Bettye LaVette is no mere singer. She is an interpreter of the highest order. Whether the song originated as country, rock, pop, or blues, when she gets through with it, it is pure R&B. She gets inside a song and shapes and twists it to convey all of the emotion that can be wrought from the lyric.
LaVette is one of very few of her contemporaries who were recording during the birth of soul music in the 1960s and is still creating vital recordings today.
Her career began in 1962, at the age of 16, in Detroit. Her first single “My Man — He’s A Loving Man,” was released on Atlantic Records. She recorded for numerous labels, including Atco, Epic, and Motown, and worked alongside Charles “Honi” Coles and Cab Calloway in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, “Bubbling Brown Sugar.”
The 2000s started what LaVette calls her “fifth career.” Her CD, A Woman Like Me, won the W.C. Handy Award in 2004 for Comeback Blues Album of the Year. She was also given a prestigous Pioneer Award by The Rhythm & Blues Foundation. She recorded four CDs for hipster indie label ANTI-Records over the course of eight years, two of which received Grammy nominations.
LaVette has received the Blues Music Award for Best Contemporary Female Blues Singer, and performed at The Kennedy Center Honors in a tribute to The Who. She then performed “A Change Is Gonna Come” with Jon Bon Jovi for President-elect Barack Obama on HBO’s telecast of the kick-off inaugural celebratory concert, We Are One.
2012 marked LaVette’s 50th year in show business, and she also released her no-holds-barred autobiography, “A Woman Like Me.” In 2016, her most recent CD, Worthy, garnered her a third Grammy nomination. She also received the Blues Music Award for Best Soul Blues Female Artist.
LaVette will be performing at Landmark on Main Street’s Jeanne Rimsky Theatre on Saturday, Dec. 16 at 8 p.m. This intimate show allows her voice to be the center of attention. LaVette will performs songs from throughout her 55-year career, including ones that she used to perform in small Detroit clubs before her 21st-century resurgence began.
LaVette has always said that just a voice and one instrument is all you need to sell a song. Hearing her sing in this setting, stripped down to just her voice and a piano, is sure to be an intense and moving experience.
