The Best Album Of The Year: Bettye LaVette ‘LaVette!’ (Jay-Vee Records)
PHOTO: Bettye LaVette by Danny Clinch
Eighteen years ago, Vocalist Extraordinaire Bettye LaVette, the longtime Essex County resident by way of Detroit, signed with Anti- and proceeded to release a string of albums that catapulted her career into overdrive. I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise was up amongst the best albums of 2005. Three albums later, she recorded her masterpiece, Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook. I was told to not know what songs she chose before listening and I’m glad I took the advice because—like Billie Holiday—she’s fond of messing with melody. The shock-of-recognition on each track was a quick sensory hit. Her alternative kind of phrasing, so singular, excessive, meaningful and uber-soulful, became her modus operandi on the next three albums, culminating in her second masterpiece, the all-Dylan Things Have Changed in 2018. No one ever had the balls to interpret Dylan like this. Both masterpieces can be a little off-putting for the uninitiated. She’s the opposite of “easy-listening.” When I saw her live, she took George Harrison’s “Isn’t It A Pity” and sang it so agonizingly slow that she made time itself stand still. I found myself holding my breath. It was delicious agony…one that only Bettye could pull off.
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If music had a Most Valuable Player award like baseball, Singer-Songwriter-Multi-Instrumentalist Randall Bramblett would’ve won it multiple times. From his time in jazz-rock fusionists Sea Level (’76-’80), he’s been the go-to guy that artists as far-reaching as the Allman Brothers Band, Levon Helm, Bonnie Raitt, Marc Cohn, Widespread Panic and plenty more have gone to in an effort to make their music better. Thirteen albums into his solo career, the man can do no wrong.
Bettye has met her match.
Lavette! has her singing 11 Randall Bramblett songs with an intensity, a passion, a daring kind of in-your-face arrogance that only she can muster. For the most part, though, she sings ‘em straight. Enticing. Inviting. That’s what makes it so universal. Guests like Steve Winwood, Ray Parker, Jr., John Mayer and Jon Batiste show up to the party but this is Bettye’s show. She’s never been so accessible. And her band—including producer Steve Jordan—accentuates her innate funkiness like a second skin, all A-List cats.
When she sings “I ain’t got no Plan B/Rhythm’n’Blues in the back of my mind/Champagne and a joint would do me just fine,” you believe her. It’s hard not to. On the slower tunes, the word that comes to mind is “desperation.” In her pauses, her phrasing, she’s an actor, putting across an emotion. No one, but no one, sings like this Lady.
If Bettye dug a little too deep for dilettantes in the past, becoming a cult icon in the process, here, everybody can groove to her unbelievable vocal chops. This is a voice that demands to be heard.