Bettye LaVette recorded her first single in Detroit in 1962, but she achieved only sporadic fame. In the past several years, however, LaVette, 69, has come roaring back. She spoke to the Washington Post from her home in New Jersey.
Q: You just spent two weeks getting good reviews for a nightclub act. How did that go?
A: When we have a new CD, what we usually do is, after the first night or so, the first time we do it, we’ll take two or three songs, the ones that seem to work the best onstage or whatever. I like this CD so much, I did the whole thing from top to bottom.
Q: You toured with Otis Redding and James Brown and performed with Cab Calloway on Broadway. Who were some of the people you learned from growing up?
A: It’s kind of hard to know. When I was 18 months old, I lived in a household that had a jukebox in the living room. I knew every song on the jukebox. This meant I knew songs by Hank Williams, songs by Red Foley, songs by Mahalia Jackson.
Q: Are you critical of your own work?
A: Oh, I didn’t like anything for the first 20 years. I wasn’t pleased with the records. The people I was competing with or working with, the sound of their recordings was always so much better, so much broader, so much bigger, so much better produced.
The Washington Post
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