LaVette!
JAY-VEE
9/10
IN 1972, Bettye LaVette cut Child Of The Seventies for Atlantic Records in Muscle Shoals surrounded by the most fabled of Southern session aces – only to have her hopes dashed when the label inexplicably chose to shelve it. The Detroit native spent the next three decades exiled in the farthest fringes of the music biz, singing for her supper in thousands of dives and lounges.
LaVette received some much-deserved attention in classic-soul circles in 2003 when , her first album of newly recorded material since 1982, got her a WC Handy Award for blues comeback album of the year. Two years later, she got some serious R.E.S.P.E.C.T. for the critically acclaimed , produced by Joe Henry – who’d helmed Solomon Burke’s 2002 comeback album – and containing LaVette’s primal interpretations of songs from female writers of every stripe save R&B, though it’s very much an R&B album.
