Soul singer Bettye LaVette

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Jesse Thorn

Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bettye LaVette is a singer with over 60 years in the game. She's recorded dozens of albums. And earned multiple Grammy nominations for her work in the blues and R&B genre. Her latest album LaVette! was released earlier this year. Bettye stops by the show to chat about the album. She let us in on how she chooses the songs she wants to record. Plus, she gets into her childhood and her long, tumultuous path to music.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFund.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:22.4	It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.
0:24.8	My next guest, Betty LeVat, isn't Diana Ross.
0:28.8	I mean, both of them are R&B singers from Detroit.
0:31.7	They were both born around the same time.
0:33.8	They both cut records from Motown.
0:36.5	They're both incredibly talented.
0:38.8	But that's about where the similarities end.
0:44.2	We could start with Betty's voice.
0:46.8	It is commanding and desperate and beautiful all at once,
0:51.0	like a sort of Tina Turner scream and jay Hawkins
0:55.4	level of intensity.
0:58.8	And of course, there is the obvious difference between Betty LeVat and Diana Ross.
1:29.0	The odds are, this is the first time you've heard Betty LeVat's name.
1:34.2	Betty is a working singer.
1:35.7	She has recorded dozens of albums on Atlantic, on Motown, Epic,
1:40.9	Verve.
1:42.1	A few of those records charted, nothing was an outright smash.
1:46.7	More recently though, the tenor of her career has changed.
1:50.3	Since the early 2000s, she's released a series of eclectic and inspired albums.
1:55.9	She's recorded her take on songs by Bob Dylan,
1:58.6	Dolly Parton, Fiona Apple and Led Zeppelin.
	...

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