Bettye Lavette

Bettye LaVette, born Betty Jo Haskins on January 29, 1946, in Muskegon, Michigan, is an American soul singer and Broadway performer whose career spans more than six decades. Raised in Detroit, she grew up singing R&B and country and western music in her parents' living room rather than in a church choir, and was raised as a Catholic. Her stage surname was borrowed from a friend, Sherma Lavette Anderson, who had introduced her to local record producer Johnnie Mae Matthews.

LaVette entered the music industry at sixteen, recording the single "My Man – He's a Lovin' Man" in 1962 under the name Betty LaVett. Atlantic Records picked up the disc, and it climbed to the R&B Top Ten over the fall and winter of 1963–64, sending LaVette on tour with Atlantic artists including Clyde McPhatter, Ben E. King, Barbara Lynn, and Otis Redding. She returned to the R&B charts in 1965 with "Let Me Down Easy" on Calla Records, peaking at No. 48, and briefly toured with The James Brown Revue on the strength of that release. In 1969 she signed with Silver Fox, where she recorded two Top 40 R&B hits, "He Made A Woman Out Of Me" and "Do Your Duty," backed by the studio musicians later known as The Dixie Flyers.

Atlantic signed LaVette again in 1972 and sent her to Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama to record with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, now known as The Swampers. The resulting album, Child of the Seventies, produced by Brad Shapiro, was completed but never issued by Atco. The mid-1970s brought two singles on Epic, and in 1978 she released the disco recording "Doin' The Best That I Can" on West End Records. In 1982, Motown signed her and sent her to Nashville, where producer Steve Buckingham oversaw Tell Me A Lie, her first album to receive an official release. Its lead single, "Right In The Middle (Of Falling In Love)," reached the R&B Top 40.

LaVette appeared on Broadway in 1976 in Bubbling Brown Sugar, sharing the stage with Honi Coles and Cab Calloway. Her involvement with the production extended into a six-year run, and it was during this period, specifically her 1977 engagement with the show, that the spelling of her first name shifted to Bettye.

French soul music collector Gilles Petard, after hearing LaVette's personal recordings of Child of the Seventies, spent years tracking down the master tapes at Atlantic, which had been presumed lost in a fire. He located them in 1999, licensed the album, and released it in 2000 as Souvenirs on his Art and Soul label. That same year, the Dutch Munich label issued Let Me Down Easy – Live in Concert. The renewed attention led to the 2003 release of A Woman Like Me, produced by Dennis Walker, which won the 2004 W. C. Handy Award for Comeback Blues Album of the Year.

ANTI- president Andy Kaulkin signed LaVette to a three-record deal after seeing her perform live. He paired her with producer Joe Henry and proposed an album composed entirely of songs written by women. The result, I've Got My Own Hell to Raise, appeared in 2005 and landed on numerous critics' year-end best lists. Its title derives from the lyrics of Fiona Apple's 1996 song "Sleep to Dream," which LaVette covered on the album alongside material by Aimee Mann, Sinéad O'Connor, Lucinda Williams, Joan Armatrading, and Dolly Parton. In 2006, the Rhythm and Blues Foundation presented her with a Pioneer Award, and Rhino Handmade reissued Child of the Seventies with previously unreleased tracks.

Her 2007 album The Scene of the Crime was recorded primarily at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with alt-rock band Drive-By Truckers. Frontman Patterson Hood co-produced the record with LaVette, and the two also co-wrote one of its tracks. The album debuted at number one on Billboard's Top Blues Albums chart and received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album. In 2008, she received a Blues Music Award for Best Contemporary Female Blues Singer. That December, at the Kennedy Center Honors, she performed a version of The Who's 1973 song "Love, Reign o'er Me" in tribute to Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend.

On January 18, 2009, LaVette performed a duet of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" with Jon Bon Jovi at the We Are One inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. In April of that year, she appeared alongside Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr at Radio City Music Hall for the David Lynch Foundation's Change Begins Within benefit concert. Her 2010 release, Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook, drew on material by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Animals, and Pink Floyd, and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album.

LaVette was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2020. In 2023, she received the Legacy of Americana Lifetime Achievement Award at the Americana Music Honors and Awards. Her musical style draws on soul, blues, rock and roll, funk, gospel, and country music.