Legendary Soul Singer Comes to Shank Hall

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Music Features

A massive snowstorm in New York City the last week in January grounded Bettye LaVette as she tried to celebrate her 76th birthday.

It seems not much else has been able to stop the legendary soul singer in the 21st century. She returns to Milwaukee on Wednesday as part of a winter tour taking her through the East Coast and Midwest.

LaVette celebrates her 60th year in the music business this year, and the last few decades have largely been much kinder than the first four. She has delivered a long string of well-received albums since 2005’s I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, produced by Joe Henry and featuring songs by the likes of Fiona Apple, Dolly Parton and Lucinda Williams.

She’s gone on to greatly expand her audience, win numerous awards, and record other critically acclaimed albums, including 2007’s The Scene of the Crime backed by the Drive-By Truckers and 2018’s all-Dylan effort Things Have Changed. Her last album, 2020’s Blackbirds on Verve, was a celebration of Black women, including Ruth Brown and Billie Holliday.

LaVette has no intention of stopping or slowing down anytime soon, saying directly, “I’ll keep going as long as I can until I make enough money to stop.”

Growing Up Fast

The Detroit native scored a hit as a 16-year-old in 1962 with “My Man–He’s a Lovin’ Man.” She remembers the excitement of the time and being a little scared, but she also recalls having to grow up quickly. LaVette says the first time she was ever on any stage she already had a hit on the charts.

“I was always in too much trouble to participate in the church or school choir,” she says.

During this time, LaVette was playing with musicians like the Supremes, the Dells, and the Marvelettes. She was younger than most everyone except Stevie Wonder. “There’s no children in the music business, no spoiled children,” she says. “You had to act like an adult. I didn’t act like a kid.”

Many of the men, she remembers, took that as an invitation. They wanted to go to bed with her. Some of those men, now in their 80s and 90, are still alive. Yes, she does kid them about it, she says.

More hits followed, but so did frustration. A 1972 album, Child of the Seventies, remained unreleased until 2006, when it was met with more critical acclaim. Other efforts of the time also failed to click.

She Kept Moving

Despite the disappointments, LaVette always kept moving, learning to tap dance for the touring company for the Broadway production Bubbling Brown Sugar in the role of Sweet Georgia Brown in 1979, performing with Charles “Honi” Coles and Cab Calloway. She says the experience terrified her, and she collapsed after coming off stage on opening night.

“Watching Honi and Cab Calloway perform, I was never that frightened when I was a kid singing R&B,” LaVette says. But the experience was incredibly important to her, and she says while she gave up tap dancing a long time ago, performing in the production forever changed the way she walked and moved her body on stage.

Known as a master interpreter, LaVette takes songs like George Jones’ “Choices” or Bob Dylan’s “Things Have Changed,” and puts a new brand of hurt on them with a gruff but incredibly soulful voice that hooks you and digs way into your chest.

LaVette says it would take her more effort to try to sing a song just the like the original person who sang it. “Besides no one feels the words exactly the same way I do,” she says. “It’s my interpretation. It doesn’t seem that hard.”

Bettye LaVette will perform Wednesday, Feb. 23 at Shank Hall, 1434 N. Farwell Ave. For more, visit shankhall.com.