Bettye LaVette is a true legend with a musical career spanning more than 60 years, she is now rightly recognized as one of the finest vocalists and one of the great interpreters of song. Her discography spans five decades, but it is within the past decade that she has finally been recognized as one of America’s finest vocal talents.6

Bettye’s Got A New Band!

Bettye's new band: new band. Rich Pagano on drums and music director, Ann Klein on guitar, John Conte on bass, and Etienne Stadwijk on keyboards.

Message From Bettye

JOY!!! I am excited to announce the formation of my new band. Rich Pagano on drums and music director, Ann Klein on guitar, John Conte on bass, and Etienne Stadwijk on keyboards.

I take especially great pleasure in welcoming Ann to the new band. It is the first time that I EVER had a female musician in the band. And she is just great.

We rehearsed at Euphoria Studios in NYC and it went extremely well.

I’m looking forward to our first gig in Avon, Colorado at the Blues, Brews & BBQ Festival this Sunday.

Pretty late in the day to be forming new bands, but they are wonderful, and I am very, very pleased. Looking forward to y’all seeing us in a venue by you soon.

Next show with the band is The Iridium on July 11th. Looking forward to many more.

Bettye Got Gold!

Message From Bettye

In 2022, the electronic music duo Odesza released a recording called The Last Goodbye. They built this new song around my recording of Let Me Down Easy. They contacted me before it’s release and offered me half of the song rights. I was flattered. You can hear and see the official video for the song here. That’s me on Shindig in 1965 on the screen!

So here we are, three years later, sixty years after recording the song, and I receive this beautifuly framed gold record in the mail…my very first.

I can’t thank Harrison Mills and Clayton Knight enough.

I guess good things DO come to those who wait!

I am truly grateful.

Bettye Joins Rolling Stones Tour

Bettye LaVette is excited to join the STONES TOUR ‘24 HACKNEY DIAMONDS as a guest artist in Chicago, IL on Thursday, June 27 at Soldier Field. For tickets and information, please visit www.rollingstones.com.

“I’ve been waiting for them to call for sixty years. They finally found my number!” says the legendary Bettye LaVette. Hailed by The New York Times as “one of the great soul interpreters of her generation, Bettye is a soul survivor who burst onto the Detroit scene in 1962, and her latest LP, the Grammy-nominated LaVette!, is her third with producer Steve Jordan. “Bettye LaVette is like a combination of Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Miles Davis,” says Jordan. “When Bettye gets a hold of a song, it becomes her song. It’s like she wrote it. She’s a great messenger.” During what Bettye calls her ‘Fifth Career,’ she has recorded The Stones “Salt of the Earth” (2010) and “Complicated” (2015), and Keith Richards plays guitar on her versions of “It Ain’t Me Babe” (2018) and “Political World” (2018).

The Rolling Stones are going back on the road with a brand-new tour performing in 16 cities across the U.S. and Canada.

Upcoming Tours

Betty Jo Haskins was born January 29,1946, in Muskegon, Michigan. The afamily moved to Detroit when she was six years old. Her parents sold corn liquor and her living room was oft-times visited by The Soul Stirrers, The Blind Boys of Mississippi, and many other traveling gospel groups of the day. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Bettye did not get her start in the church, but in that very same living room, where there was a jukebox, filled with the blues, country & western, and R&B records of the time. The “5” Royales, Dinah Washington, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Red Foley, …these were her roots.

The story behind Bettye LaVette’s Blackbirds is similar to many albums that were due for release in 2020. It was her sophomore record for Verve. It was an album of mostly songs that were associated with female R&B singers who came before her: Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Nancy Wilson, etc. Steve Jordan, who Produced her Things Have Changed album of Bob Dylan songs, was again on board as Producer and drummer.

It was recorded in 2019 and was scheduled for a March 2020 release date. A promo tour of the Northeast and the midwest was booked. All was well…and then, the pandemic began, forcing the tour to re-schedule for the fall of 2020, also pushing back the release date to August. Then the fall 2020 tour was re-scheduled for fall 2021, and then that was rescheduled to the current dates of Feb 2022! In the meantime, Blackbirds received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album.

So this is the “promo” tour for Blackbirds, albeit two years later. Bettye and her band will be performing songs from the album, along with other songs from her catalogue. They will be performing the entire album, plus others, at The Blue Note.

Her latest Grammy-nominated album, Worthy, features 11 songs composed by writers such as Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, John Lennon & Paul McCartney, Mickey Newbury, Beth Nielsen Chapman & Mary Gauthier (who wrote the album title track) and producer Joe Henry among others.

Congratulation to Bettye LaVette for winning Best Soul Blues Female Artist of 2016
at The Blues Music Awards on May 5, 2016, in Memphis, Tennessee.

In memory of Bryan James, my original webmaster. Thanks so much to Jenn Bryant for taking over the task.