Bettye LaVette in Oslo in 2016 (Photo: Tore Sætre/Wikimedia; used with permission)
“Ya’ll too silly,” Bettye LaVette gratefully told the audience at Seattle’s Triple Door music theater on June 21, 2023, as they affectionately cheered her every song, as though she is not worthy of their adoration. At 77 years young, LaVette is a survivor. She made her first record when she was 16. She was picked up by Atlantic Records a year later and then dropped just as quickly. The next 30 years were troubled by disappointments and bad luck—the kind that come with record labels and the music biz.
She got a fresh new start in the mid ’00s thanks to three critically acclaimed albums on the Anti- record label, followed by a couple of high-profile television appearances. In 2008, performing at the Kennedy Center Honors, her tempestuous rendition of The Who’s “Love Reign O’er Me” literally moved Pete Townshend to tears. A year later, accompanied by Jon Bon Jovi, she performed an inspirational take of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” at the Inauguration Ceremony of President Barack Obama. LaVette was finally getting the recognition and respect that she deserved…40 years after making her first record.
She opened her Seattle set with her commanding interpretation of Bob Dylan’s “Things Have Changed,” which LaVette personalized by rearranging verses and adapting the lyrics to suit this woman’s perspective. With gritty determination she poured intense passion into each word. “I hurt easy but I don’t show it, you can hurt somebody and not even know it,” she sang, and you feel the pain that she has hidden away.
LaVette, live at Massey Hall in Toronto (Photo Kasra Ganjavi/Wikipedia; used with permission)
LaVette did not learn to sing in the church like many of her peers. She learned from the gospel and church singers that sang in her parents’ Muskegon, Mich., home, where they could sneak a drink of homemade corn liquor while singing and dancing to a jukebox blasting blues and country & western music. It was a nightclub in their living room and a nightly scene that fascinated a young Betty Jo Haskins. She sang and she danced along with them from the time she was two.
Soul is too narrow a description of LaVette’s singing. Her utterly unique vocal style comes from a blend of the gospel-charged soul of Aretha, rocking blues of Tina, the timbre and rasp of James Brown, and the chesty talking country blues of Johnny Cash. Between songs, she bantered on stage with an endearing sense of humor and characteristic sass that softened the edges of her hard-lived life. The audience laughed with her as she slipped off her heels, explaining that, “Those are good for just one song,” and that the music stand on stage was necessary because she “suffers from senioritis and can’t remember the damn lyrics.” Despite that claim she rarely needed to refer to those lyrics.
Related: What’s up with those James Brown song titles?
For this performance, she announced that the songs on her new album were all written by living legend Randall Bramblett, whom Rolling Stone called “one of the South’s most lyrical and literate songwriters.” His deep catalog of songs was carefully curated to create an album of 11 tunes that allow LaVette to weave her magic of interpretation. She rewrote the words simply by singing them. “He wrote these songs for me, he just didn’t know it at the time,” she told the audience, proudly adding, “I’m going to sing them all tonight, because I like them.”
LaVette delivered on that promise and it did not matter that most of the audience had not yet heard any of the songs. It’s the individuality of her voice that you hear, the way she stretches a syllable to three, the crack in her throat that folds into a wail, the words that she selects to punctuate so that there is no mistaking what she wants you to hear. This is LaVette’s entrancing passion play and her four-piece touring band, led by musical director and drummer Marco Giovino, backed her up admirably with a confident smorgasbord of steamy Southern soul seasoned with a pulse of country, blues, rock, funk and gospel rhythms.
She started with “See Through Me,” a snaky tale of a life in limbo. When Lavette sang out, “I keep on shaking like I’m never gonna stop, I need somebody to see through me” you believed that she was on the run and had been for quite some time. “Lazy (And I Know It”) is a bluesy lament to the drudgery of a 9-to-5 office job. LaVette was not having it: “Waiting on the weekend was never my style…catch me in a nightclub at closing time.”
In her memoir, A Woman Like Me, LaVette wrote, “More than simply loving music, I am music. Chapter by chapter is what drives my story forward.” She’s never had a Plan B in real life and in the song she claims, “Might be crazy but at least I am free…that’s why they love me, I have no Plan B,” ad libbing, “Still working on Plan A.”
She introduced “Mess About It” as an homage to James Brown, whom she toured with in the early days of her career. Limbered up at this point, the funky rhythm offered up an opportunity for her to shuffle across the stage and back, like a curious cat on a hot tin roof.
Closing with “It’s Alright,” a slow-burning heartache with a melancholy slide guitar that builds into an anthemic gospel chorus, LaVette stepped off the stage into the audience with a reassuring chorus of “It’s alright, it’s alright, this messed up world, it’s alright,” and owing to the wild and wonderful life that she’s led, you can trust that she knows what she’s singing about.
This was a night of magnificent storytelling, sung by one of the greatest interpreters of song of our time. Bettye LaVette delivered due justice to the songs of Randall Bramblett. Don’t miss her. Listen to the new album. Explore the back catalog. Read her memoir. Hers is the story of a hard-lived life filled with joy, heartache, humor and sorrow. But most of all, love, and she is profoundly grateful for it. Returning to the stage for a final encore, LaVette broke from the Bramblett-penned songs for a spirit-lifting gospel take on a song by Sinead O’Connor, singing a cappella, “I have everything that I ever requested, and I do not want what I have not got.”
Watch LaVette sing Bob Dylan’s “Things Have Changed”
1 Comment so far
Jump into a conversationHey RJ, Nice review of the show. One minor correction, she doesn’t say senioritis, she says she suffers from CRS…Can’t Remember Sh*t! lol