006 Chicago Blues Festival Chicago,IL
6/16/2006 Bonnaroo Manchester,TN
6/17/2006 WC Handy Blues & BBQ Festival Henderson KY
6/24/2006 Monterey Bay Blues Festival Monterey CA
8/19/2006 Madison Ribberfest Madison, IN

Bettye LaVette 2005 album honors!

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 00:01:00 -0800

Bettye LaVette's "I've Got My Own Hell To Raise" captured an abundance of "Top" honors for the year of 2005!

Below is a list of the confirmed honors, in no particular order.

"BEST OF"
Albany Times Union
Chicago Sun-Times
Winston-Salem Journal

"TOP 10"
Amazon.com
Appleton Post-Crescent (Wisconson)
Baltimore Sun
Boston Globe
Chicago Public Radio
Cnn.com
Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)
Entertainment Weekly
Kansas City Pitch
Kentucky.com
Lexington Herald
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Patchcord.com
Philadelphia Daily News
National Public Radio
The New Mexican
The New York Times
San Jose Mercury News
Seeingblack.com
The Tennessean
Therestandstheglass.com
Times-Leader (PA)
Washington Post
WTOP (Washington�s Top News�Radio)

"TOP 15"
Chicago Tribune
FoxNews.com
SoundOpinions.com

"BEST CONCERT"
New York Daily News

"BEST INTERNET DOWNLOAD"
# 160 Yahoo.com �Little Sparrow�

Catch up with Bettye LaVette in this Metrotimes.com interview

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 00:04:00 -0700

The pop music world that Bettye Lavette has been trying to conquer since her first hit in 1962 (Atlantic Records� �My Man, He�s a Loving Man�) has been a hardass.

The strange creature that freights the sweetness of melody and harmony with the cocked fangs of pure business and cold, hard cash hasn�t given Lavette much in the way of returns.

Ironically, the toughest nut to crack has been hometown Detroit, where Lavette � unlike her local contemporaries Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross and Martha Reeves � has been unable to gain a multiracial crossover audience.

It�s an unfortunate fact that Lavette writes off as bad luck and timing. In 1963, when the Sound of Young America was booming from countless car radios in the Motor City, Lavette had already made her way to New York, where the thrills were short and the heartaches long.

Her local misfortune continued when Cameo-Parkway, the label that in 1965 issued Lavette�s most successful song, had distribution problems in the Midwest.
�It�s so hurtful because �Let Me Down Easy� was the biggest recording that ever happened to me,� Lavette says, over the phone from her new home in New Jersey, where she moved from Detroit last July when she was married. �But at home, it helped me none.�

The 58-year-old singer�s career reads like a Shakespearean tragedy. It�s littered with bright spots (hit records, Broadway) and low hits (death, missed opportunities, etc.) and best played on the black keys.
�I tend to take the B flat minor look at things,� Lavette says. �It�s OK with me to cry.�

She was 17 when one of her managers took a bullet in the eye. The horrific accident helped kill a deal that might have propelled her to stardom. She missed an opportunity to work with Burt Bacharach.

Over the years, she�s seen versions of her recordings become hit records for other artists, as in �He Made A Woman Out of Me,� which went nowhere for Lavette but became huge for Bobbie Gentry.

Two years ago, Lavette�s musical director of 35 years died while the singer was in the process of making A Woman Like Me, her first studio album in more than 20 years.

That�s three strikes right there. But woes notwithstanding, the world�s finally grinning on Lavette, who has been waiting years for another turn at bat.
But while some of her more obscure records typically fetch hundreds on Internet auctions, they don�t make many playlists. Lavette long ago earned respect in the British Northern Soul movement, a trendy niche now fostered by neo/faux-soul hipsters who refuse to give up the ghost of maximum rhythm and blues.

And �soul singer� is a tag Lavette is glad to accept, but is uncomfortable with. It�s a term she says was invented by white music fans to define a sound.

�Thank God they started this movement and brought us all out of the crypt, but they�ve put us in categories,� Lavette says. �I�m a rhythm and blues singer and that�s what I�ve been all my life. Whitney Houston isn�t. She�s a pop singer and Anita Baker�s a pop-jazz singer, but Gladys Knight and Tina Turner and me are all rhythm and blues singers.

A Woman Like Me, a 12-song tour de force that may have for the first time captured the breadth of Lavette�s vocal talents in a studio setting, is definitely a rhythm and blues album that leans on the blues side. It�s not retrofitted to make Lavette sound like she did when she was a child, and it may initially alienate folks who have nostalgia in mind.

A Woman Like Me reveals a gifted songstress whose capacity for emotional nuance enables her to reach joyous heights and melancholic lows. She�s hurt, vindictive, wounded, strong, hateful, loving, wanting and satisfied. On each of the 12 song-stories (most written by outside writers), she�s compelling enough to draw in the listener, to hold the listener�s attention.
Call it mature music, or call it blues for grown-ups, because its themes are aimed at those who�ve lived and learned. It�s an album that deserves respect. In fact, A Woman Like Me earned the singer four Handy Award nominations, which will be decided in Memphis at the end of this month.

The Handy Awards, named after W.C. Handy, the man who is credited with the first published blues song, are this country�s most prestigious awards in the fields of blues and soul music. Lavette�s nominations include best blues album, best soul/blues album, best comeback album and best soul/blues singer.

Lavette�s got her end-of-April itinerary in hand.
�I�m going to dash down to Memphis and see if I can get one of these Handys,� she says. �If I do, I�m coming back and tying them to the back of the car and riding around Detroit. If I get all four, I�ll really come back and holler out the window. They�ll think somebody�s campaigning for something.�

More than a few Detroiters are beaming with pride that one of the city�s own � and one of its most neglected � is finally getting just recognition.

�We raised that girl,� says Sir Mack Rice, former member of the Falcons (from 1957 to 1963), whose �Mustang Sally� has become one of the lynchpins of rock, roll, blues and soul. �She was just a little girl who wanted to sing, and ever since then she�s been climbing.�

Rice first encountered Lavette in 1962 as Betty Haskin, a teenage fan and St. Agnes High School student who haunted clubs like the 20 Grand and the Graystone Ballroom.

Haskin wasn�t long for the constraints of a girls� Catholic school. The people she sought to meet were the more progressive Northern High students, many of whom would later strike gold at Motown.

Lavette would hang out at Northern, but it wasn�t Smokey Robinson or the nascent Temptations that she wanted to meet. It was Sherma Lavett, a friend whose last name Bettye adopted as her own, adding an �e� at the end.

�She knew everyone who was on the stage in Detroit, and I wanted to know her,� Lavette explains. �So I started going with her to the 20 Grand and to the Graystone, and at the Graystone we met Timmy Shaw, who had a recording out at the time. And Johnny Mae Matthews was working with him.�

Shaw introduced Lavette to Matthews, a savvy local music businesswoman, songwriter and producer with her own label. Matthews mined Lavette�s talent by featuring her voice on �My Man.�

Matthews � who is portrayed as a shrewd operator in the made-for-TV movie The Temptations � had the tools of a star-maker. But, like local producers operating on her level then (think Berry Gordy or Jack and Devora Brown of Fortune Records), Matthews was � according to Lavette � a shark swimming in shallow waters.
�She was possibly the first female producer of the day, and certainly the first black female producer. She at one time had the Temptations when they were the Distants, the Supremes when they were the Primettes, and she had the Falcons,� explains Lavette.

Matthews intended �My Man, He�s a Lovin� Man� for release on her Northern label, but Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records heard the tracks and quickly snatched up the single for national distribution.

�The people that I knew as stars were people like Ruth Brown and Clyde McPhatter and Ray Charles. These people were on that red and black label [Atlantic], and suddenly I was on it,� says Lavette. �For black music, that was the absolute hottest label at the time.�

The song went Top Ten in the R&B charts, and the 16-year-old Catholic schoolgirl became an instant celebrity.
Lavette sounds downright wistful when she recalls the moment the record hit: �For me to have just been at the Graystone literally the week before dancing to �Stand By Me� by Ben E. King and the Drifters and then to be on the road with them like in 60 days.

�Yeah, it was really something.�
Back at home and armed with a hit record, Lavette showed a shrewd business side by dumping Matthews� management and hooking up with well-connected manager Robert West.
By that time, Motown had hit pay dirt. With songs like the Miracles� �Shop Around,� Mary Wells� �My Guy� and the Marvelettes �Please Mr. Postman� having already clocked in at No. 1 on the national pop charts, Hitsville U.S.A. was living up to its name. Every other Detroit record producer and label owner wanted a taste of what Motown had and maneuvered to get it.

In 1963, Herman Griffin � husband of Motown star Mary Wells � and West traveled to New York to negotiate the deal that would eventually place Wells with Twentieth Century Fox and sever that singer�s ties with Motown.
�West was more or less negotiating the deal. He had worked with the Falcons and Atlantic and he had been to New York,� Lavette says. �Most of these [Detroit] people had never talked to anyone from New York before. So if you had that, it gave you kind of a leg up.�

West, a big man with a hot temper and a feverish regard for his artists, often carried a handgun. He would pay a price for this when he aimed the gun at Griffin in a boozy argument at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan.
�Herman was about 5-feet-5, and West was about 6-1 and noted for pulling this little ragged gun on everybody,� Lavette says. �He pulled the gun out in the argument, and Herman ran toward him and pushed his hand back. The gun fired and went through West�s eye, and through his brain.�

While the pistol fracas left Griffin unharmed, it spelled a tragic end for West, who would die two years later from the injury. It was also a tragedy for Lavette, who � at the tender age of 17 � took up the reins of her career. Remember, this was the �60s, and the opportunities for women were thin at best, much less for a girl not yet 18.
After West�s death, Lavette made her way out to New York and sat down with Jerry Wexler and demanded to be released from her contract.

Wexler obliged, begrudgingly, as he had just matched Lavette with a new young producer and songwriter named Burt Bacharach.

Wexler�s Bacharach carrot didn�t tempt Lavette. Conceivably, Lavette�s career could�ve taken a Dionne Warwick-like trajectory.

�He wasn�t the Burt Bacharach you know now,� Lavette says. �He had one record, I had one. There�s no way you could look upside his head and tell who he was going to be.�

Lavette�s instincts led her to a two-year stint at Small�s Paradise in Manhattan where she was a featured vocalist with the Don Gardner and Dee Dee Ford review. It was her first real education in stage showmanship.
With Lavette in mind, Ford penned �Let Me Down Easy,� which became a Top 20 R&B hit in 1965 on Calla Records. In the ensuing years, the tune became Lavette�s bread and butter. She has recorded fast versions, slow versions, disco versions and live versions. With its aching plea for a gentle end to a soured love affair, �Let Me Down Easy� embodies the ethos of what has become known as soul music. In three minutes, Lavette begs, screams and demands a show of kindness from an ex-lover.

Pounding the stage for two years at Small�s gave Lavette the ammo she needed to put together a ballistic live show, which she carried with her when she left New York for Detroit in 1968.

�Betty didn�t need a record,� Rice says. �She�s got the glamour and she�s got the style and she knows what she�s doing and she�s loving it, and that�s what I love about her.�

Instead of returning home a conquering heroine like many of the Motown artists packing the Roostertail and the Fox Theatre then, Lavette�s out-of-town successes and polished stage show went virtually unnoticed.
�The people in Detroit � my audience � is primarily black,� Lavette says. �And when whites started coming into the city and knowing the clubs, I wasn�t there. So when I came back they didn�t know me. They only knew Motown.�

While Lavette�s career turns insured home-turf obscurity, the singer stayed her course.

Her 1970s recording sessions took her to Memphis and to Alabama�s famed Muscle Shoals studio. She worked with everyone from Leland Rogers (brother to Kenny) to Memphis cult-hero Jim Dickinson during his stint with the Dixie Flyers.

Then she turned away from pop music and became a cast member in Broadway�s Bubbling Brown Sugar. Onstage, alongside the likes of Cab Calloway, Lavette learned show business inside and out in a completely different arena. Lavette still regards her Broadway stint as one of her best career moves.

�That�s the most fun I�ve ever had,� she says. �When I got into show business I thought of it from a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers point of view. Lena Horne in long black gloves and big, big stages, and that was it.�
Although many of her �70s recordings were shelved, forgotten or otherwise neglected, Lavette managed to release �Your Turn To Cry� on Atco in 1972, which she considers, alongside of �Let Me Down Easy,� the best representation of her work until last year�s Just Like A Woman.

Lavette and Giles Petard (a huge Lavette fan and an owner of a small French label called Art & Soul) compiled 14 sides culled from the singer�s Atco and Atlantic sessions for a 2000 album Souvenirs.
That feat of detective work, which involved a lengthy search on Petard�s part for the �lost� tapes that Lavette was sure were destroyed in a fire in Atlantic�s vaults, may not have happened had interest in her career not been rekindled by the earlier release of a live set, Let Me Down Easy, on another small Euro label.

Although she may have been nearly invisible for years, Lavette never took her hands off the mic. At 16, she set out to become a singer, and 42 years later she continues to ply the trade, with both a teenager�s enthusiasm and a grandmother�s wisdom.

�Anytime people don�t hear from you for a long time they think you�ve either taken a day gig or got strung out on drugs, but I have always done this,� Lavette says.
Still, she remembers many nights spent whiling the time away in Detroit�s Locker Room bar, where she was often perched on a bar stool with Pervis Jackson of the Spinners, a Detroit group that bubbled-under for 15 years before breaking big in the 1970s.

�I�d say, �How in the hell did you hold on all that time when the Tops were making it and the Tempts were making it. Everyone was making it all around you and you were starving to death?�
�And Jackson said, �Do you know how to do anything else?� And I said, �Hell no.��
For more than 40 years, Lavette�s been pumping her change into the music industry�s slot machine, hoping for the big payoff.

What�s remarkable is the woman�s ability to be a shouter while gingerly adopting the soft, melodious vocal technique of a jazz singer. She can get down and dirty onstage too. Outright nasty even. Her vocal cords have been stretched to the limit and her body�s been danced to death � and she�s far from retiring the dancing shoes.

�I�m still able to do a lot of dance movements in my show which most of my contemporaries who are almost 60 years old aren�t doing,� Lavette says.
Her skills have not gone unnoticed by local performers� Thornetta Davis and Norma Jean Bell, who owe Lavette a nod for her unflagging devotion to craft and her inspirational role as one of the top female vocalists to ever come out of Detroit.

�I am a person who studies performers,� says Bell, who was a teenager when she first saw Lavette. �And I always learn what to do and what not to do, and she�s a real show person. I think that that�s what has kept her around because her records don�t always sell well. ��
When Lavette refers to show business, she speaks in the abstract � almost bitterly � as if the music business is some stubborn Goliath that she�s determined to fell.
�I�ve given it everything I have,� Lavette says.
She cites Tina Turner as inspiration: �Her first records came out just a couple of years before mine, and I know how she feels now when I see her holding her stomach in and twisting and twirling.

�I know that she feels beat on when she gets off the stage like I do, but she had to do it because the business owed her money. She�d given it her whole life and they were finally offering her some money. She couldn�t quit then. I can�t quit now.�

With the release of A Woman Like Me, Lavette is again poised for real recognition, and whether she leaves Memphis with a Handy award or not, the music cries out for a listen.

The album, while unfortunately a swan song for Lavette�s musical director Rudy Robinson, is perhaps the first full-length studio work that the singer can call her own. Tell Me A Lie, the 1982 record she recorded for Motown, netted another successful single with �Right In The Middle (Of Falling in Love),� but the middle-of-the-road pop album, which flopped, was not a true representation of the singer. Befitting of Ripley�s Believe It Or Not!, A Woman Like Me took approximately 40 years to make.

Though producer Dennis Walker � whose list of credits includes Robert Cray and B.B. King � penned the lion�s share of tunes on the album, they were handpicked and adapted by Lavette.

�He had a tune called �You Left Me Lonely� and I said, �No one has ever left me lonely,�� Lavette says. �So I rewrote the song and changed it to �A Woman Like Me.� He was just like, �You�ve never won anything. I�ve won three Grammy awards and you�re just taking my tunes and decimating them.� He let me do everything I wanted, that was the first time I�ve ever done that in a studio.�

So far, A Woman Like Me has collected accolades, and things are looking good. Ry Cooder, in fact, wants to include Lavette in a future film and recording project.
Looking back over a storied career that has associated her with a bevy of record labels including National, Lupine, Big Wheel, Cameo-Parkway, Atlantic, Calla, Karen, Silver Fox, Atco, Epic, Street King, Bar None, a brief stint with Motown in the 1980s, and, most, recently Blues Express, Lavette speaks with worlds of experience, as the new record shows. It�s a record by a women who knows the routes to bottom and to the top.

By Mike Murphy
Freelance Writer
www.metrotimes.com

Soul Legend Bettye LaVette signs to ANTI-

Wed, 06 Apr 2005 00:04:00 -0700

Bettye Lavette, one of the supreme voices in soul music, has been signed by Anti- Records. Her first album for the label will be released in the autumn.

Ms. Lavette will be working with artist and producer Joe Henry, who was also responsible for Solomon Burke�s Grammy-winning �Don�t Give Up On Me� album in 2002. Recording sessions are scheduled to start in May.

This will be the latest chapter in a long musical career that started at the age of 16 with a tune called �My Man � He�s a Lovin� Man�, recorded by Bettye in 1962 for the small Detroit-based label, Lupine. The record was picked up by Atlantic Records, the first of many nationwide record labels for whom Bettye Lavette recorded during the Sixties and Seventies.

Dave Godin, the esteemed English soul music writer and archivist, claimed: �There are dozens of really top-drawer female Soul singers in what is a highly competitive field, but few can match the flawless totality of conveyed experience that Bettye Lavette never fails to achieve.

�She is the consummate artist who can relate on every level. Take Bettye Lavette away from Soul music�s history and there is a gap which no other person I can think of could have filled�.

Although she never achieved the level of commercial success her extraordinary talents deserved, Bettye Lavette�s music has long since made an indelible impression on soul fans around the world � in the UK, for instance, she was one of the pivotal artists in the 1970�s Northern Soul movement.

Among the labels for which she has recorded are Motown, Scepter, Atco, Epic, Silver Fox, West End, SSS International and Street King. Her classic tunes include �Piece of My Heart� � a recording that clearly influenced Janis Joplin�s version of the song � and �Your Turn To Cry�, a mesmerizing deep soul performance released as a single by Atlantic�s Atco label in 1972.

Anti-Records is also the label home of such artists as Tom Waits, Jolie Holland, Daniel Lanois as well as the aforementioned Solomon Burke album. Says Anti president, Andy Kaulkin, �The consistent quality of Bettye�s work over the last 40+ years is amazing to me. From her creative song choices to the fire of her performances. she has always stood apart. This great artist has been seriously slept on, and we want to do everything we can to change that.�

For more information, visit Bettye's official website at the link below.