Renowned for making sad tunes sadder, song stylist extraordinaire Bettye LaVette was strikingly upbeat the other day, for two reasons.
First, she had just learned that morning that one of her old tunes, 1970’s “Easier to Say Than Do,” had landed on the soundtrack to this summer’s “The Beanie Bubble” starring Elizabeth Banks and Zach Galifianakis. “I have no idea how or why,” she said with a long, dry cackle. “I’m just glad they’re saying my name.” She’s on the soundtrack with Janis Joplin, Lenny Kravitz, the Cranberries, Earth, Wind & Fire and the McGuire Sisters, among others.
Second, LaVette is stoked about her own new album, “LaVette!” featuring the Southern soul songs of Randall Bramblett and all-star guests like John Mayer, Jon Batiste and Steve Winwood.
“As Hubert Humphrey used to say, I’m as pleased as punch,” said LaVette, who is not prone to gushing.
The veteran singer, who returns Tuesday to the Dakota in Minneapolis, discovered Bramblett about eight years ago when he opened for her in an Annapolis, Md., club. He gave her a couple of his CDs. Then her manager/husband explored more of Bramblett’s catalog and made a mix CD for her. She was smitten by the songs.
“He wrote them for me, but he didn’t know it,” LaVette said this month from her New Jersey home. “He gave me liberty to personalize them by making them more feminine or twisting the story around.”
This time, LaVette isn’t reimagining familiar numbers. She’s finding herself in obscure tunes, discussing life’s dilemmas with pathos and sometimes self-deprecating humor. There’s the pushback of “Don’t Get Me Started” and the heartbreaking “I’m Not Gonna Waste My Love.” On the simmering funk single “Plan B,” she admits that she’s not cut out for a day job and has no fallback strategy. In “Hard to Be a Human,” she sings sarcastically of God: “First He made the mountains, then He filled up the seas. But He lost His concentration when He started working on you and me.”
LaVette and Bramblett met only once in person but talk often on the phone. Said the well-traveled song interpreter: “He’s the only person I know who has had more flop records than I’ve had. He’s had 17 albums and none of them have sold.”
The Michigan native got her start on Motown as a teenager, scoring minor R&B hits in the 1960s. After decades in obscurity save for a six-year stint on Broadway in “Bubbling Brown Sugar,” LaVette launched a recording comeback in 2003, making a series of themed albums — including a collection of tunes by female songwriters, material from the British Invasion and pieces by Bob Dylan.
She’s received recognition along the way, including blues awards and Grammy nominations as well as hosannas for performances at the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors (doing the Who’s “Love, Reign o’er Me”) and Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural celebration (duetting with Jon Bon Jovi on “A Change Is Gonna Come”). She authored a raw, riveting, celebrity-filled 2012 memoir, “A Woman Like Me.” But none of her well-reviewed endeavors has been a big seller.
This time, LaVette isn’t reimagining familiar numbers. She’s finding herself in obscure tunes, discussing life’s dilemmas with pathos and sometimes self-deprecating humor. There’s the pushback of “Don’t Get Me Started” and the heartbreaking “I’m Not Gonna Waste My Love.” On the simmering funk single “Plan B,” she admits that she’s not cut out for a day job and has no fallback strategy. In “Hard to Be a Human,” she sings sarcastically of God: “First He made the mountains, then He filled up the seas. But He lost His concentration when He started working on you and me.”
LaVette and Bramblett met only once in person but talk often on the phone. Said the well-traveled song interpreter: “He’s the only person I know who has had more flop records than I’ve had. He’s had 17 albums and none of them have sold.”
The Michigan native got her start on Motown as a teenager, scoring minor R&B hits in the 1960s. After decades in obscurity save for a six-year stint on Broadway in “Bubbling Brown Sugar,” LaVette launched a recording comeback in 2003, making a series of themed albums — including a collection of tunes by female songwriters, material from the British Invasion and pieces by Bob Dylan.
She’s received recognition along the way, including blues awards and Grammy nominations as well as hosannas for performances at the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors (doing the Who’s “Love, Reign o’er Me”) and Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural celebration (duetting with Jon Bon Jovi on “A Change Is Gonna Come”). She authored a raw, riveting, celebrity-filled 2012 memoir, “A Woman Like Me.” But none of her well-reviewed endeavors has been a big seller.
By: Jon Bream (Star Tribune)
AUG 22, 2023 • 7PM
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