The word "tragic" is often to describe R&B singer Bettye LaVette—but she laughs so hard when talking about her rocky 45-year career that it's clear her setbacks have only made her tougher. As a Detroit teenager, she had a hit with 1962's "My Man—He's A Loving Man," but though she was a friend and tourmate to many soul superstars throughout the decade, LaVette was never able to break into the upper bracket. After a string of excellent singles for small labels like Calla and Silver Fox, LaVette traveled south to Alabama's heralded Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 1972 to record an album for Atlantic. The result, Child Of The Seventies, might have been a minor masterpiece of the era, had it ever been released. Instead, Atlantic inexplicably shelved it, leaving LaVette twisting in the wind on the verge of her biggest triumph. From there, she released a smattering of records—including a dark-horse disco hit, "Doin' The Best That I Can"—before spending time in the Broadway show Bubbling Brown Sugar. She realized a dream in 1982 when Motown issued a full-length titled Tell Me A Lie, but the album flopped, and LaVette spent the next two decades in relative limbo.
In 2000, fueled by fresh interest in original soul music, Child Of The Seventies finally saw the light of day in the form of a French import called Souvenirs. Things snowballed from there: After signing to the high-profile Anti- imprint, LaVette recorded 2003's gritty I've Got My Own Hell To Raise. Her new album for Anti- carries some serious baggage: The Scene Of The Crime was recorded in Muscle Shoals at FAME Studios with legendary session musicians David Hood (who played on Child Of The Seventies) and Spooner Oldham. And Hood's son Patterson and his neo-Southern rock group Drive By Truckers were LaVette's backing band for Crime. The singer's still-simmering frustration erupts in the aptly dubbed "Before The Money Came (The Battle Of Bettye LaVette)," Crime's most bitterly personal yet swaggering track. Now 61—and looking and sounding as good as ever—LaVette spoke with The A.V. Club about rejection, vindication, and the correct usage of the term "soul singer." (Apparently there isn't one.)
The A.V. Club: Is "The Battle Of Bettye LaVette" really the first song you've ever written?
Bettye LaVette: For the most part, especially when it comes to telling a story like this one does. I'm not a writer, and I don't think I could write about anything I didn't know. And I don't feel like writing about everything that I do know. [Laughs.] Patterson was my muse, and he talked me into writing that song. He said that anybody who could talk as much as I do could write a song. [Laughs.] Songwriting doesn't even interest me. If you're sitting down talking to Patterson, though, he has to stop at every third word so he can make a note about a song. [Laughs.]
AVC: In "Battle," you sing about David Ruffin and the other early Motown stars who were friends of yours growing up in Detroit. You wound up on Motown in the '80s, but did you ever come close to being signed to the label in the '60s?
BL: Oh, no. I didn't sound enough like a girl for them. [Laughs.] They really wanted a very pop sound. The producers who were my champions there—Clarence Paul, Andrew Williams, Mickey Stevenson—were considered antiquated, left over from the '50s. Even when I did do my album for Motown, it was through connections I had in Memphis and Nashville. [Laughs.] But originally, the only Motown artists that had records before I did were Mary Wells and Smokey Robinson.
AVC: In the '60s you toured with people like Otis Redding and James Brown. Do you have any particular memories or impressions of that experience?
BL: The first six months that I sung, I worked with Otis Redding, Clyde McPhatter, Ben E. King, Barbara Lynn, Clarence "Frogman" Henry. And then in the next five years of my career, I worked with James Brown, The Drifters, gosh, who else was around at that time? [Laughs.] After all these people became stars, I never got to see them very much. Some of them never again; I never got to see Otis again after he started to be a star. But I knew him from singing at the Royal Peacock together. That's a whole little story unto itself. [Laughs.]
AVC: When you eventually signed to Motown in the '80s, did it feel like a vindication?
BL: I was very happy. I still had hopes that the same thing would happen to me that happened to all my old friends. I didn't feel vindicated. I feel vindicated now, 'cause I'm 61, my voice is strong, and I can fit into a size 6. [Laughs.] This is vindication.
AVC: Another thing you bring up in "Battle" is your aborted album, Child Of The Seventies. How did that recording come about?
BL: It was actually the second time I'd been with Atlantic. My first record was on Atlantic in 1962, on a label that was distributed by them. So in the early '70s, Atlantic still knew me from the hit I'd had before. I went down to Muscle Shoals Sound and recorded the album in, David Hood tells me, three days.
AVC: What do you remember about that recording session?
BL: First of all, it was very different from recording in the North. It was so laidback. Nothing was sophisticated; everything was pretty natural. [Laughs.] Like rolling over in bed.
AVC: It seems there were a handful of soul singers from the North who really fit in with the Southern soul scene—people like yourself, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett.
BL: That's probably because we were all the first generation of our families that lived in the North. We had been to the South a lot. It wasn't culture shock. [Laughs.]
AVC: When you first listened to the playback of that record in 1972, did it sound like something special?
BL: Yes. I knew that all these musicians I was working with had recorded all these hit records. I knew the songs were good and that I sang them well. And I knew I was on Atlantic. I had virtually no reason to believe they'd call me and say, "We've decided not to go forward with the project."
AVC: That's what Atlantic told you?
BL: That's exactly what they said. They had sent me plane tickets for a promotional tour. They called and asked for the tickets back and said they had decided not to go forward with the project.
AVC: Did you fight it?
BL: Well, what was I going to say? [Laughs.] Nobody gave me any information. I still really don't know what happened, or what was said in my absence. It was very much like when I was with Calla. I went to the office one day, and no one was there. I never heard from Nate McCalla again, until someone told me he'd been found in a ditch in Arizona or somewhere. [Laughs.]
AVC: How big of a personal setback was not having the album released?
BL: It was a tremendous setback. I didn't know what to do. It was a long time before the Broadway thing came along in 1979. A whole bunch of other stuff happened in between there: big stuff, insignificant stuff, stuff I can't even remember.
AVC: You had a disco hit in the '70s, "Doin' The Best That I Can."
BL: Yes. But before it took off, I asked for release from my contract and told them they could keep any money that the record made. [Laughs.] I left so that I could go to Nashville and record with the same producer, Steve Buckingham. And I never heard from the "Doin' The Best That I Can" people ever again. I guess that's why [Buckingham] felt so compelled to ask me to do the Motown album. He felt bad. [Laughs.] I had gotten myself out of a record that was actually selling. I had no idea disco was going to get as big as it got.
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