Bettye LaVette and Me...

It was the gigs. When you signed a contract, you only got about 1½ percent. The royalties were not a big deal anyway. They’ve become a big deal during the last, maybe, twenty-five years, when artists have become involved in writing, producing, owning part of this and owning all of that. Back then you knew, if the record was big, you were going to work all the time. That was what you looked forward to, and it wasn’t television then. Especially for black artists, you had to do a lot to get an album and to go on TV, it wasn’t a given. I never went on television until "Let Me Down Easy." When I was on Shindig (in 1965), I was just standing there very still. I was very frightened, I didn’t even move my head.

Bettye LaVette

I was ashamed to sing it, because it sounded so old. I wanted to sound like Little Eva and the Shirelles, but this was all I was offered, so I had to do it, but I was very embarrassed, and I never got the opportunity to do the kind of shows they were doing. I was always at a nightclub because of the nature of the song. I was always with older performers. I had been singing for fifteen years, before I met the Shirelles and Chubby Checker... My mother was thrilled. No one in the family had ever done anything. No one had actually held a hundred-dollar bill, no one had ever travelled. They thought that we had been saved. They were very thrilled.

Bettye LaVette, sixteen years old singing "My Man, He's A Loving Man"

Things Have Changed (2018) signed by Bettye

Dee Dee Ford was very ill at the time, mentally, and was slowly having a nervous breakdown. She was very sad about this trumpet player, who was her man, and she started to write "Let Me Down Easy," so I helped her write the song. When they asked to write down the credits who wrote it, I just said ‘give my part to her.' I didn’t know you get money from these things for years and years and years. I think I wrote maybe three or four lines, but gosh! – today three or four lines... So as a result she winds up being the only writer on it.

Bettye LaVette

I wrote our most famous song, ‘Nights in White Satin’ when I was nineteen. It was a series of random thoughts and was quite autobiographical. It was a very emotional time as I was at the end of one big love affair and the start of another. A lot of that came out in the song. She (Bettye LaVette) covered ‘Nights,’ and somebody sent it to me as an MP3, a link. I was sitting in bed with my laptop, waking up to my emails, and I clicked on this link, and I burst into tears. My wife came in, and she said, ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ And I said, ‘You’ve got to listen to this.’ She didn’t cry, but I heard the lyric for the first time. There have been hundreds, maybe thousands of covers of ‘Nights in White Satin,’ but that was the first time I heard it for real.

Justin Heyward, Moody Blues singer-songwriter and ardent Bettye Lavette fan

Let Me Down Easy: In Memphis (1960s recordings, 2022 release) signed by Bettye

Bettye LaVette is not only a soul singer sensation, she is a survivor with a career lasting more than sixty years. Judging by her recent appearance at the Iridium on December 13, 2023, she has no intention of slowing down. She was in great voice and her lithe figure dismissed any notion of a senior citizen hobbling or slouching toward retirement. She was seventy-seven years young and electric, prowling the stage, fertile and fecund, enthralling the audience. She was showcasing her new album, LaVette!, a collection of songs written by Randall Bramblett, which is up for a Grammy, her seventh nomination. As Bettye quipped during the show, "I hope I win, I don't wanna be the Susan Lucci of the Grammys!" Bettye defies categorization like few singers: elements of blues, country, gospel, rock and soul inhabit her gruff and expressive vocals. In many ways, she is the best kept soul secret hiding in plain sight.

Born Betty Jo Haskins in Muskegon, Michigan (near a harbor of Lake Michigan), Bettye was raised in Detroit, "When I was two, we left there for Detroit. My early life was spent in an atmosphere where there was always music playing, but I’m one of the few singers that did not come out of the church.” Her parents had moved from Louisiana as part of the Great Migration decades earlier in search of better opportunities, "My family was in the corn liquor business, and I’m the only person in the family who was involved in music." Unfortunately, Bettye's father died when she was twelve, a casualty of having too much free and unfettered access to said corn liquor. Not the first nor the last time that John Barleycorn won. He always wins.

There was lots of music around the Haskins house, as Bettye recalled, ”You could call my mother ‘a gospel groupie.' Because gospel singers drank so much, they stayed at my house quite a bit, to be there to drink, so I had the opportunity as a small kid to know and see the Five Blind Boys, Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers and others. Everybody was always happy. It was a very happy atmosphere. It was fun. Even then I would dance and sing for them, so I’ve always known old songs. When most children didn’t even talk, I knew entire songs. I really didn’t grow up with gospel, because I didn’t go to church to see those gospel people. I saw them at my house.” She was also friendly with Aretha Franklin and her father the Reverend C.L. Franklin, sharing a deep Detroit gospel and soul bond.

Initially, Bettye was influenced by the phrasing and voices of Bobby Bland and Sam Cooke "and musicals... All I knew about singing was this big stage, the dancing and Fred Astaire, which is one reason why I hated my voice for so long, because it didn’t sound like Ginger Rogers. But I liked all of the musicals, anyone who sang in a movie. I always knew I could sing, and I’ve always sung, but I didn’t know I could do it as a profession until maybe a month before "My Man - He's A Loving Man" came out (in 1962 when she was sixteen)."

Blackbirds (2020) signed by Bettye

Bettye's name change happened around this time. She was good friends with Sherma "Ginger" Lavett Anderson who was active on the booming music scene, as Bettye explained, ”She was a local groupie. She knew all the entertainers, and I wanted to know them, so she introduced me to Timmy Shaw and to all of them. Although I was no one at the time, I met people like the Temptations, who were the Distants then. I began to hang around with Ginger, and they just kinda blocked me out of it and said ‘you don’t have to be a groupie, you can join us’. Timmy Shaw took me to meet Johnnie Mae Matthews. They liked me, but I knew I didn’t sound like Bobby Bland. I knew I didn’t sound like Etta James. It was a long time before I accepted my voice. I guess about the time I went to Muscle Shoals in the early 70s, I began to realise the power of my voice and that it was okay I didn’t sound like all the girls. It was okay, I sounded like James Brown.”

In the ensuing decades, Bettye's career was marked by near hits and many misses. Her first single recorded in 1962 "My Man, He's A Loving Man" was a Top Ten R&B hit for the Northern Recording Company, a label owned by Johnnie Mae Matthews, a singer, songwriter and producer who was also the first black female to own a record company in the rough hewn Detroit music scene, a formidable task. Bettye remembered her toughness, "She was ‘a truck driver’ – really rough, really mean, just a really hard woman. At that time, I guess, she was maybe around thirty-five, but that was old to me, because I was only sixteen. She was a hustling kind of a woman, very manlike. She was not respected, but everybody (she) knew she had crossed somewhat. She was the only one, who had a connection to outside of Detroit, but there was no one at her funeral...The thing with "My Man" actually happened in a few weeks’ time. One week I was a groupie, the next week I was already there.”

The road beckoned with incessant touring and Bettye ended up in New York recording her next big hit, "Let Me Down Easy." Bettye remembered the unusual circumstances, ”Fortunately, in New York I was surrounded by people, who wanted to help me. Nate McCalla, who owned Calla Records, actually worked for the mafia, I found out later that they gave him Calla Records. He and I just became really good friends, but he knew nothing about the record business. He was asking me, should we do this? Should we do that? When we did "Let Me Down Easy," they asked me what I wanted. The only arranger that I had heard of was Dale Warren, and they flew him (in) from Detroit. I asked for violins, because I’d never had any violins. I probably should have just asked for straight money, but Nate just adored me, and I didn’t know they were gangsters.”

Tell Me A Lie (1982) signed by Bettye

Her next big break (and bust) came when she signed with Atco in 1972, a division of the storied Atlantic Records, the home of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding. They released one single recorded in Detroit, a jaunty, swinging cover of Neil Young's "Heart Of Gold." You might think a dour Neil Young song might not be the best subject matter for a soul singer, and you would probably be right. Brad Shapiro, a gifted producer of Wilson Pickett and James Brown renown, suggested that they go to Muscle Shoals, Alabama and record an entire album with the fearsome rhythm section of Jimmy Johnson, Barry Beckett, David Hood and Roger Hawkins, known affectionately as The Swampers, so respected and revered that they were even name checked in Lynyrd Skynyrd's opus "Sweet Home Alabama" in 1974:

"Now, Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers
And they've been known to pick a song or two
Lord, they get me off so much
They pick me up when I'm feeling blue
Now, how 'bout you?"

Bettye recalled the joy of working with them, ”It was very, very easy working with them. They were the most laid-back guys. We’d sit around for a while, smoke joints and then they’d say ‘Well, let’s record one, how you wanna sing it, baby?' I’d start singing and they’d follow one at a time and everybody would get their part. Then they would go out alone, work out their part, come back and then we would do the head arrangement.”

The studio at 3614 Jackson Highway (the title of a Cher album which she recorded there in 1969!) was not sumptuously appointed, as Bettye divulged, ”The roof was thin, and everytime it rained we couldn’t record. We rehearsed those days. It was just the most ragged little place. We would sit on the floor, but it was very laid-back. They didn’t charge you by the hour, and sometimes you were in for twelve-fifteen hours." The album was set for release, then it was shelved for reasons that were never revealed, though Bettye had her opinion, ”My biggest disappointment is that album that didn’t come out. That was supposed to be my first album, and I thought I had all the components – Atlantic, Brad Shapiro, the Muscle Shoals Sound, the songs – and when they decided not to release it, which I know now was because of Ahmet Ertegun, I was devastated." It's incomprehensible that Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Records and purveyor of exquisite taste, would have made such a terrible error in judgment but Child Of The Seventies languished in storage until the tapes were retrieved and subsequently released in 2006, nearly thirty-five years after they were originally recorded.

The Scene Of The Crime (2007) signed by Bettye

By this time, Bettye had resuscitated her career with critically acclaimed albums and producers like Joe Henry who collaborated with her on I've Got My Own Hell To Raise (a collection of songs written by Fiona Apple, Sinead O'Connor, Dolly Parton, Lucinda Williams) and Patterson Hood on The Scene Of The Crime (with songs by Elton John, Don Henley, John Hiatt and Willie Nelson). Her career was kicked up several notches when she performed in 2008 at The Kennedy Center Honors in a tribute to The Who, with surviving members Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend in the audience. Bettye sang a spellbinding "Love Reign O'er Me" to the delight of the rapturous audience and awestruck honorees. By all accounts, it was the highlight of the evening and the subsequently released television show!

I was blessed to see Bettye at The Iridium in New York City on December 13, 2023. She had a talented band with her: Tom West on keyboards and Hammond B3, Marc Hickox on bass, Bobby Keyes on guitar, and her music director Marco Giovino on drums. The band was tight and they opened with a swampy "Things Have Changed," off her eponymous album released in 2018 dedicated to all things Bob Dylan. Other highlights were "I Hold No Grudge," "I've Got My Own Hell To Raise," and "Joy," a Lucinda Williams classic. Though Bettye doesn't write many of her songs, she is the rare interpreter who completely inhabits and envelops a song to make it her own.

Thankful N’ Thoughtful (2007) signed by Bettye

She mentioned that she was so happy to be back at the Iridium, near the Brill Building where so many songwriters. churned out hit after hit, not just Carole King and Gerry Goffin, and Mike Lieber and Jerry Stoller, but also her friends Don Covay and Van McCoy who later wrote "The Hustle," a number one hit in 1976. At the time, they were just struggling songwriters, wishing and hoping to catch a break, As Bettye reminisced, she forgot Van's big hit, and laughed, "You know, I suffer from CRS...can't remember shit!" No matter, she didn't forget any lyrics and brought down the house with her version of "Let Me Down Easy," a song that was sampled by EDM stars ODESZA, which has over 50 million streams since it was released in 2022 as "The Last Goodbye." With Spotify's challenging accounting, it's prolly added $5,000 or so, a mere pittance to Bettye's coffers! She finished the show by singing "It's Alright," another new track off LaVette!, and she roamed all over the club exhorting and imploring the audience with the healing refrain, "It's alright, It's alright, It's alright..." Indeed it was.

Bettye walking the floor! The Iridium, NYC 12.13.2023

After the show. I asked her husband and tour manager Kevin Kiley if she wouldn't mind signing a couple records. He saw the stack of seven or eight, "Yeah, she's not gonna sign all those, pick two." 'Yeah, that's gonna be tough,' I said, flipping through the albums, 'They're all great, how can I pick just two?' "Yeah, ok, I hear you, gimme three and I'll be back," Kevin grabbed three and he headed behind the curtain to secure the signatures. After a few minutes, Kevin reappeared and opened the curtain and said, "Listen, it's mellow back here tonight, why don't you come back and get the rest of them signed." He didn't have to ask twice. Bettye was seated, a well deserved rest after a gripping and energetic ninety minute show. I thanked her for her music and wished her well in her elusive Grammy pursuit. She was happy to sign her records, and when she saw The Scene Of The Crime, she said, "You know, there aren't many of these, this is a limited edition." She smiled when she saw the Elmore James tribute album, "This was done for his hundredth birthday, that was a lot of fun," Her husband Kevin said, "You know Marco produced that album," pointing to his drummer in the corner, "You should have him sign it as well." Well, that was fortuitous, yes that sounds like a great idea. When I handed it to Marco, I said, 'I already had Rodney Crowell sign it.' "Oh, he's a great songwriter and a really nice guy as well. That was a great session," Marco confided as he handed it back to me. 'You know,' I continued, 'the only problem I had with Rodney was after the show, he was wearing an Astros shirt. I hate the Astros, I'm an unrepentant Sawx fan.' Kevin said, "You're right at home here, the whole band is with you!" An unexpected delight, reveling in the company of fellow massholes, I thanked Bettye and, especially Kevin for their kindness and generosity.

Strange Angels In Flight With Elmore James (2018) signed by Bettye, Rodney Crowell, Marco Giovino

It's amazing the resurgence that Bettye Lavette has experienced over the past twenty years, releasing ten albums with seven Grammy nods, and guest artists flocking to play with her including Keith Richards, John Mayer, Stevie Winwood, and Jon Batiste. It's been so well deserved and earned. "In The Meantime," a track off her new album, Bettye sings, "I'm dreamin' dreams of my used to be, tellin' everybody I'll be just fine..." Bettye's been through so much, and she's more than fine, much, much more.

Peace and blessings to Bettye LaVette and Kevin Kiley!