Bettye LaVette Shows How It’s Done
Despite not winning an award at the know-nothing Grammys for her brilliant LaVette! album, The First Lady of Song from Essex County put on a spectacular demonstration—as always—of interpretation at the “Celebrating Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra” NJPAC concert in Newark on February 8. Christian McBride (from Montclair) led his 16-piece big-band all night, minus the few songs he switched to bass for. McBride’s orchestra opened the festivities with the instrumental “Night Train,” first recorded by its author, Jimmy Forrest, in 1951, popularized by James Brown in 1961 and recorded by McBride in 2020.
The palpably yearning ache that LaVette brought to the 1924 Gershwin chestnut “The Man I Love” was riveting. Chestnut no more! Plenty of singers have tackled this one—Sophie Tucker (1928), Billie Holiday (1929), Sarah Vaughan (1957), Barbra Streisand (1993), Etta James (1994), Kate Bush (1995), Joni Mitchell (1999)—but has anyone turned it inside out enough to feel its innards?
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She sang three more songs, enthralling the hushed crowd with her genius: “Black Coffee,” the steamy 1948 torch song first sung by Vaughan, then by Ray Charles, Bobby Darin, Rosemary Clooney, Ruth Brown, The Pointer Sisters and dozens of others. “Love Me Or Leave Me” is from the 1928 Broadway musical Whoopee!. Peggy Lee wrote “He’s A Tramp” for the 1955 animated Disney film Lady and the Tramp. “That might be the only tune I’ve ever performed that as a little girl I saw a puppy sing onscreen but I’ve always wanted to do it,” said Bett.