"Last fall, I received a call from Anti Records President Andy Kaulkin who inquired if I might be interested in working with Bettye LaVette. Having grown up worshipping the great soul albums and always wanting to get to work with one of the legends, I jumped at the chance to get to work with her.

I had found an import of the 1972 album and was also a huge fan of her Anti debut. Soon, I was talking to her on the phone about the album and compiling songs from all over the spectrum to play for her. In one early conversation, I asked her if she would like to co-write a song with me for the album, but she nipped that in bud stating “I don’t write songs, I interpret them.” This set the stage for a working relationship that was sometimes bumpy but always rewarding.

Andy’s initial idea was to pair Bettye with a working band, one that has played together on the road and on albums for years and years. For a lack of a better description, a sort of "Exile on Bettye LaVette Street” except that Bettye is no fan of The Rolling Stones and having worked so hard for so long for her time in the light, she wasn‘t about to share it with a bunch of “young” upstarts like myself and my band. On the song front, having established that we wouldn’t be co-writing together, I sent her around fifty songs to listen to and batted a big zero, as we didn’t record a single one of them. Andy knew what he was doing though, as for all our differences, Bettye shares a lot of common ground with me and with my band. Proud and defiant or stubborn as a mule (depending on who you ask), this common ground might have made for some turbulent times in the studio, but it also has made for a great album. Much great art has been made through high pressure and tension and this one certainly fits the bill. Never one to give up easily, I set out to co-write at least one song with Bettye and from the first day began writing down little things I would hear her say in the studio.

Bettye is a walking encyclopedia of amazing stories and great sayings and soon I was attempting to capture that defiant voice into a song that would somehow sum up her story. Finally, after a particularly good day of recording, I played her the song I had written and was shocked and amazed when she agreed to record it. She then took my finished song and completely reworked it (Don’t tell me you’re not a writer!) and the result is "The Battle of Bettye LaVette” which we recorded shortly before finishing the album.

As for the actual recording of the album, the plan was to convene in Muscle Shoals at FAME Studios and make it all up together. We had learned the basic structures of the songs themselves but everything else was up for reinvention and reworking. David Barbe and I would handle the production while a combination of Drive-By Truckers and several veterans of the Muscle Shoals scene would provide musical backing. Spooner was hired to play Wurlitzer and piano on all of it. My Dad would play bass on several songs. I had an overall list of songs and a basic time frame outline, but otherwise, everything was up for reinterpretation.

As the sessions got underway, word seemed to spread across the music community about what we were up to and soon more and more of the original Muscle Shoals players began to show up to check it out or pay respects. Veteran session legends Jimmy Johnson and Roger Hawkins both came by to listen to what we were up to. Bettye hadn’t seen either one of them in 35 years but soon they were catching up on old times like dear old friends. Rick Hall, who founded and still owns FAME came by almost daily and was both encouraging and a source of great old stories. One night after a session, Bettye ended up hanging with Kelvin Holley, who plays with Little Richard and The Decoys (which also features my Dad on bass) and the next day he was there strapping on a guitar and playing on a song. One night our friend Tim brought dinner over for all of us.

But beyond the great players and stories and food the real highlight of making this record was whenever Bettye began to sing. David set her up with a microphone in a booth in the hopes of capturing good live takes during tracking and a safe majority of the album’s vocals came from what would normally be the “scratch” take. On the final day of recording we set aside plenty of time to redo anything that needed it and she ended up knocking all of that out in about two hours. This was my favorite part of the entire project, as I wasn’t “busy” doing anything else and could watch a master at work. She would prepare for a take the way I picture DeNiro getting into character for a film. It occurred to me that Bettye was very much a method actor and her attention to every minute detail of a lyric is nothing less than astounding.

The days we spent together in Muscle Shoals are a bit of a blur, but the following anecdote stands out. It was Saturday afternoon and we had just recorded Ray Charles' "Call It Love” and were about to try a take of Willie Nelson’s “Pick Up My Piece.” She and I had just disagreed about something or another and I had settled in the assistant chair next to David who was engineering the session. The song began and a hush filled the control room as we all realized we were hearing something very incredible coming through the monitor. All of us sat there stunned listening to the take play live (exactly what you will hear when you play the record). After the jaw-dropping performance, Bettye came bounding into the control room listing all of the things that were wrong to her about the completed take. Barbe, cool as a cucumber, didn’t say a word and motioned for me to do the same. He just pushed play and let the take fill the room once again. By the time it was over Bettye was in tears (and she wasn’t alone) and everyone agreed that something magical had just occurred. The fact that the next day there would be a song and take that would even be greater is a testament to how special this project was and is.

The album’s tour-de-force and true gravitational center is the old Elton John song “Talking Old Soldiers.” The song, a strange oddity of a track in it’s original form is transformed by Bettye into both a defiant statement of her survival and an exorcism of the demons brought on by years of mistreatment and indifference from a musical industry that prefers cookie-cutter formulas to artistic genius. To call it one of the most profound performances in the history of soul music is an understatement. In twenty-two years of playing in bands and a lifetime of being obsessed with music and art, I’ve never heard anything like it. Witnessing it’s recording, stripped bare to just piano, bass and a slight hint of pedal steel and that voice, that terrifying and magnificent voice, shook all of us to our cores and continues to every time I hear it played. I may be prouder of those four and a half minutes than anything I’ve ever been involved with.

It’s thirty-five years after Bettye first came to Muscle Shoals to make the record that somehow did define her career and she has returned to the scene of the crime to take it to another level. We all learned some things about ourselves and made an album that transcends any genre. I am eternally proud and thankful that I was able to be there as a witness and participant. Next time I visit home, I plan to take a photo of Bettye for Swampers to hang on their wall.    Patterson Hood  May 2007