Photo by Mark Seliger
For years, Bettye LaVette was the secret weapon of soul, beloved by music purists and record collectors, but comparatively little known next to her peers Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross. All of that is changing these days, thanks to a series of well-received comeback albums and a jaw-dropping autobiography, “A Woman Like Me,” that singer Alicia Keys recently optioned for a movie.
Richmond can hear all about it, as the great lady herself is scheduled to bring an intimate, stripped-down "one-woman show about my life" to the Tin Pan on April 4, integrating the stories found in her colorful book with a selection of tunes she's made her own, including "Let Me Down Easy" and "Cry Me a River."
Richmond magazine: Your new album, "Things Have Changed," is all Bob Dylan songs. How'd that happen?
Bettye LaVette: Bettye LaVette does Bob Dylan. It's like those movies they did in the '50s, like "Dracula Meets Frankenstein." [Laughs]
RM: Are you a Dylan fan?
BL: I've done some of his stuff before. I can't really say I'm a Dylan fan, I'm too [f-ing] old to be a fan [laughs]. I've been singing as long as he has. I'm not really a fan of any of my contemporaries, I'm a fan of people whose bridges I came across on.
My friend, photographer Carol Friedman, pitched me the idea of doing a Dylan album, and I started working on it last November with Steve Jordan producing, and a great group of musicians, including guitarist Larry Campbell [a veteran of Dylan's band]. Usually I just pick up a tune, learn the words and I record it. But this time I had to find 12 tunes by the same writer that I actually liked. Then I had to put the words in my mouth, and I would have to change the gender, sometimes I had to change what was happening in the song because it wasn't what a woman would be doing, and because it wasn't a tribute album, the songs had to pertain to me. And Dylan, you know, doesn't sing any melodies at all. So I had to go through the music and put the melodies where I thought they should go.
I [re]wrote so many lyrics too. I hope Bob won't be angry. I had to cut out verses - some of the songs have seven or eight verses. And, you know, Bob is always fussing about something - sounding more like a wife -- you end up saying, 'OK, OK, don't tell me that again. Nag, nag, it's the same damn thing.' [laughs]
RM: Your autobiography, A Woman Like me, is incredibly frank, revealing the inner world of the '60s soul music circuit. Like when Motown's Tammi Terrell pulled a gun on you.
BL: Oh, but that was just joking. Everybody had a gun, that was really the point of the story. Everyone had been saying how much we were alike - she was Tammy Montgomery - but I could never run across her on tour. And finally I got to the same town she was in, and she said [jokingly] 'I heard you been looking for me.' But she and I became very close.
RM: Your book paints indelible portraits of Otis Redding, Diana Ross and other legendary performers in their early days.
BL: When I met Otis, he had one mohair suit, some black patent leather shoes and some red socks. People want me to talk about the person that they think they know, and I want to talk about the person I knew. Some got upset with me when I talked about Diana Ross, but I knew her when she was 18 years old. I didn't know her after she became a star. When I knew her, she tended to kind of look down on everybody else. I bet she still has the very same attitude she had then. And it was a problem between me and her and the rest of the female singers who encountered her. We tended to hate her because she was doing the things that, actually, you should do, to look like a star. And we wanted to be bougie like her, but we weren't practicing it like she was.
RM: In the 70s, you performed on Broadway, and throughout the country, in "Bubbling Brown Sugar." Did you enjoy the theatre?
BL: It was the most fun I've ever had in my entire life. Imagine getting to tap dance with [famed hoofer] "Honi" Coles? And Cab Calloway, he kind of adopted me. I loved performing, but I did not like traveling with 32 people, I just don't like group activity. I've only been in one band in my life, and that was in 1963 with Don Gardner and Dee Dee Ford. I'm not a group participant, I usually cause trouble in a group. And after "Bubbling Brown Sugar" was over, and was a big hit, I thought I was kind of "theatre-ish" so I rehearsed another show for nine months in Detroit ... and it ran for two weeks. (laughs).
RM: You had a disco smash in 1978, "Doin' the Best I Can." But I heard you weren't so keen on disco.
BL: Cory Robbins, who later headed Profile Records, and Run-DMC and all that, he was 19 years old at the time and put that together [for West End Records]. I thought he was a cute kid and I loved him. I loved the song and I needed a record out. I recorded it and I went back on the road with "Bubbling Brown Sugar," and they told me that this guy Walter Gibbons had remixed it. They played it for me and it started and two minutes went by. And I said, 'Am I singing in this or what?' and then after awhile my voice came in, for a line, and went back to the instrumental, and I said, 'this is ridiculous.' I told them I wanted out of my contract and that they could keep the royalties. Well, Cory came down to the Carlyle Hotel and he brought me my check. I was like ... (silence). And they took me to a big disco there in New York, the Factory I think it was, and we walked in and the song was playing on these huge speakers and the guys knew all the words. It's in the top 100 Disco songs of all time now, but I liked it as a song, first and foremost, before they took my track and put it all over the other track.
RM: It's been noted that the recent music since your "comeback" is smoother than it was in the old days. How do you think your sound has changed?
BL: Well, I've gained control of my voice, which was something that [former manager] Jim Lewis was trying to teach me for more than 20 years. And it took me about 20 years to understand what he was saying, which was 'Let the song come to you. And stop hollering.' And that was my thing. I was a tiny girl with a big voice, so I hollered. This poor man argued with me and had to cuss me out so many times. I remember one night we were coming back from [a gig], it's in the book, and I said, 'You just want me to sound old, Sarah Vaughan can't sing' and he put me out of the car onto the freeway. He said, 'you're too stupid to ride in the car.' (laughs) But he saw the potential in me that I did not see. Because I wasn't trying to develop my voice, I wasn't taking care of it.
RM: How do you feel about finding mainstream fame late in your career? Is it bittersweet?
BL: There's bittersweet feelings but there's also pride and ebullience. I've been trying to be Bettye LaVette all my life. And with the music sounding the way it does, and with the emotion I can bring into it, that's where my bitterness [goes]. I don't have to act it out, I've got somewhere to put it. I put it in a song.
RM: When was the last time you played Richmond? Do you remember?
BL: I've played there a few times over the years. I remember the first time I performed in Richmond, on the first tour I ever did in my life in 1962 with Clyde McPhatter and Ben E. King, I forget where it was, but it was one of the first integrated dances in Virginia, and they had a rope down along the middle of the auditorium separating [blacks from whites]. And I'll never forget it because the [promoter] told me not to play one side any more than the other and to crisscross the stage, and that's how I do it to this day, going from one side to the other. [Laughs]
Bettye LaVette performs at the Tin Pan, 982 Quioccasin Road, on April 4. Doors 6 p.m., show 8 p.m. $42.50 to $47.50. 804-447-8189 or tinpanrva.com.
