THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “I ain’t got no f*cking other plan,” says the legendary Bettye LaVette. She’s talking about her 61-year storied career, which began in 1960s Detroit and kicked into higher gear in the mid-2000’s. For her latest LP, simply titled LaVette!, she teamed once again with producer Steve Jordan. An interpreter without peer, Bettye chose to record an album of songs written by Randall Bramblett. “I think he’s the best songwriter I’ve heard in the past 30 years,” says LaVette, “and I just discovered him eight years ago.”
Says Jordan: “Bettye LaVette is like a combination of Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Miles Davis. When I prepare a band for her, I make sure we have it together. When she joins us, we’re only gonna get one or two takes, because she puts her heart and soul into each performance. When Bettye gets a hold of a song, it becomes her song. It’s like she wrote it. She’s a great messenger, a communicator, an interpreter.” Indeed, the late, great George Jones called her “a singer’s singer.”
Says LaVette: “I’m very happy with what we’ve done. It is very, very difficult to please an old woman, but I’m nearly excited.”
Born in Muskegon, Michigan, Bettye’s parents, Louisiana migrants, ran a club out of their home. They sold corn liquor and chicken sandwiches and spun records for the Black auto-parts workers and traveling gospel groups who didn’t have a hangout to kick back in and call their own. She was a toddler, listening in on old folks’ business; learning old folks’ ways. Some of that was conversation, observing the interactions, the repartee; some of it was the 78s that spun on the family’s jukebox — a trove of blues, gospel, country and western, and the latest R&B that filtered through AM radio playlists.
She is a six-time Grammy nominee, has recieved a Pioneer Award from The Rhythm & Blues Foundation, has won several Blues Music Awards and has been inducted into The Blues Hall Of Fame. Bettye is one of very few of her contemporaries who were recording during the birth of soul music in the 1960s and is still creating vital recordings today.”
