Bettye LaVette Interview from 2004
From Soul Express 3/2004
The last of July
this summer Bettye put up a remarkable show at the Rauma Blues festival
here in Finland. Especially her signature slowies – Your Turn To
Cry, Souvenirs and Let Me Down Easy – were spine-tingling
revealing her talent not only as a vocalist, but also as a dramatic stage
performer. We discussed with the lively and charming Mrs. LaVette not only her
music, but also many other aspects of her life and career.
Betty Haskin
was born in Muskegon, Michigan, on January 29 in 1946. ”When I was two, we left there for Detroit. My early life was spent in an atmosphere,
where there was always music playing, but I’m one of the few singers that did
not come out of the church.”
Bettye’s parents
had moved from Louisiana up north in search of better employment. ”My family
was in the corn liquor business, and I’m the only person in the family, who was
involved in music. I have one sister, who passed away twenty years ago. She
was thirteen years older.” When Bettye was only twelve, as a result of
consuming the family business product her father died.
”You could call
my mother ‘a gospel groupie’. Because gospel singers drank so much, they
stayed at my house quite a bit, to be there to drink, so I had the opportunity
as a small kid to know and see the Five Blind Boys, Sam Cooke and the Soul
Stirrers and others. Everybody was always happy. It was a very happy
atmosphere. It was fun. Even then I would dance and sing for them, so I’ve
always known old songs. When most children didn’t even talk, I knew entire
songs. I really didn’t grow with gospel, because I didn’t go to church to see
those gospel people. I saw them at my house.”
As a 17-year-old
young lady Bettye became an avid Etta James fan, but in her earlier
formative years she was influenced by Sam Cooke’s and Bobby Bland’s
voices... ”and musicals, which is why later doing Bubbling Brown Sugar
was so thrilling for me. All I knew about singing was this big stage, the
dancing and Fred Astaire – which is one reason why I hated my
voice for so long, because it didn’t sound like Ginger Rogers. But I
liked all of the musicals, anyone who sang in a movie. I always knew I could
sing, and I’ve always sung, but I didn’t know I could do it as a profession
until maybe a month before My Man came out.” Today Bettye names Bobby
Bland and Ray Charles her all-time favourite artists.
As a teenager
Bettye became friends with Sherma Lavett, also known as Ginger. ”She
was a local groupie. She knew all the entertainers, and I wanted to know them,
so she introduced me to Timmy Shaw and to all of them. Although I was
no-one at the time, I met people like the Temptations, who were the Distants
then. I began to hang around with Ginger, and they just kinda blocked me out
of it and said ‘you don’t have to be a groupie, you can join us’. Timmy Shaw
took me Johnnie Mae Matthews. They liked me. But I knew I didn’t sound
like Bobby Bland. I knew I didn’t sound like Etta James. It was a long time
before I excepted my voice. I guess about the time I went to Muscle Shoals in
the early 70s I began to realise the power of my voice and that it was okay I
didn’t sound like all the girls. It was okay I sounded like James Brown”
(laughing).
MY MAN
Using Ginger’s
surname LaVett, Johnnie Mae and Robert Bateman recorded Bettye on an
early soul romp called My Man – He’s A Lovin’ Man (b/w Shut
Your Mouth) in the late summer of 1962, released test pressings on the
Northern imprint, where Atlantic picked it up from and pushed all the way up to
# 7-r&b (# 101-pop), and still today it remains Bettye’s biggest chart
success. ”The thing with My Man happened actually in a few weeks’
time. One week I was a groupie, the next week I was already there.”
Johnnie Mae
Matthews was a controversial figure on the Detroit music scene. ”She was ‘a
truck driver’ – really rough, really mean, just a really hard woman.
At that time, I guess, she was maybe around thirty-five, but that was old to
me, because I was only sixteen. She was a hustling kind of a woman, very
manlike. She was not respected, but everybody knew she had crossed somewhat.
She was the only one, who had a connection to outside of Detroit. But there
was no-one at her funeral.”
For a
sixteen-year-old girl it must have been uneasy to sing a song like My Man. ”I was ashamed
to sing it, because it sounded so old. I wanted to sound like Little Eva
and the Shirelles, but this was all I was offered, so I had to do it,
but I was very embarrassed. And I never got the opportunity to do the kind of
shows they were doing. I was always at a night-club because of the nature of
the song. I was always with older performers. I had been singing for fifteen
years, before I met the Shirelles and Chubby Checker.”
”My mother was
thrilled. No-one in the family had ever done anything. No-one had actually
held a hundred-dollar bill, no-one had ever travelled. They thought that we
have been saved. They were very thrilled.”
Today we are
more aware of the many ways of ripping off artists and not paying them those
days, so one hit single was hardly enough to support Bettye’s family. ”It was
the gigs. When you signed a contract, you only got about 1½ percent. The
royalties were not a big deal anyway. They’ve become a big deal during the
last, maybe, twenty-five years, when artists have become involved in writing,
producing, owning part of this and owning all of that. Back then you knew, if
the record was big, you were going to work all the time. That was what you
looked forward to. And it wasn’t television then. Especially for black
artists you had to do a lot to get an album and to go on tv. It wasn’t a
given. I never went on television until Let Me Down Easy. When I was
on Shindig, I was just standing there very still. I was very frightened. I
didn’t even move my head.”
YOU’LL NEVER
CHANGE
For the
follow-up on Atlantic LuPine’s Robert West organized a four-song
session, which resulted in one non-charted single (You’ll Never Change/Here
I Am), and at the same time Robert became Bettye’s manager. ”Most artists
knew that he didn’t know the industry. I didn’t know until years later that
when Johnnie Mae sold me to Atlantic they gave her money that she was supposed
to give me, and she and Robert West divided that money. I thought Robert West
was saving me from Johnnie Mae Matthews, but he was actually involved in the
swindle. But he was very good to me, did spend a lot of the money on me and my
career that he got; just not really contribute a lot to what was going on at
the time. It wasn’t until later, when Jim Lewis became my manager that
I was broadened as an artist. He taught me things, sent to staging and acting
and vocal school.”
”Robert was my
manager probably for just a couple of years, because right after You’ll
Never Change and that whole recording session Robert West and Herman
Griffin, who was Mary Wells’ husband, became partners. They were
going to make a big production and management company of their own, which would
be spear-headed by Mary Wells. He told me that if they got Mary Wells a big
deal then he could bring me and the new Falcons along. The original
Falcons had broken up, but, of course, West still owned the name. Then Robert
West went to New York, he was shot, and that was the end of that – for
me, anyway.” Robert got hit in the eye during an argument he and Herman were
having.
WITCHCRAFT IN THE
AIR
Bettye’s third
single, Witchcraft In The Air, appeared on LuPine in 1963. ”A lot of
those other things belonged to Atlantic. They were not on the Atlantic label,
but if West could have gotten them to work locally, then Atlantic would have
put them on their label. Witchcraft was paid for by Atlantic. Jerry Wexler
was a very big fan of mine, and while he alone couldn’t get Atlantic to go with
him on spending money – like when the Child Of The Seventies
album wasn’t released (in ‘72) – Jerry was still in my corner. He
still liked it, but Ahmet Ertegun – which I just found out
– never liked me. That was my hold-back at Atlantic. I never knew
that all these years until now. But Jerry would give Robert West money to keep
him recording me – and the Falcons and whoever – and hope
that something will happen.” The Falcons are singing on the background of the
ballad on the flip side, You Killed My Love.
Bettye had
followed Robert to New York. ”When I went to New York to see about Robert
West, I stayed. The booking agent, who was booking me, booked all black
artists. The accountant, who became my next manager, introduced me to Don
Gardner and Dee Dee Ford, who introduced me to the New York faction
– Doris Troy, Luther Dixon, Dionne Warwick... the whole New
York faction.”
In New York with
Luther Dixon Bettye cut one song, (Happiness Will Cost You) One Thin Dime,
which remained unissued at the time, but has since then become a firm northern
favourite in Britain on compilations. ”With Luther we knew each other, when I
started to work in a club there; worked there for two years. Me and Little
Charles Walker alternated. I met Luther one day just walking down
Broadway, and he said ‘hey baby, come on in here and put your voice on this
song. I’ll take it to Florence Greenberg to see, if we can get you a
deal. This was just weeks before Let Me Down Easy. I went in, read the
paper, put my voice on it, never saw Luther again, never heard of him again
– till I was in England. There somebody said ‘is this you on this’,
and I said ‘no, that’s not me’. I didn’t even recognise my own voice. They
just kept playing it and then I realised ‘yes, Luther did that’. The track was
already there, and it just happened to be in my key. I put my voice on it, but
it wasn’t even meant to be released; only to let Florence hear it to see, if
she liked my voice.”
LET ME DOWN EASY
In early ‘65
Bettye recorded one of the masterpieces in soul music, a deep and pleading
ballad called Let Me Down Easy, which on Calla notched up to #
20-r&b (and # 103-pop). This was the second record that charted for Bettye
in her career, and it was backed with What I Don’t Know (Won’t Hurt Me).
”Fortunately, in
New York I was surrounded by people, who wanted to help me. Nate McCalla,
who owned Calla Records, actually worked for the mafia. I found later that
they gave him Calla Records. He and I just became really good friends, but he
knew nothing about the record business. He was asking me, should we do this,
should we do that. When we did Let Me Down Easy, they asked me what I
wanted. The only arranger that I had heard of was Dale Warren, and they
flew him from Detroit. I asked for violins, because I’d never had any
violins. I probably should have just asked for straight money (laughing). But
Nate just adored me, and I didn’t know they were gangsters.”
Already earlier
in New York Bettye had joined the Don Gardner & Dee Dee Ford Revue.
”Dee Dee Ford was very ill at the time, mentally, and was slowly having a nervous
breakdown. She was very sad about this trumpet player, who was her man, and
she started to write Let Me Down Easy, so I helped her write the song.
When they asked to write down the credits who wrote it, I just said ‘give my
part to her’. I didn’t know you get money from these things for years and
years and years. I think I wrote maybe three or four lines, but gosh!
– today three or four lines... So as a result she winds up being the
only writer on it.”
Two further
Calla singles emerged in 1965 (I Feel Good All Over/Only Your Love Can Save
Me and Stand Up Like A Man/I’m Just A Fool For You), but they went
practically unnoticed, and Bettye decided to return to Detroit. ”They ran me
back to Detroit.”
I’M HOLDING ON
Back in Detroit
Bettye hooked up with his sweetheart to be, Clarence Paul. ”I had met
him, before I went to New York. He was eighteen years older than me
– he should have been arrested (laughing) – but I was in
love with him for like sixteen years, and learned so very much from him. In
fact, when we all left Detroit the other day, he was the last person I saw. We’ve
been friends for the whole forty some years.”
”I had a
complete fit. I said I’m starving. I’ve just come from New York and I can’t
get anything at all. You’re a producer, you should be able to do something for
me. We sneaked into the United Sound, sneaked the Funk Brothers in
there, sneaked the Andantes in there, and this was all done early in the
morning, because Motown would not let their people do anything else. Clarence
Paul, Stevie Wonder and Morris Broadnax wrote I’m Holding On
for me. Stevie was coming up with the melody and Clarence was pretty much the
producer and director of putting it together, but Morris Broadnax, who lived
across the street from me – and it was he I used to cry about
Clarence Paul, who was married – wrote all the lyrics.”
Released in 1966
on Big Wheel out of New York and backed with Tears In Vain (originally
recorded by Stevie), the single flopped. ”Other songs that Stevie, Morris and
Clarence wrote – like Hey Love, which Stevie did first and
then I covered it (for Karen in ‘69), and Aretha’s Until You Come
Back To Me – were all written for me, about my relationship with
Clarence Paul.”
Jim Lewis
became Bettye’s third, long-time manager. ”When I came back from New York from the Let Me Down Easy situation, that’s when I met Jim Lewis. He was
very big in the Musicians Union, so that allowed me really work with the best
of musicians. He had been a musician himself during the big band era. He had
played with Jimmie Lunceford, so his take on show business was
completely different than mine. He wanted me to be in Las Vegas and in big
night clubs, so he made me learn three songs a week – good songs like
Lover Man. That kept me working, and it was those songs that got me to Bubbling
Brown Sugar and kept me alive in New Orleans. Had I not learned those
songs and had I worked only when my records were selling, I would have starved
to death. He made me the artist you see. He worked with me until he died. He
passed away seventeen years ago.”
WHAT CONDITION MY
CONDITION IS IN
In 1968 and 1969
Bettye had four singles released on Ollie McLaughlin’s Karen label. ”Record
companies released records in packages. They released These Arms Of Mine,
Hello Stranger and My Man – that was the group I went out
with – and Ollie I met then, but I never saw him again until when I
recorded for him. He always loved my voice. He came into the Twenty Grand one
night and I was singing Hey Love, which was out by Stevie Wonder. He
said ‘you gotta record that. Can you come to the studio tomorrow, and we will
put something down on tape just to send to Jerry Wexler’.” (Hey Love
finally appeared as Bettye’s third Karen single, coupled with A Little Help
From My Friends).
”The only open
track that he had was Almost, which was the flip side of a Jimmy
Delphs record (earlier in ‘68 on Karen, too), and it happened to be in my
key, so they put my voice on it. People wondered, why there was only one side
(the flip was a band track of Love Makes The World Go Round). They had
but one track. They sent it to Atlantic, they loved it and gave him the money
for What Condition My Condition Is In.”
Kenny Rogers’
First Edition had a # 5 pop hit with Just Dropped In (To See What
Condition My Condition Was In) in early ‘68, a few months before Bettye
covered it for her second Karen release (b/w Get Away). ”Kenny Rogers
came to Detroit, I met him and gave him a copy of my record. ‘This is so much
better than our version. I have to send it to my brother Lelan, who is
starting a new company in Nashville’. When Lelan got the record, he said ‘I
know her. I was her promotion man on Let Me Down Easy’.” Bettye’s final
Karen single in ‘69 coupled a less tasty remake of Let Me Down Easy with
Ticket To The Moon.
HE MADE A WOMAN
OUT OF ME
Lelan’s Silver
Fox label was a subsidiary of Shelby Singleton’s SSS International. ”Lelan and
Ollie were the very same kind of producers. They trusted what you felt you
could sing, and they just kind of laid back and let you sing it. We went down
to Nashville, but we didn’t want Shelby Singleton in the studio, so we went to Memphis. Shelby didn’t know what he was listening to, and he always had an advice.”
A southern
mid-paced chugger, He Made A Woman Out Of Me (b/w Nearer To You,
cut also by Betty Harris), which was banned on some radio stations due
to its risque lyrics those days, charted for Bettye as the third record in her
career in late ‘69 (# 25-soul). Bobbie Gentry popularized the song a
year later. He Made A Woman Out Of Me was followed by the similarly
raunchy Do Your Duty (# 38-soul; b/w Love’s Made A Fool Out Of Me).
Bettye was backed up by the Dixie Flyers, led by Jim Dickinson,
and the Memphis Horns.
Bettye’s third
Silver Fox single and three subsequent SSS International releases in 1970
offered, among others, a couple of covers: Games People Play/My Train’s
Comin’ In, (Take Another) Piece Of My Heart/At The Mercy Of A Man, My Train’s
Comin’ In/He Made A Woman Out Of Me and Let’s Go, Let’s Go’ Let’s Go.
She also cut one more version of Let Me Down Easy, which remained
unissued at the time.
Let’s Go, Let’s
Go, Let’s Go was a duet with Hank Ballard and a cover of his # 1
r&b hit in 1960. ”The reason, why I wound up doing it with Hank, was
because he didn’t know the words, and I was standing there singing in his ear.
Lelan said ‘why don’t you sing it with him’, so we just started singing it
together and left it that way. By that time Hank was very alcoholic, but I
remembered the words, because it was one of the songs on my show. I
remembered, how Clarence Paul recorded Stevie Wonder. They whispered the words
in his ear and Stevie would sing them.”
In 1971 there
was a one-off on the TCA label, Never My Love/Stormy, a couple of pop
songs by Association and Classics IV. ”At that time I had no-one
to write for me, and those were the tunes I was doing on my show and they were
working really well, so we just recorded them. Those days Jim Lewis was
choosing all my songs; or he brought me like five songs and asked me to pick
the ones. TCA was Twentieth Century Attractions, owned by Jim Lewis, Rudy
Robinson and I.”
YOUR TURN TO CRY
Signing with
Atco in 1972 was for Bettye artistically and musically one of the highlights of
her career and, at the same time, one of her biggest tragedies. ”Ollie
McLaughlin again. He owned me for everything we had done, and Jim
confronted him in Detroit. This is when Ollie was getting strung-out on drugs,
spending a lot of Atlantic’s money. He told Atlantic he knew Brad Shapiro
personally and he could get him to do a recording on me, if they would just let
him have one more recording session money. They did that. I didn’t even know
who Brad Shapiro was, because at that time you weren’t necessarily looking at a
producer. I knew the musicians, but producers hadn’t quite yet become the
important thing. Although he had had these successes with Wilson Pickett,
you only knew it, if you were there. It wasn’t known by the general public the
way it is now.”
The first Atco
single, Heart Of Gold/You’ll Wake Up Wiser, was still cut in Detroit,
but for the ensuing album – under the working title of ”Child Of The
Seventies” – Bettye was sent down to Muscle Shoals to work with their
famous rhythm section of Jimmy Johnson, Barry Beckett, David Hood and Roger
Hawkins, under the production of Brad Shapiro. For the album they laid
down eleven tracks there – plus one later in New York – added
background vocals in Memphis and strings in Miami. ”It was very, very easy
working with them. They were the most laid-back guys. We’d sit around for
awhile, smoke joints and then they’d say ‘well, let’s record one, how you wanna
sing it, baby’. I’d start singing and they’d follow one at a time and
everybody would get their part. Then they would go out alone, work out their
part, come back and then we would do the head arrangement.”
The building at 3614 Jackson Highway wasn’t one of the most luxurious places to cut a record. ”The roof was
thin, and everytime it rained we couldn’t record. We rehearsed those days. It
was just the most ragged little place. We would sit on the floor. But it was
very laid-back. They didn’t charge you by the hour, and sometimes you were in
for twelve-fifteen hours. I’ve never heard of those guys again, until, of
course, my busy husband – Mr. Kevin Kiley, a musician himself
– located all of them a few weeks ago.”
In the end, in
1972 Atco released only one single, a touching version of Your Turn To Cry
(b/w Soul Tambourine) – originally cut a year earlier by Joe
Simon as Your Time To Cry – and decided to shelve the
album. ”I was three days under the table, drunk and crying. I was just
through.” Luckily, in 2000 a French company, Art & Soul, released the
album under the title of Souvenirs, with three Atlantic/Atco singles as a bonus
(Heart Of Gold, My Man, You’ll Never Change plus the flips). Souvenirs
is a real masterpiece containing four movers, two enchanting mid-pacers and
six thrilling slowies, such as Our Own Love Song, Outside Woman and, of
course, the title song. ”Of my recordings right now, I’m probably personally
selling more of them than anybody else, because all the companies are so small
and so under-distributed. Everywhere we’re going, we’re selling it, so we’re
probably the biggest record company I got going right now.”
Two more songs
– Waiting For Tomorrow and Shoestring – meant
to be released on Atlantic in 1973, also stayed in the can. Waiting For
Tomorrow was cut by Clarence Paul in California, where Betty also moved to
be close to Clarence, but since nothing was coming her way there music-wise she
soon returned to Detroit.
THANK YOU FOR
LOVING ME
Bettye’s next
single in 1975 appeared on Epic. Cut in Detroit, Thank You For Loving Me
(b/w You Made A Believer Out Of Me), hit the tail end of the charts (#
94-soul), but the follow-up, Behind Closed Doors/You’re A Man Of Words, I’m
A Woman Of Action, became a no-show. ”Epic and I are suing the production
company. The production company took Epic’s money, and didn’t give them an
album. We read in the paper – I guess, about ten years ago
– that Bill Craig, the head of the production company, had
been arrested in Colorado or somewhere for a recording fraud. He had gone
somewhere else and done the same thing again.” One of the producers on those
Epic sides was Ronnie Dunbar, so the Invictus influence on the sound was heavy.
Due to her
singing and acting abilities Bettye was next recruited to play in a touring
production of a Broadway musical called Bubbling Brown Sugar. ”We went
on and off for about six years – different productions, because they
kept reviving it. The role that I played was Sweet Georgia Brown, and there
were three Sweet Georgia Browns, so it was up to your preference which one you
liked, me or Vivian Reed or the third girl; same with the male character
– whether you liked Cab Calloway or Honi Coles.”
Bubbling Brown
Sugar later earned Bettye a role in another play. ”I got The Gospel Truth,
because they knew I had done Bubbling Brown Sugar. People in Detroit certainly
didn’t know that I knew anything about theater, but after Bubbling Brown Sugar
they said ‘hey, she’s done a play before’, and I was one of the five persons in
Detroit, who had done a play before.”
”We rehearsed
The Gospel Truth with Mickey Stevenson for a year – and we ran
one week (laughing). It was unbelievable. It just didn’t work. I think I was
the only person on the show, who had ever done a real play, so that’s why the
rehearsal took so long. The people had to be taught staging. Most of them had
never been on stage before, and certainly hadn’t been in a play before.”
”My second
marriage took place right after Bubbling Brown Sugar, 20 years ago. I had been
married as a teenager. I was married before My Man, at fifteen, and
that, of course, didn’t last. My second husband was a hotel manager, and I met
him while travelling with Bubbling Brown Sugar. We were married on stage
between the afternoon show and the evening show. People were coming in, and
they thought the show was going on. We were together six years. We were in New Orleans two years, and then we were in Detroit four years.”
DOIN’ THE BEST I
CAN
For the West End label Bettye even cut a disco single in 1978. ”I was doing Bubbling Brown Sugar
then and we were in New York – just one of the times the show had
broken down and that production had ended – and I thought I wasn’t
going to be doing that anymore. The young man, Corey Robbins, who
produced Doin’ The Best I Can, was like nineteen years old and he was
working in a record company, in financing. He called me and said ‘I know you
don’t know me, but I’d like to record this song on you’. ‘I don’t want to do a
disco record’. I did it anyway, because I needed a record.”
”Then Bubbling
Brown Sugar started up again, and I went off on the road. When we came
back to Manhattan, Doin’ The Best I Can had sold 150,000 copies there.
It was selling everywhere. I was just stunned. Then the whole West End fell apart, so that was the end of that.”
TELL ME A LIE
”The man, who
told Corey to do Doin’ on me, went to Atlanta, where he met a new
producer, Steve Buckingham, and asked me to come down and do two tunes. I
walked out of my contract on Doin’ The Best I Can, told Corey he can
have all the royalties, just let me out of the contract, because I didn’t want
to be a disco artist. I went to Atlanta. Steve and I did Tell Me A Lie
and some other tune. Then the people disappeared, all of them. Steve and I
couldn’t find them.”
”Two years later
they call Steve Buckingham and tell him that Diana Ross is
leaving Motown. They want a veteran female to fill that spot. Steve looked at
it as we could get back to me being more soulful later, but right now let’s try
to make pop. So he wouldn’t let me holler or he wouldn’t let me do anything
but just sing straight out.”
Finally, after
twenty years since her debut single the detroiter Bettye LaVette was signed to
Motown. Produced by Steve Buckingham and recorded in Nashville, her first
official album, Tell Me A Lie, landed at # 48-soul (# 207-pop) in early ‘82.
With a mixture of ordinary dancers and a couple of Motown covers, it wasn’t a
great album, but it had its moments – especially the pleading title
track. ”So, after all these years, I’m living in New Orleans and recording in Nashville for Motown.”
RIGHT IN THE
MIDDLE
A catchy
mid-pacer called Right In The Middle (Of Falling In Love), written by Sam
Dees, was chosen as the first single and it hit # 35-soul (# 103-pop) in
early ‘82. Backed with You Seen One You Seen ‘Em All, so far it’s
Bettye’s last chart single. ”I didn’t even want to do the song. I started to
like the record years later, but I love it on stage now. I didn’t want to
record it then, because most of my songs that I recorded have real good, solid
stories. I thought it was kinda silly, unsophisticated.” The follow-up, I
Can’t Stop/Either Way We Lose, flopped.
Tell Me A Lie
remained Bettye’s only album on Motown. ”They just didn’t know what to do with
the album. Motown had never sounded like that. They had no market for real
rhythm & blues. Then they released the Temptations and Stevie Wonder
records right with it, so that smashed the airplay and that was the end of it.
They decided not to exercise their option.”
Next Bettye went
disco again with a song called Trance Dance on Streetking in 1984. ”People,
who like me, have asked not to let anyone else hear it (laughing). Here again
Steve Buckingham had gotten involved with them Streetking people, and they said
they could get another album.”
SURRENDER
Like so many
other ex-motowners Bettye got caught in Ian Levine’s web in the late
80s/early 90s and wasn’t released until a CD (Not Gonna Happen Twice)
and a couple of singles were put out, including a version of Diana Ross’ Surrender.
”He had been a fan from Let Me Down Easy, and when he came to do the
Motown thing, he had a few tracks. Many of us now call it ‘the Ian Levine
fiasco’. There were so many artists that could no longer sing. I wasn’t even
supposed to be involved in it, but he knew me and because I had had one album
on Motown that made me legitimate to be involved in the project.”
From the early
90s there’s also a recording on the Get Down label from a show called The
Rhythm And The Blues, where on a song titled Have You Tried Jesus Bettye
is joined by Kellie Evans, Don Albert and the ever-wonderful Sandra
Feva.
DAMN YOUR EYES
”In the
nineties, my manager Robert and I were walking around Detroit begging for
gigs. That was what I was doing – little bitty things, like my
keyboardist Rudy Robinson and I, just two people, playing.” Bettye’s
musical director of over thirty years back, Rudy Robinson, unfortunately passed
away just before Bettye’s latest CD was finished.
Bettye also
appeared in a cable tv show in Detroit. ”It was actually a topical show, and I
just had a segment in it about entertainment, where I was interviewing show
business people and reading news about local happenings in Detroit. Every once
and awhile they would let me do a live thing. I’d bring the band in and we’d
close the show with a song.”
In 1997 Bettye
covered Etta James’ Damn Your Eyes (b/w Out Cold) for the Bar
None label out of New Jersey. ”I went to Toronto, did the arrangement myself
and recorded it in a little room. Somebody introduced me to these people at
Bar None in New Jersey, and they were going to help me just press it up. That
was all they were supposed to do. After they decided they didn’t want to go on
with the deal, because they wanted to be a little more rock ‘n’ rollish
– they were a rock ‘n’ roll company – it didn’t work and
that was the end of it. Years later I find somebody with a copy of it. I said
‘it never came out, how did you get a copy’? ‘This record company Bar None has
pressed some, and they’re selling it’. We have no contract. We have nothing.”
A WOMAN LIKE ME
In 2001 they
released Let Me Down Easy – Live In Concert on Munich
(recorded in Holland), but an even more important album in Bettye’s recent life
is her latest studio album, A Woman Like Me, released on Blues Express
in early 2003. This year it was voted the Comeback Blues Album Of The Year at
the Handy Awards. ”Again, we’re selling more copies than the record company,
because the record company was not set up to sell records. It was just set up
to record and maybe sell a few out of its office, online or whatever. The
minute it was finished, the company owner disappeared. It took a year and a
half to get it out. He finally got it out, pressed up a few copies, but nobody
could find them. He had no distribution, and when people started asking for it
he was stunned. He was ashamed to face me, because he didn’t know what to do.
It’s just that I have this great booking agent now (Rosebud), the record isn’t
propelling me, I’m propelling the record. So I’m taking it with me wherever I
go and it’s getting more airplay, so it’s gotta be the longest selling record
in the world.”
Backed with real
live players and recorded in California, the set offers a variety of funky
movers, mid-paced shuffles, jazzy jams and a few thrilling ballads (Thru The
Winter, Salt On My Wounds and Close As I’ll Get To Heaven). Bettye
herself names A Woman Like Me her favourite out of all the records she’s
cut. ”I’m completely satisfied with it.”
”My biggest
disappointment is that album that didn’t come out. That was supposed to be my
first album, and I thought I had all the components – Atlantic, Brad Shapiro, the Muscle Shoals Sound, the songs – and when they
decided not to release it, which I know now was because of Ahmet Ertegun, I
was devastated. That and what’s happening with A Woman Like Me, because
I felt it was the best recording I’ve ever done.”
”My happiest
moment was Bubbling Brown Sugar, because that was what I originally
wanted to do, dance and sing on a big stage. Luckily I have more possibilities
now than I’ve ever had in my life. I’m in contact with Muscle Shoals’ Jimmy
and Barry, Ry Cooder has approached me and Jim Dickinson with his
new partner said they would like to do something for me.”
If Bettye comes
your way, please don’t miss her. You can find her touring dates and other
information on her website at www.bettyelavette.com.
-Heikki Suosalo
Aknowledgements to
Bettye, David Freeland (and his book Ladies Of Soul), Ian Storey-Moore (Soul
Survivor # 8), David Cole (In The Basement # 13) and Pekka Talvenmäki (Blues
News # 173).
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