The Soul of Bettye LaVette

HERE at The Misread City, we’re longtime fans of the LA-based biographer and ghostwriter David Ritz. Many of you know his work – his definitive biography of Marvin Gaye, Divided Soul, and his "collaborative autobiographies" of Ray Charles, Jerry Wexler, Cornel West, and many others. He’s among the most productive and genuinely soulful people we know. (Ritz is, among other things, a former student of one of our intellectual heroes, Leslie Fiedler.)

Ritz’s latest book is on the once lost – now found -- R&B singer Bettye LaVette, who exits both inside and outside of the tradition. She can build up a phrase like Otis Redding, and she can smear her tones like Eric Dolphy. “She is a voice from the wilderness,” Pete Townshend has said. “How did we miss her for so long?

Ritz captures that voice, and her strange, at times very sad, at times hilarious story, in A Woman Like Me. (Don’t take out word for it: Elvis Costello loves the book as well.)

LaVette also has a new record, Thankful 'n' Thoughtful, on the Anti- label. It's got her usual counter-intutive set list, with songs by Dylan, the Black Keys, Neil Young, and two versions (one of them wonderful) of Ewan MacColl's "Dirty Old Town" -- originally written about Salford, Lancashire, which makes me wonder how long it will take her to cover The Smiths.

We spoke to Ritz about LaVette’s roller-coaster career, the book and his work as a ghost writer.

Bettye LaVette manages to be both a classic soul singer in her vocal tone and technique, and also a real individualist: It takes just a bar or two to tell it’s her. Can you describe her style, her approach to a song?

She describes herself as a rhythm and blues singer—and I think that’s accurate. She’s street-trained in the Etta James/Otis Redding school of singing: unrestrained emotional expression; idiosyncratic style over self-conscious composure; emphasis on percussive narrative. Let the beat drive the story. Sing conversationally. Stay  loose. Never fear the funk cause the funk is deepest and messiest truth. Like all the great soul singers—Marvin, Ray, David Ruffin—she’s also informed by jazz. Her sense of harmony is highly sophisticated and her phrasing, though raw, has jazz-like cadences. The way she elongates a line. The way she cuts off a phrase.

One of the things that makes LaVette so distinctive is her choice of material. Unlike a lot of R&B singers, she doesn’t sing many blues numbers or classic soul tunes, at least not on her recent albums, but rather songs by everyone from Ewan MacColl to Tom Waits to Aimee Mann. One of her records was produced by musician Joe Henry, an inspired choice but hardly an obvious one. Where does that impulse come from?

She’s an iconoclast by nature. She resists the obvious. She’s also a searcher. She’ll search out various writers—say, George Jones—and learn their entire oeuvre. She and her husband Kevin, a brilliant musicologist, are fearless about seeking out esoteric material. They never stop looking for good stories set to music. They search far beyond the R&B genre because they know if the song is righteous Bettye has the chops to reinvent it.

As riveting a musician as she is, LaVette spent decades poor and obscure, at times working as a prostitute. Was it just bad luck that put her so far on the margins for so long?

God only knows. Why some great artists hit early while others hit late or not at all is an eternal mystery. We can look back and analyze but I prefer to leave the mystery in tact. Who can say why the planets align the way they do? Was her it fault that she languished in obscurity for so long? Probably yes, probably no. Why does the cosmos conspire to bless one artist and deny another? Who knows? I’m just glad she’s finally made it.

What is LaVette like temperamentally? Intense? Laid back? Guarded? Funny or deeply sober?

Sober is not a word you’d apply to Bettye. Neither would you call her laid back. She is not guarded. I know no one more candid. She is funny, even hysterical. She’s intense. Her mind is fascinating. Her brilliance is always on full display.

It’s interesting how she breaks from the classic grounding of soul music and the black church, or at least Christianity. “My story is one in which Jesus will not be making an appearance,” she says in the book. “My feeling then and now is that if God is fond of black people, he has shown his affection only recently.” How typical is this point of view, have you found, among black musicians of her generation?

Given her cultural background, her atheism is highly unusual. It’s also refreshing. A believer myself, I was happy to be challenged over and again by her skepticism about the Christian story. Bettye’s strongly anti-authoritarian. She also likes to use language to shock. Her main tool, as a singer and conversationalist, is surprise.

You’ve spent time with a lot of subjects for as-told-to novels… Many of them are black musicians whose backgrounds are in basic ways very different from yours. Part of your job is to capture their voices, or maybe merge them with your own? My guess is that the trick is a bit like the secret to improvising: You listen. But what else is there?

Love. It helps enormously to offer love to your collaborator. Love comes in the form of not simply listening, but listening with your heart as well as your head. Love comes in the form of not judging your subject. Love is also expressed in patience. Letting her take as long as she needs to tell her story.

Love also comes in the language you use to ask questions. Even the tough questions ideally should come from a place of love. Love is also the source of my enthusiasm. And without enthusiasm—for the mere fact of hanging out with Bettye, for the joy of hearing her speak, for the privilege of channeling her voice and sculpting her story—the work becomes dull. With enthusiasm, art is possible. A groove can be set. A story can be told. 

Conference for Aspiring Musicians

NEXT week ASCAP will hold a conference dedicated to beginning and mid-career musicians and songwriters: The I Create Music Expo, held at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel, will school them in the business side of things and in staying afloat during a very tough time in the industry. It's an especially tough time for aesthetes and introverts: The current climate requires a strong degree of self-promotion.

HERE is my story from The Hollywood Reporter. It's only online for subscribers, but that may change this week. (Here's the conference website.)

Speakers, panelists and so on range from hacks to middle or the roaders to eccentric talents like Van Dyke Parks and Pharrell Williams.

My story, which includes an interview with diminutive songwriter Paul Williams, who currently heads the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers begins this way:

Music and song- writing typically attract idealists who love melody, harmony and the creative process. Navigating the business, however, requires pragmatism and discipline, and in these unstable times, striking the right balance can be a challenge.

Billy Bragg and Mavis Staples at UCLA

FRIDAY night at Royce Hall saw an unlikely double bill, with British folk-punk hero Billy Bragg playing a full set mixing politics and pop before soul goddess Mavis Staples, who channels the spirit of the black church and the civil rights movement.

This incongruous pairing ended up being a blast, though the two may have more in common politically than musically. (Both artists have also, of, course, worked with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy.)

It's easy to love Billy Bragg's early music -- those rough songs from the '80s belted out with a thick British accent and an electric guitar. For a while in the early '90s it seemed like Bragg was going to ride the alt-rock boom into something like fame: He had a small hit with the jaunty "Sexuality," co-written with Johnny Marr.  But the music that's come since the early '90s with some exceptions like the Woody Guthrie records with Wilco, has seemed less urgent.

So it was a thrill to see Bragg set up solo on the Royce stage with just a stack of amps and Telecaster. His set leaned heavily on political songs, including a cover of Woody Guthrie's "I Don't Have a Home in This World Anymore," and some new numbers that sounded good. His political rants in between songs were about as engaging and persuasive in their common sense and compassion. The recent U.S. elections clearly inspired him.

And his love songs -- "Greetings to the New Brunette," "Milkman of Human Kindness," "A New England" -- still sound great. I'd forgotten how great Bragg could be live. My wife lamented that she could not vote for this British citizen for president.

The highs of Mavis Staples -- best know as part of the Staples Singers -- were high indeed even if she was less consistent than Bragg. Alongside gospel -- "Creep Along, Moses" -- and soul numbers, with stirring vocal harmonies, she sang CCR's "Wrote a Song For Everyone" and The Band's "The Weight."

At times in the set Staples seemed to get lost, and she's some of her voice's middle range sounded worn. But Staples gave off so much decency and positive energy it was hard to mind, and her band was spectacular.

A fuller review HERE by Steven Mirkin in the Orange Co Register.

Otis Redding Live on the Sunset Strip

Perhaps the most exciting development in West Coast culture this week is the release of one of the greatest R&B records I have ever heard – Otis Redding Live on the Sunset Strip. It should be equally appealing even to people who know classics like Redding’s Live in Europe and other, shorter recordings of these April 1966 dates at the Whisky a Go Go.

Peter Guralnick, in his masterly Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, sketches an indelible portrait of Redding’s emergence from Macon, Georgia, “just another graceful southern city gone to seed,” through early hits like “These Arms of Mine,” and the growth of what he calls “an aching vulnerability seemingly at odds with the self-confidence he exuded to friends and associates.” Redding died in a plane crash near the end of 1967, at his peak, right before his transcendent “Dock of the Bay” – a song showing a new direction -- was released.

The set is made up of three full sets, including the songs “Security,” “Respect,” Chained and Bound,” “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” and his covers of songs like “Satisfaction” and even “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.”

As much as we love James Brown, Solomon Burke, Sam Cooke and others, Otis is our favorite soul singer here at The Misread City. We spoke to Ashley Kahn, author of books about Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme, who penned the liner notes for this new 2-CD set.

Q: Some of this material exists in previous sets. What’s new here?

This includes stuff that wasn’t available previously. Most important, it doesn’t try to fix ‘problems’ – it’s warts and all. It’s the performance experienced by the people who were actually there, with his hand-picked road band, which he called his ‘orchestra.’ It also includes Sunday night’s last set: In the jazz world, the last set is where people take chances, pull out tunes you don’t expect them to, sometimes hitting, sometimes not. Normally record companies say, ‘We’re gonna bury that -- put it in the archives.’

You can also hear how the energy build in a live show. And the time allotted to these recordings gives you the pauses and banter between the songs: It gives you the feel of the down-home welcome of an Otis Redding show.

Q: Otis’s Live in Europe is an acknowledge masterpiece – how is the spirit of this date different?

A: That, and there’s also the concert recorded with Booker T and the MG’s at the Monterey Pop festival. By the time of those concerts, he had crossed over from being this R&B guy to someone making pop hits, radio hits. Pop radio was changing, genres were opening up. This is earlier: It’s the working-man’s Otis that you get here.

Q: The live recording has a special place in '60s soul, even beyond its role in rock, jazz, and other genres.

A: Live was when soul musicians were most themselves – its when they’re working an audience and working off its energy. It’s hard to recreate that in the studio. At a live show, musicians are very motivated – it’s hit it or quit it. You gotta make it happen – and that’s Otis at his best.

Q: Even with the great voices of '60s soul, there was something deep and yearning about Otis Redding that nobody could match.

A: There’s a grittiness he never lost. As he said in the great tune, ‘Tramp,’ he did with Carla Thomas, ‘I’m straight from the backwoods,’ with no apologies. It’s there in his voice, his in banter with the audience. Otis had a balance between the down-home and sophisticated mid-‘60s soul.

Q: Otis died when he was only 26. What might he have gone on to do?

A: There were so many changes taking place during his career and after. But Otis was always in the process of shifting. If you think of the territory he covered from just the early ‘60s to the mid ‘60s, when he was listening to Bob Dylan and the Beatles. And he put together, with 'Dock of the Bay,' a gentle folk song on acoustic guitar.

Would he have gone in the direction of Al Green, with a preacherly quality, but elegant and intimate?  Or Barry White and Isaac Hayes, that between-the-sheets soul?

Who knows. He was certainly heading in a more introspective direction.

He was definitely following his own path.