For the one who is seen to use his own skill to his heart's content, how to wither himself away should be quite a difficult problem. Especially for those who had been brilliant in their best days, the gap between the past and the present is so deep and puzzling. Aside from athletes who only can do sports professionally in their short peak, musicians can do music until they cease to move and can have their own 'flavor' which is brought from their decline filled up by their career. While we often feel sad about the 'flavor' of those who made songs put in the memories of many of us, we feel like discovering something new when we know the 'flavor' of the one who had been hidden behind for long and is put in the spotlight suddenly. Bettye LaVette keeps releasing records for over 40 years since she was sixteen. Her voice is sweet and bright in her northern pops element, and thick and spreading in her southern soul sphere. That's why old school soul fans have known much about her. Even after when in the 21st century her voice became throaty and lower, her way of shaking her voice, sometimes with bending tones, grows to appeal to the sentiment of the audience. I hear her substantial works in recent years, and then I think it is not too much to say that today is in her prime.
"Child of the Seventies", the compilation of LaVette's sides distributed by Atlantic, contains her first hit My Man - He's a Lovin' Man and Shut Your Mouth. Recorded in Detroit of '62 where Motown established itself afterward, these tunes backed by typical R&B arrangements and blusy guitars let you hear her fresh but thick voice, which is said to have not come from any church gospel or any professional career. She joined the tours with her sudden hit, however, her following Here I Am andYou'll Never Change got no hits. Her next stay is at Lu Pine label where the Primettes as better known as the Supremes also had stayed before, and from where she cut a novelty Witchcraft in the Air and a ballad You Killed My Love (they appear on a compilation "Birth of Motor Town"). And then she moved to New York and released Calla's imprint Let Me Down Easy with the orchestral arrangement in the rhythm of a kind of tango. This earnest vibration of her voice absolutely tells intorelable feelings like everything-was-gone to the audience. Her Calla years compilation "Bluesoul Belles" also inculdes a fine ballad Cry Me a River and cheerful tunes. Among them it seems to me that Let Me Down Easy is by far pre-eminent.
Hits dried up again and LaVette tried to find a way in the south. She released a rendition of What Condition My Condition was in (it appears on "Dirty Laundry" and so on), the hit by the country singer Kenny Rogers in his psychedelic rock era. This lead her to Kenny's brother Lelan who once had produced Esther Phillips. Recordings of his label Silver Fox and its parent company SSS international from '69 to '70 can be heard on "Take Another Little Piece of My Heart", which contains not only her hits like funky and sexy He Made a Woman out of Me or Do Your Duty, but well-shaped At the Mercy of a Man, well-choosed renditions and duets with the original Twist Hank Ballard. You can hear the good combination of the Dixie Flyers who later supported many soul hits and the Memphis Horns and her voice. And then her reading of Neil Young's Heart of Gold recorded in her home Detroit brought her to Muscle Shoals. She cut an Atlantic single Your Turn to Cry coupled with Soul Tambourine, however, she could not get any hit and her scheduled album was cancelled. "Child of the Seventies" contains tunes of the album like All the Black and White Children with magnificent message and arrangement and Souvenirs with earnest feeling. They let you hear the fine harmony between southern soul which came to mix sophisticated works with its own earthiness of country and her sophisticated but soulful voice.
Since then she released some disco tunes, or appeared on the stage of Broadway, or recorded country soul at Motown, or read Motown tunes in the black contemporary arrangement at the UK label Motorcity. While sometimes she couldn't get good tunes, you can hear her voice wither away but grow its sentiment deeper. When into the 21st century there came "Let Me Down Easy in Concert", the live in Holland with her main tunes and there came re-prints of her past recordings. From Europe we found her again. After a long interval in the U.S. she released the W.C. Handy Award album "A Woman Like Me", which contain wonderful blues with solid backings. However, I was more impressed with her next album. "I've Got My Own Hell to Raise" is produced by Joe Henry who also did works with Solomon Burke. He selected tunes of those who came recently like Sinead O'Connor, Fiona Apple or Aimee Mann, and he let us hear her voice as possible as he can with less unique treatments. The honest and delicate sound is not the re-production of the past blues or soul but can only be said as today's one. Although it is difficult to ask her such tensions in the next album, I think her voice should spread to us not as the stable past but as the anxious and uneasy present. (2007/06/24)