Icon Bettye LaVette Signs With Jay-Vee Records
She came out of Detroit with both barrels smoking in the 1960s but she’s been a Jersey Girl for decades. With one of the most iconic voices in music history, as produced by drummer/label head Steve Jordan on songs all written by Randall Bramblett, LaVette! won’t be released until June 16 but you can hear one song, “Plan B,” below. “Dangling on a string,” she sings in that inimitable style of hers, “mumbling a prayer, my mojo’s busted and I ain’t got a spare,”
“I ain’t got no fucking other plan,” she says.
As far as her decision to record songs by this one composer, she says, “I think he’s the best songwriter I’ve heard in the past 30 years.” Bramblett has been an A-List cat, a musician’s musician, for awhile now. In the course of a 40-year solo career, the Georgia prodigy has been enlisted by no less than the Allman Brothers, Marc Cohn and Levon Helm, among many others, to record, perform and compose.
Producer Jordan says, “I’ve always felt that if Bettye could just sing the songs she really wanted to sing, she would get the most out of it.” He calls her a combination of Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Miles Davis. “When I prepare a band for her, I make sure we have it together. When she joins us, we’re only gonna get one or two takes, because she puts her heart and soul into each performance.”
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And what a band Jordan assembled! Pino Palladino has played bass with The Who and Jeff Beck. Guitarist Larry Campbell is a longtime member of Bob Dylan’s band. Leon Pendarvis has played keyboards for Bonnie Raitt, Barbra Streisand and The Blues Brothers Band. Guests on LaVette! Include John Mayer, Jon Batiste, Steve Winwood and Ray Parker, Jr.
“When Bettye gets ahold of a song,” concludes Jordan, “it becomes her song. It’s like she wrote it. She’s a great messenger, a communicator, an interpreter,” to which Bettye adds, “I’m very happy with what we’ve done. It’s very very difficult to please an old woman, but I’m nearly excited.”