An Intimate Evening With Bettye LaVette

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Bettye LaVette is no mere singer. She is an interpreter of the highest order. Whether the song originated as country, rock, pop, or blues, when she gets through with it, it is pure R&B. She gets inside a song and shapes and twists it to convey all of the emotion that can be wrought from the lyric.

Her career began in 1962, at the age of 16, in Detroit, Michigan. Her first single “My Man – He’s a Loving Man,” was released on Atlantic Records. She recorded for numerous labels, including Atco, Epic, and Motown, over the course of the 1960s through the 1980s. She also worked alongside Charles “Honi” Coles, and Cab Calloway in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Bubbling Brown Sugar in the role of Sweet Georgia Brown.

2012 marked her 50th year in show business and she also released her no-holds-barred autobiography, A Woman Like Me, co-written with David Ritz. In 2016, her most recent album, Worthy, garnered her a third Grammy nomination. She also received the Blues Music Award for Best Soul Blues Female Artist.

Although still not a household name, fans, critics, and artists have nothing but high praise for her live show and her interpretive vocal skill. She is one of very few of her contemporaries who were recording during the birth of soul music in the 1960s and is still creating vital recordings today.

Bettye LaVette performs at the Shalin Liu Performance Center on Friday, September 22. Showtime is 8 PM. Tickets: $46, $40, $29a