Bettye LaVette – an Xperience Interview

Bettye LaVette – an Xperience Interview – by Liam Sweeny.

Bettye LaVette is, according from the New York Times, “one of the great soul interpreters of her generation.” In the words of George Jones, “truly a ‘singer’s singer.’ With a sixty year career span that traversed Motown from it’s birth. She is coming to Caffe Lena on June 22^nd and you won’t be disappointed. Welcome Bettye LaVette.

RRX: So can you tell me a little bit about the Bettye LaVette Duo?

BL: Well, cause I’m a song interpreter as opposed to a singer. And for songs usually with magnificent lyrics. So I get a chance to exhibit them in the duo thing and when I’m with my band, everybody’s playing, I’m bouncing around the stage and tap dancing and whatever, So this is kind of a laid back thing and it’s more of a conversational attitude.

RRX: That’s cool. That’s really cool. In your autobiography, it comes up about your being a song interpreter instead of a just s singer. I’ve never heard someone say that, which is a really cool thing; that’s a very powerful thing. Can you explain a little bit of what you mean by being a song interpreter instead of just a singer?

BL: I think that everybody has a different thing about it, especially today because there aren’t a lot of song interpreters. Everybody seems to try to do everything exactly the way the other person did it. But I just take a little bit of umbrage with, with interpreter because I really haven’t interpreted anything. I’ve just given you my rendition of it. I’m not a mellifluous singer, that’s when I say I’m not a singer, but I tend to embrace words and put them in places where a lot of other people don’t, even if they, you formally heard them in other places like my Bob Dylan album.

RRX: Let’s talk about the Bob Dylan album, actually. I just read that it’s all Bob Dylan songs, right?

BL: Uh-huh.

RRX: What went into that? What was your thinking about doing that before you did it?

BL: Is this the only way I can get a contract with Universal?

(both laugh)

RRX: That’s a good answer. There we go.

BL: I had to really get the sound of him, which has never really appealed to me, and I’ve never really had to listen, although I’ve recorded some of his other songs, but I approached him strictly from a lyrical uh point of view and not a melodic point of view. And during the whole album, I had to listen to a lot of him to see how I wanted me to sound. And as I learned, I had to find out more about him. And I did. One thing is I usually tell the audience something when I’m trying to find something we had in common. And the one thing that I know we have in common is just like an old woman, he complains about everything. All the time. So we have that in common.

Wow.

BL: But he doesn’t divulge much about how he feels, you know, he just tells what happened, who did it. And that it annoyed him or whatever. He really said it hurt him. He really comes from that point of view, and he rarely said things like it hurt because I love them. It’s always just, ‘they did this.’ And then he tells the ironic things that what they did is just like, like wading in water or like falling off the log or out of a tree. But he never just says it broke my heart, or I never thought I was gonna recover from that. It’s just, it’s almost, it almost seems like a reporter.

Do you see a lot of that in songwriters? Do you see a lot of that in general?

BL: No, I think that’s what makes him so unique. He tells some of the most interesting things that happened. But he doesn’t tell you how he felt about them. But I did try and find him. I found a great deal of him in Emotionally Yours. I had to take the lyrics and set them aside away from him. And there was no denying what he said. If I saw him, I said, ‘no, no, I got you. I know what you said.’

So have you heard from him?

BL: Oh, no, no, no, and I resent that too. Anytime you could help a person by just saying their name, I think just to have that much power and not to use it at all is really a mean thing to do.

RRX: The writers, the songwriters, are there a lot of core group of writers that, that people go to or is it, is it more of a broader expanse?

BL: Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure everybody does it different. And then there are a lot of people who write their own songs. I just look for songs that are adult. And if they’re supposed to be funny, I don’t want them to be funny. I don’t look for 10 and 2 songs as we’re calling them now, me and some others, where you sing two verses and repeat the chorus 10 times. So I avoid that kind of thing. And I don’t know a lot of writers personally, of course, when I was in Detroit, I knew all the writers that were there, but the people whose songs I’m reinterpreting now, I’ve had a chance to meet some of them, Rolling Stones and Paul and Ringo. But these are people that I’ve been singing as long as they have. We were just in different places, and they didn’t come to where I was and I couldn’t afford to go where they were.

RRX: You’ve been accused of having “buzzard luck.” Can you explain that?

BL: Many things, if you read the Bible, if you read the book. I’ve just had some ironic things happen, which is why somebody chose to write a book because the things that have happened to me haven’t been. the normal things that happen to people. Do you know anything about Motown at all?

RRX: A little bit.

BL: About their very first singers, her name was Mary Wells.

She was about 10-15 years before Diana. She was the first big female vocalist. At any rate, I had been singing. A month. And in a scuffle in New York, her husband shot my manager in the head. I didn’t know any other managers so I had only been singing. So that’s how it started. And then when my friend David Friedland, who wrote the book that you referenced, decided to name his chapter about me, Buzzard Luck, because he had heard my mother say it early on when he first met me. My mother said, I’ve never seen anything like this girl, she has buzzard luck.

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