Criminally overlooked for a period of time, Bettye LaVette is enjoying a renewed visit to the spotlight. Despite a fiery stage presence on par with Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner and Etta James, LaVette never made the big time. She did have a few R&B chart hits, namely "My Man – He's a Lovin' Man" and "Let Me Down Easy" (her theme song today).
In the early '70s, she recorded an exceptional album called Child Of The Seventies for Atlantic that inexplicably got shelved (it was issued by Rhino Handmade in 2006). Afterwards, she produced some moderately successful singles across the years and enjoyed a run on Broadway (in the Tony-nominated Bubbling Brown Sugar with Cab Calloway), but otherwise fell below the radar.
LaVette resurfaced in 2003 with A Woman Like Me, which nabbed her a W.C. Handy Award for Best Blues Comeback Album. 2005's I've Got My Own Hell To Raise — produced by Joe Henry and featuring material by Lucinda Williams, Johnny Cash and Sinéad O'Connor, and a genius crew of young turk session players — gained her even more attention. In 2007, The Scene Of The Crime, laid down at Muscle Shoal's Fame Studios, is anchored by LaVette's authentically road-weary, hard-luck voice. Backed by young Southern rockers Drive-By Truckers (the disc also features Muscle Shoals standbys Spooner Oldham and David Hood, father of DBT's Patterson Hood, and a session player on Child Of The Seventies), the CD is filled with treacly, vintage guitars and plinky piano straight outta '70s Alabama — making it a perfect kiss between soul music's past and present.
Provenance: Muskegon, Michigan, though she was mostly raised in Detroit.
Latest release: The Scene Of The Crime (2007)
© 2007 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.
Bettye Lavette
