Bettye LaVette

Artist's Website

Bettye LaVette is one of the greatest soul singers in American music history, possessed of an incredibly expressive voice that one moment will exude a formidable level of strength and intensity and the next will appear vulnerable, reflective, reeking of heartbreak. Unfortunately, it says much about the vagaries of the popular music industry that, although LaVette has been recording for over four decades, up until recent years she has remained criminally unknown.

Ms. LaVette has recently turned sixty-one, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her. She is probably in better physical shape than most people a third her age with striking features and intense eyes that say “Respect me or I will whip your ass!” and more than enough strength and fortitude to back it up. She is in the throws of what must be her most stable period of success in a career that dates back to 1962 and a teenaged R&B hit called “My Man (He’s A Loving Man).” She grew up in Detroit, peers and friends with other young talented black men and women who went on to become superstars at Motown and Atlantic. She has stories of David Ruffin sleeping on the floor of her mama’s house and young Supremes still learning their craft, one that Bettye learned well and continued to develop for nearly half a century. Her peers went on to far greater fame and fortune while Bettye labored on the sidelines, sometimes supporting her family by singing in hotel lounges.

While her soul music peers appeared to burn brighter, making and losing fortunes along the way, Bettye persevered and kept it together. Wilson Pickett and David Ruffin are gone and most of the survivors have seen their talents diminished by years of abuse and neglect. Bettye, on the other hand is at the top of her powers. A true soul survivor at a time when so many of her peers make that term seem like a quaint cliché’.