Bettye LaVette may be the greatest R&B singer you’ve never heard of. Raised in Detroit, LaVette’s early years amounted to a never-ending Motown party. By 16, she was married and recording. By 25, her first manager had been murdered and her second one, mixed up with mobsters, had vanished. While neighborhood kids—Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin—ascended the pop charts, LaVette made records that, through what she calls “buzzard luck,” fizzled or never got released.
After years when “nothing really happened” she had a career breakthrough in 2005 with her much-praised album I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise. In December 2008, she wowed the Kennedy Center Honors with her performance of The Who’s “Love Reign O’er Me”; the following month she performed at Barack Obama’s inauguration. Now 65 and living in West Orange with her Jersey-bred husband, the singer/harmonica player Kevin Kiley, LaVette is up for the contemporary blues Grammy for her latest recording, Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook. The awards will be presented on February 13.
It seems your luck has changed since you moved to New Jersey.
I moved here in 2003, when we got married, and when I’m here there isn’t anyplace I want to go. I’ve never been embraced this way before. People see me and recognize me in the post office and supermarket, and that’s wonderful.
Why did it take so long for you to be recognized for your talent?
You know how they say things come together to make a perfect storm? It was like that—a perfect failure. The bad things that happened, like the record label calling me in 1972 to say, “Your album’s not coming out,” were just as unique as some guy calling me up out of the blue and saying, “Would you like to come honor The Who at the Kennedy Center?’”
What was your career like in the decades prior to your current success?
Nothing really happened. There was just a lot of starting and stopping—I could never get all the dots connected. I watched everybody I grew up with go on to be very successful, and I have issues with these people because I feel like they watched me starve.
What does the Grammy nomination mean to you?
I’m from Detroit—everybody I went to school with won a Grammy. All my friends and neighbors had them. People who weren’t even musicians, like producers, had them. In Detroit you just looked across the alley and saw them on people’s mantels. So I’m hopeful. I don’t think it will say anything as to how well or not well I sing, but it’s kind of a personal thing with me.
You mentioned that you have more nerve than some other performers. Do you mean you’re not afraid to take chances?
I’m not afraid of anything at all at this point. You know, I’ve already been everything: nervous, doubtful. I’ve already given up and already started again. One of the things you get for giving up your youth is you cast off a lot of BS. I just signed my first management contract in 40 years, because I know what I want now. I did this thing with Todd Rundgren two weeks ago, a tribute to the Beatles, and his manager is now my manager.
Todd Rundgren: that’s a cool roster-mate.
Yeah, he was here for dinner the other night. We picked him up at the airport because he was performing in New York or something. I made gumbo.
What else should we know about you?
I’m a history buff—I know so much about [New Jersey] that my husband doesn’t even know, and he’s lived here all his life. He never knew George Washington almost died here, and that Edison used to be over there and then he was over here. I’m always pointing it out…My teacher from grade school would be proud.
You must be proud too.
The way I feel is relieved. I’m not tense at all. I feel I could sing the rest of my life now and be assured that enough people know me that I would have places to work. Even if I had to go back to making $50 a night, I feel much more secure in the fact that I have places to sing. It’s all I know how to do and all I have to do now.