{"id":2951,"date":"2011-08-02T01:01:45","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T08:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=2951"},"modified":"2011-08-02T01:18:46","modified_gmt":"2011-08-02T08:18:46","slug":"bettye-lavette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/bettye-lavette\/","title":{"rendered":"BETTYE LaVETTE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

BETTYE LaVETTE<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A mighty soul legend takes on classic-rock heavyweights<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n

Bettye LaVette admits that she wasn\u2019t listening to rock \u2019n\u2019 roll radio at\u00a0 the time the 1960s and \u201970s classics she tackles on her new album, Interpretations: The British\u00a0 Rock Songbook<\/em>, were popular.\u00a0\u201cI was listening to mostly black radio then,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m a rhythm & blues singer, and that\u2019s where my<\/em> music was being played. I had no particular teenage romantic involvement with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

No matter\u2014her lack of attachment to the original recordings allowed LaVette to put her own stamp on these reimagined versions. \u201cAt one point, every song, including the National Anthem, was just words on a piece of paper,\u201d she figures. \u201cThese were just more songs I was learning to sing.\u201d<\/p>\n

LaVette admits that it was a challenge to find an emotional connection to songs whose lyrics were, at times, oblique. For instance, she learned that Led Zeppelin\u2019s cryptic \u201cAll My Love\u201d (with lines like, \u201cAt last the arm is straight, the hand to the loom\u201d) was inspired by the death of Zep singer Robert Plant\u2019s son. She found her way into it from another direction. \u201cI made it a\u00a0man-woman relationship,\u201d she says. \u201cI made the guy the cloth, I made the loom my past, I made the \u2018feather in the wind\u2019 the bitch,\u201d she laughs. \u201cIt made a story in my head.\u201d Similarly, LaVette learned that Pink Floyd\u2019s \u201cWish You Were Here\u201d had been written for onetime Floyd frontman Syd Barrett. \u201cBut I was singing it for David Ruffin and Marvin Gaye, and all my friends from then who stuck with me so long and had such good thoughts for me,\u201d she says. \u201cI wish they could see this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis\u201d is one of the most satisfying comebacks in the history of pop. After she first made her name in the early 1960s, \u201cthe sugar turned to shit,\u201d as she puts it. LaVette bounced among labels through the \u201960s and \u201970s. In the decades that followed, she did everything from tap-dancing with Cab Calloway on Broadway to playing anonymous piano-lounge gigs. \u201cI always tell my audience, \u2018You know, it\u2019s only been about five years since I actually had the addresses of all of my fans,\u2019\u201d she notes with a laugh. But in the new millennium she has at last found the mass audience she deserves. LaVette sang at an Obama inaugural concert and the Kennedy Center Honors\u2014and the\u00a0men behind those shows, Rob Mathes\u00a0and Michael Stevens, co-produced the record. \u201cWe just happened to feel the exact same way at the same time,\u201d she says of the pair. \u201cKind of like when people meet each other at a bar and run off and\u00a0get married.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Chris Willman<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BETTYE LaVETTE A mighty soul legend takes on classic-rock heavyweights Bettye LaVette admits that she wasn\u2019t listening to rock \u2019n\u2019 roll radio at\u00a0 the time the 1960s and \u201970s classics she tackles on her new album, Interpretations: The British\u00a0 Rock Songbook, were popular.\u00a0\u201cI was listening to mostly black radio then,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m a rhythm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[2261,70,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2974,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions\/2974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}