Bettye LaVette
R&B / Soul
There’s a space in American music where country meets soul, where elements of blues, folk, pop, jazz, gospel and r&b meld in seamless alchemy, where genre boundaries are ultimately not very meaningful. For my money, the best of that music is rooted somewhere around two or three in the morning, when all is quiet, one’s emotional guard is down and the musicians are able to drive the voodoo down, getting at the essence of what it is to be human. This is a space that is all too rarely accessed in most contemporary recordings, yet it is a space that Bettye LaVette returns to again and again on I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise. The result is a record of majesty, richness and depth, of naked, raw, visceral emotion, a record that will raise the hairs on the back of the neck of any fully alive, blood pumping, breathing human being. It is also a record that reflects the wisdom and musical acumen acquired over a forty-three year career by a song stylist par excellence.
Who is Bettye LaVette you ask? The simple answer is Ms. 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 to this point she has remained criminally unknown.
Born in Muskegon, Michigan in 1946, LaVette grew up in Detroit. Despite the palpable level of emotion and fire breathing intensity that permeates the essence of her vocal art, LaVette is one of the very few soul singers who did not get her start singing in the church. “Discovered” at the age of 16 by the legendary Motor City music raconteur Johnnie Mae Matthews, LaVette’s first single was the insouciantly swinging “My Man--He’s a Loving Man.” Recorded initially for Northern in the fall of 1962, the record was quickly picked up by Atlantic for national distribution. The net result was a Top 10 r&b hit that just missed the pop Hot 100 and would be eventually covered by both Tina Turner and Ann Peebles.
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