Dan's Papers - May 30, 2008 - R&B Icon Bettye LaVette Heats It Up at WHBPAC

The results of "American Idol" are in and we have a new overnight success (unless you consider five months to be a long time in the trenches). But as far as R&B legend Bettye LaVette is concerned, there should be one more leg of the competition for the contestants.

"I wish one test they had to pass was to go on the road with me for 30 days," she said. "It's one thing to sing when you have the perfect arrangements with the perfect musicians for a two-minute song. The big question is, how can you keep my audience interested in YOU for 30 minutes?"

With more than four decades on the road in concert halls and clubs, a hit Broadway show under her belt, plus nine albums to her credit, LaVette knows what it takes to keep an audience engaged, hour after hour, show after show, year after year. And now, 425 lucky fans will get the chance to be kept "interested" by LaVette at the West Hampton Beach Performing Arts Center (PAC) on Sunday, June 1, at 8 p.m., when this icon of classic soul and R&B takes the stage. According to LaVette, the show will cover her entire career in the business, with songs from "every album, every period."

The Bettye LaVette era began in the heyday of classic Motown and R&B. In 1962, as a high school student, LaVette made her debut with "My Man - He's a Good Man," which earned a Top 10 spot on the R&B charts. It continues through to her most recent release, The Scene of the Crime, (Anti- Records). Recorded with the Drive-By Truckers band, the CD earned LaVette a GRAMMY nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album; three 2008 Blues Music Award nominations (Album of the Year, Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year, and the B.B. King Entertainer of the Year); and the Maple Awards nomination for "International Artist of the Year." Crime made its debut as Billboard's "Top Blues Album."

Yes, many people know Bettye LaVette, and her rich and raw sound. But many more would have known her if it weren't for the 'crime' that occurred in 1972. Signed to Atlantic Records, LaVette recorded the album Child Of The Seventies in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Then a mystery occurred. The album that took LaVette just three days to record, the work that would position her among Motown royalty, got "lost" at Atlantic - for 30 years. There's been no explanation.

Why was her tour de force squashed? Maybe someone was threatened by Bettye Lavette's talent. And for good reason. Lavette's imposing, emotion-filled voice is a head turner. Even across the phone lines from her home in West Orange, with just the simple greeting, "Hi Baby, can you hold on for a minute?" - the voice registered a presence for days. So despite any record industry efforts to keep LaVette's career hush hush, she wasn't about to keep quiet.

LaVette played the club circuit through the '70s, built a following in Europe and landed a leading role in the Broadway hit, Bubbling Brown Sugar (which she said, was "the most fun I've ever had in my career"). In 1982, she was in the studios again, recording her 1982 Motown album, Tell Me A Lie, which was reissued by Reel Music just last week.

While LaVette was gigging anywhere and everywhere, her booking agent invited Anti- Records president, Andrew Kaulkin, to hear her. Taken by LaVette's enormous talent and unique sound, Kaulkin suggested they make a record. He sent her 100 songs, which she narrowed down to just 10, no negotiating. You couldn't help wonder what it was about those songs that grabbed LaVette's attention, how she could pare it down so quickly. "It's very simple," she said. "If someone put 100 guys in front of you and said you could pick 10 to date, would that be hard to do? No. It's the same thing with a song. I know myself, my voice, so it's easy to know which ones work for me, which ones I can make believable."

LaVette's collaboration with Kaulkin resulted in the critically acclaimed 2005 release I've Got My Own Hell To Raise, which includes songs far outside the R&B realm by Rosanne Cash, Dolly Parton, Lucinda Williams and Joan Armatrading. LaVette doesn't write songs, she realizes them, and is never intimidated by an original version. "I don't look at it as 'doing someone else's song,'" she said. "I just look at it as a song. In the old days, it was the writer's song - not the singer's."

Building on the success of Hell, LaVette began to work on Crime. Kaulkin had two suggestions: team up with the Drive-By Truckers, and record in Muscle Shoals - the scene of the crime where the fateful album was recorded 30 years ago.

Crime is filled with intensely original versions of songs by Willie Nelson, John Hiatt and Elton John among others, all stamped with her signature style. In "Choices," when she sings "Now I'm livin' and dyin' with the choices I made," there's a theatricality and depth of expression in the vocals that bespeaks a lifetime of professional and personal experience. Every note is riveting. There's no denying, LaVette knows how to keep your attention. "When I'm on stage, all I'm thinking about is the song I'm singing at that moment," she said.

And now, after 30 years of waiting, Betty LaVette's moment has arrived. Don't miss a second.