PAST DUES Bettye LaVette's new album gives her career a much-needed boost

Veteran soulstress Bettye LaVette seems as giddy as a schoolgirl as she settles in for our chat. "I'm really going to play a club in New York!" says the 57-year-old resident of Detroit, in an authoritative, after-hours rasp that makes her unbridled enthusiasm seem even more out of character. 

Though admirably humble, LaVette's assessment downplays her résumé. It's true that her latest album, A Woman Like Me, is easily the finest of her nearly 40-year career, but perusing the highlights of her time in showbiz suggests that LaVette's gifts as an old-school R&B song stylist have been evident ever since the mid-'60s, when she hit the R&B charts with "Let Me Down Easy" and "He Made a Woman Out of Me." In the meantime, her skills have taken her through ill-fated contracts with Motown and Atlantic, among other prominent labels, and even landed her on Broadway in the 1979 revue Bubbling Brown Sugar.

If anything, the singer's obscurity - most of her recordings are only available in Europe - is something of a cautionary tale for those who think a worthy singer needs little more than good songs and the producer of the moment to strike gold. "At one time or another, I've recorded for every major label except Capitol and Mercury," LaVette says, even as she disses much of her output. "Yes, I've made some bad records, but there's no denying the quality of the songs, which I always handpicked myself."

A Woman Like Me finds the singer's track record for fine tunes intact. It's chock-full of songs written by co-producer Dennis Walker, whom pop fans will recognize as the catalyst behind soulful blues star Robert Cray's success. That's how LaVette came to turn Cray's "Right Next Door" from a tale of uneasy male braggadocio to one of unflinching female guilt. "It was the only song of Dennis' I knew when we made contact four or five years ago, and even though I had to tailor it to a woman's point of view, I knew I wanted to do it," she says. "I had to do the same for the title track because it had kind of a 'man done me wrong / if you leave me I'll die' thing that I just can't identify with. If you listen to the songs, they all say things like 'we are in love,' or 'cheat on me muthuh, and I will leave yo' ass!' When it came to altering them, Dennis just said, 'Do what you have to, baby.' "

However, LaVette has another explanation for the new disc's leap to brilliance. "I wanted a CD that captures me the way I do my show, which I've never done before," she explains. Appropriately, the disc plays like a hip night out at a contemporary juke joint, with a mix of mid-tempo boogie and ballads driven by Walker collaborator Alan Mirikitani's scintillating guitar. On riveting slow pieces like "Thru the Winter," "It Ain't Worth It After Awhile" and "Close as I'll Get to Heaven," LaVette's handle on the lyrics is so sure that her gritty timbre sounds strangely elegant. "My longtime keyboardist and music director Rudy Robinson died shortly after we finished the album," she says, "but I thank God he lived long enough to lay it down exactly the way we've been doing it for years on the road. What you hear is what people have always gotten when they come to see us live."

Interestingly enough, LaVette feels her lack of a commercial breakthrough thus far may have enhanced her live act. "I've developed a pretty big repertoire because the records never dictated my show," she muses, "so I didn't have to be Diana [Ross] singing something like 'Baby Love' forever, or Chubby Checker doing 'The Twist.' Plus, now I know that I'm really worthy of the treatment I thought I deserved decades ago, which is great because, like I said before, New York's a town that don't take no shit." Out comes an animated chuckle. "It's the one place where you've gotta be absolutely great - or at least be really great at the lie you're telling."  A Woman Like Me is out on Blues Express.

C. Time Out New York, July 2003
http://www.timeoutny.com/rock/408/408.music.bettye.opener.html

Helped immeasurably by producer/songwriter Dennis Walker, best known for his breakout work with Robert Cray, LaVette moans, screams, shouts, pleads, and growls her way through a dozen tracks that'll leave even the most jaded R&B fan begging for more. One of the casualties of music biz politics, LaVette has a style that has only sharpened with age. In her mid-fifties at the time of this recording, the singer has a husky voice that tears at the edges, adding deeper emotion. Although the production leans toward the slick side, it leaves room for the singer to dominate each track. Walker, who wrote or co-wrote nine of these tunes, provides heart-tugging yet defiant material perfect for LaVette's take-no-prisoners approach.

The singer plays the part of the scorned, aggressive woman, left behind but strong enough to know she's better off without that no-good scoundrel. Song tiles such as "Salt in My Wounds," "Serves Him Right," and "It Ain't Worth It After a While" tell the story without having to hear a lyric. LaVette squeezes every ounce of emotion from this material, lashing into it with a barely contained explosive delight.

Like a stage actress, she builds up the tension gradually until igniting in a shower of yelps and repeated phrases similar to Otis Redding at his most impassioned. This is a powerful album - moving, intense, and honest - from an artist desperately making up for lost time. It's a success for everyone involved, and deserves to put Bettye LaVette back on American stages where she belongs.

Hal Horowitz www.allmusic.com

Bettye LaVette is the best R&B singer you've never heard of. That's partly because she's never had a widely promoted album or performed in the Twin Cities during her four decades in the music business.

But the singer - who has toured with Otis Redding, shared a Broadway stage with Cab Calloway and had Little Stevie Wonder write a song for her - has never stopped working. "There was no period in which I had to stop because I was strung out on drugs. No companies took all of my money. I didn't live in any cars," said LaVette, who sings this week at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. "I've remained a singer for the whole 42 years. I've never had another gig."

LaVette has been signed to several big record labels, including Atlantic and Motown, but says she never made a "good" album, and never had "savvy management." The business setbacks, she says, were enough to give her the blues that no man ever did. However, things began to turn around for LaVette last year after she hooked up with the Rosebud Agency, which also books Mavis Staples, Robert Cray and Booker T. Jones, and released "A Woman Like Me," her first U.S. album since 1982.

"The best record Robert Cray never made," the San Francisco Chronicle declared of LaVette's CD, which was produced and written by Dennis Walker, who was responsible for Cray's blues hits. It's gritty, powerful, timeless R&B, featuring three tunes Cray has recorded, including "Right Next Door." He can't touch LaVette for searing intensity and down-so-low soul. Maybe no singer can.

"Pure, magnificent soul," the New York Times raved about LaVette's Big Apple nightclub performance last year. And that only referred to the night's first number. The review led to a call from Ry Cooder, who wanted to produce an album for LaVette.

LaVette doesn't have a press agent to get critics to the shows or arrange interviews. If you want to talk to her, leave a message for her manager of the past 15 years, who makes calls for LaVette after his shifts as a supervisor at Ford Motor Co. in Detroit. ("He can count faster than I can, and he can look really mean -- and I can't," she says.)

LaVette, who will turn 58 next week, is comfortable with her grassroots approach.That's how she hooked up with producer Walker. She had been corresponding with a fan who collected her singles and her two albums from the early '80s. It turned out that he ran Shanachie, a world-music label, and he introduced her to Walker and Blues Express, a tiny San Francisco label.

"For the first time, I was involved in everything, right down to the mix," she said of the album. "Dennis let me put in any sass or any pure Bettye LaVette that I wanted to. Like the tune 'A Woman Like Me' was not even called that, and it was geared a completely different way. It was called 'You Left Me Lonely.' You may have left me, but I wasn't going to sit there and be lonely. He let me change what I wanted to change." She even reworked Walker's Grammy-winning "Right Next Door." Recalled LaVette: "Dennis said, 'God, the song was already sad. Now it's pitiful.' "

No gospel roots
One thing that sets LaVette apart from other R&B singers is that there's no church in her voice. Born in Muskegon, Mich., and raised in Detroit, she grew up in the Catholic Church so the only gospel music she heard was when the Soul Stirrers or the Blind Boys of Alabama literally came over to her family home and performed.

Because LaVette started singing as a teenager in the early '60s, she was compared to Etta James, who had started doing R&B as a teen in the '50s. However, LaVette said her musical influences have always been men -- Bobby Bland, Clyde McPhatter and Ray Charles and later Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. In 1962 at age 16, LaVette cut her first single, "My Man (He's a Lovin Man)," which climbed to No. 7 on the R&B charts. Three years later, she unleashed the explosive "Let Me Down Easy," another R&B hit. All told, she has released 28 singles on various labels, including Epic and Scepter. Her disco number "Doin' the Best I Can" was a club favorite in '78. In the 1980s, she was in the Broadway cast of "Bubbling Brown Sugar," featured on the songs "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "God Bless the Child."

Even though LaVette got married (and had a child) at 14, and just wed last year for a third time (to a New Jersey antiques dealer and R&B fan), she said she always has been married to her music. Hence, her relationships haven't necessarily fueled her singing. "I've never had any great man problems. I've not been a battered woman," said LaVette, who is proud that her daughter (a college teacher) and grandson are college graduates.

Instead, she says, "My career has pretty well beat me up. It's often put me in situations that were painful for me. "I tend to be melancholy anyway. I like blue days. I like B-flat minor chords. I can be sad about anything sad; it doesn't have to happen to me."

C. Jon Bream, Star Tribune, January 2004

www.startribune.com

Bettye LaVette: A Woman Like Me
 "The best female soul release in years"

Well, here it is only March and I hold in my hand the CD that will undoubtedly be my Best of the Year for 2003; Bettye LaVette's new CD is perhaps the best female soul release in years. A Woman Like Me (Blues Express) was produced by Dennis Walker who also produced all the early Robert Cray releases. Walker was a major contributor as a songwriter on all of those early releases too, so it is no wonder that he has written nine of the 12 songs here, including two, "The Forecast (Calls For Pain)" and "Right Next Door (Because Of Me)" each appearing on one of Cray's Mercury releases, with the latter's lyrics being used to title Cray's "Strong Persuader" release.

Enough talk about Robert Cray, though, since this is a Bettye LaVette release all the way - and what a release it is. As mentioned in the album's liner notes, this release is only the second time her talents have been showcased in a full length album. She first recorded in the early ' 60s and has had numerous single releases over the years with limited success. As is the case with so many of our soul/blues performers, she has a large following in Europe, prompting a 2000 live release from Germany coupled with a fine French release of her complete Atlantic/Atco recordings from the late '60s and early '70s. Both of these releases are well worth seeking out, as I am sure you will want to do after hearing this new release on Blues Express.

Seconds into the opening track, "Serves Him Right," you realize that the years have been good to her. Her voice is as strong and convincing as ever. When she growls out the lines "...He can go to hell for all I care..." you know you are in for an emotional experience. 12 tracks later, you are in awe of this newly rediscovered diva, and are bewildered that she has not been a major star. Hopefully that will change. The previously mentioned second track, "The Forecast," rivals Cray's performance. It is a well crafted song that works well in LaVette's hands. The track that follows, "Through The Winter," is an absolute jaw dropper - a slow burner wrought with as much emotion as a singer can deliver. What a trip! Song number four is the other Cray song, "Right Next Door," a cheating song on a par with the best of that genre. When she sings "...I was just another notch on his guitar. He made me lose the man who really loved me, he made me break my baby's heart...", mine broke too. Jumping to the sixth track, "Thinking About You," a sensuous song about a woman longing for her man. When she moans "hot," I break out in a sweat. What passion in her voice!

Only halfway through the album and I am already in love with her. Jumping once again to track number eight, "It Ain't Worth It", you hear Bettye in a different light, a torch song very much in the Billie Holiday mold. This track has some fine piano by the great Rudy Robinson who unfortunately passed away shortly after recording this album.

Track number nine, "When A Woman's Had Enough," is a great Dennis Walker tune also recorded by Shemekia Copeland on her new CD. If you want to hear how sensational Bettye LaVette is, compare those two tracks. We all know how great Shemekia is. Well, Bettye's version leaves Shemekia's in the dust. "Salt On My Wounds" has a fine sax intro and is another intense slow burner about lost love. Whew!

There isn't much more I can add to this review. If you aren't convinced by now, you never will be. Buy this CD. It will not leave your CD player. When you have sympathetic live musicians, an understanding producer and the great, great Bettye LaVette on board, the perfect CD can be created.

Alan Shutro, March 2003

http://www.bluenight.com/BluesBytes/ph0303.html

Bettye LaVette's voice has the kind of earthy urgency that can't be faked or taught. She developed that sound by spending more than four decades on the soul/blues circuit, making any number of great singles that seldom received decent distribution or radio airplay.

Yet LaVette has never wavered, nor has she let career disappointments affect her powerful singing. She's a magnificent soul vocalist, equally gifted at heartbreak sagas, tribute pieces and ironic narratives. While many fans thought her 1982 Motown LP Tell Me a Lie would be the session that earned LaVette some deserved international acclaim, perhaps it will be her newest album, A Woman Like Me (Blues Express), that puts her over the top.

Producer Dennis Walker, whose previous clients include Robert Cray and B.B. King, frames LaVette's fiery vocals with the stinging guitar licks of either Alan Miriktani or Mike Turner. There are also stirring horn lines, as well as strong soloing from saxophonist Tom Peterson, whose darting tenor response to LaVette's cries and biting commentary on "Salt on My Wounds" ranks as the disc's highlight. LaVette is alternately defiant on the title cut, angry on "Serves Him Right" and "When a Woman's Had Enough," and alluring on "Thinkin' About You" and "Close as I'll Get to Heaven." With long-time music director Rudy Robinson, who died shortly before this disc was released, inserting lush phrases and delicate piano lines underneath, LaVette's stirring vocals present every conceivable emotion except self-pity. A Woman Like Me won't get any Billboard chart listings with a bullet, but it's a contemporary soul/blues masterpiece and unquestionably LaVette's finest album to date.
Ron Wynn

"From Ann Peebles to Etta Jones, there are dozens of great lost soul divas out there, every one collectible and every one overrated.

LaVette resurfaced seriously when she shouted her way into "Bubbling Brown Sugar" and has inspired a reissue boomlet in elderly nations that don't want to bomb Iraq, but buying the product, even from bettyelavette.com, is impossible. That said, I intend to keep trying. The mad genius of this album is producer-songwriter Dennis Walker, who having long ago sculpted Robert Cray as an obsessed adulterer-cuckold now turns three of the bluesman's male-chauvinist classics into painful cries of victimization and, with help from guitarist Alan Mirikitani, crafts a batch of long-suffering miniatures that make the record. But LaVette makes the songs - though she's gritty and loves to testify, she never overdoes it. What's more, she's got the psychological equilibrium to find optimistic material she can put across just as passionately.
   That's why Walker sequenced the material to move LaVette toward independence - and wrote the strong-willed title track with a woman."  
Robert Christgau

Renewed interest, thanks in part to Dutch label Munich Records' 2000 release of a live LaVette performance, has spurred her first U.S. album in 20 years. Proof that some things only get better with time, LaVette's scorching, soul-infused vocals and eloquent phrasing leave no doubt as to the emotional meanings behind such cuts as "Serves Him Right," "When the Blues Catch Up to You," "Salt on My Wounds," and the title cut.
Better late than never.

GM, March 2003, Label/Catalog Number: Blues Express BE10004

A Woman Like Me Review: "Most highly recommended"

Bettye LaVette is a veteran of the soul circuit who had hits as a teenager with My Man - He's a Lovin' Man and Let Me Down Easy, and later scored with Your Turn to Cry. Later she performed with Cab Calloway and Honi Coles in the touring company of Bubbling Brown Sugar. A marvelous and powerful singer, she was discovered in the nineties by a new generation of fans, especially over in Europe where she recorded a terrific live album, Let Me Down Easy - In Concert.

Blues Express has issued her first US studio recordings in decades, A Woman Like Me, that is produced by Dennis Walker and includes a studio band that included guitarists Bobby 'Goodfingers' Murray (who is on rhythm guitar, Alan Mirikitani (who handles most of the solos), and Mike Turner, bassist Richard Cousins and drummer Lee Spath along with her long-time musical director Rudy Robinson on a collection of mostly original songs penned by Walker.

Included are a couple of numbers that Robert Cray previous called The Forecast (Calls For Rain), and Right Next Door. The latter number was originally on Cray's Strong Persuader where Cray sang it from the perspective of the touring musician who has broken up a woman's marriage and is listening to the break-up from his hotel room next door. LaVette's version is from the perspective of the woman who was a notch in the singer's guitar and with Alan Mirikitani 's stinging guitar is perhaps stronger than Cray's original. Another Walker original, When the Blues Catch Up To You, is a nice slow blues about how things going to catch up to her no-good man with some blistering fretwork from Murray again.

The rest of the album is equally striking, whether Thinkin' Bout You, where LaVette is home alone thinking how nice her man smells and feels; the melancholy blues-ballad It Ain't Worth It After a While, with a nice jazzy-tinged solo from Mirikitan; to When A Woman's Had Enough, where the groove is a bit funkier. This is one of those recordings that caught my attention the first time I listened to it. I would be hard-pressed to find anything by any of the Handy nominated women this year that is as consistently strong a recording as this. Four decades after first hitting the charts, Bettye LaVette sings with style and passion that deserve to be heard.
LaVette's A Woman Like Me is most highly recommended release. 

Ronald Weinstock, http://thebluessite.com

And when I say ''bluesier approach', I'm not really alluding to the singer but to the fact that there's always an aspiring rock guitarist out there who thinks he should be star of the show and when he's the co-producer and co-arranger too... Nevertheless, no one upstages the wondrous vocals of Bettye, sounding - if such a thing were possible - better and stronger than ever, as witnessed when she comes in eighteen seconds into the opening cut, "Serves Him Right", a mid-paced item which, lyrically and musically, sounds like an up-date of her Silver Fox material. Bettye spits out the title line and the words "He can go to hell for all I care" with gusto.

"The Johnny Carson 'Tonight Show' Horns open the tad slower, chugging, "Forecast", penned (as much of the material) by co-producer, Dennis Walker. This is such a grower that, after several spins, even the short guitar break and twiddly bits pass without problem. Things slow right down for "Thru The Winter", a terrific, intense ballad with such a burning heat coming from Bettye's vocals that any snow, that winter, would melt right away. With occasional back-up vocal assistance from the Bass Sisters, this sad, sad tale ends with those chilling notes of anguish that Bettye does to perfection. The tempo lifts, but not too much, for "Right Next Door". It's another sad story lyrically with words like "'I was just another notch on his guitar" providing perhaps just a little too much excuse for that guitarist - Alan Marikatani - to go to town and he's there too on "'When The Blues Catch Up To You", a loping blues item and my least favourite track on display.

The keyboard work of Rudy Robinson - some of his last duties prior to his untimely death - merit special note on the moody, atmospheric "Thinkin' Bout You", with Bettye smouldering away before we turn to the horn-supported, gritty title track, "A Woman Like Me", starting deceptively low-key and building as it goes. Its back to the ballads for another of the CD's many highlights: "It Ain't Worth It After A While". Rudy's keyboards and Lee Spath's gentle percussion - plus some much, much, subtler, guitar work - allow Bettye to emote... I was about to say 'to the full' but when did she ever give less than 100 percent?

There's a much more pounding beat to the funkier, mid-paced "When A Woman's Had Enough", with the Bass Sisters coming in on the title track in similar fashion to the Pointer Sisters' "Yes We Can Can". It's a saxophone that introduces "Salt On My Wounds", another exquisite slowie and deepie. Yet again, the lyrics tell a sad tale. (Bettye's involuntary ex is flaunting his new woman. "Why do you want to rub salt in my wounds?" she asks.) As the song progresses, the sax continues its mournful wail and, by the end, Bettye is wailing "Why?" alongside.

Staying in the slow ballad vein, "Close As I'll Get To Heaven" is a song penned by Australian, Rene Geyer. With the femme vocal support and dramatic string effect background in places, it has, perhaps more than any other track, across-the-board commercial potential and I suggest that radio stations should ignore this one at their peril. Things go out in driving blues fashion with Bettye's own "Hey, Hey, Baby (Bettye's Blues)", ending a set which just seems to get better with every play (and there have been many). Biased? Too right I am but you don't need to be biased to buy this CD - you just need to appreciate one of the very finest, most soul-drenched voices of any era.