Tag: steve jordan

MIXTAPE: Will Holshouser on the Accordion in Country, Bluegrass, and Roots Music

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The accordion is like a cousin you don’t see very often, but who is an integral, colorful member of the family. In country, folk, bluegrass and related roots music from the U.S., the accordion has always been there, more of a presence than you might think. It’s central to styles such as zydeco, Cajun, and conjunto music, but also many foundational bluegrass and country artists – such as Bill Monroe and the Carter Family – used accordion in their music at times. The accordion was in the environment, part of the sound world of mid-20th-century popular music, adding a special touch to bands of all kinds. Although it did not continue to flourish as a central bluegrass or country instrument, there’s no musical reason for that absence: it fits right into the sound. Whether playing rhythm or lead, it can be versatile, punchy, and expressive.

If country music is our unifying theme here, the accordion makes a great lens for viewing the vast diversity of the genre and its extensive family tree: Tejano-conjunto accordion playing, with its polka and Spanish origins and its two-beat and waltz rhythms, is a natural fit with country; zydeco and Cajun music overlap with it seamlessly; Western Swing bands, which merged jazz and country, often included accordionists from the Midwest with Central or Eastern European backgrounds. Of course, the impact of African American blues, swing, and jazz is so strong in all these styles that it’s more than just an “influence” – really a foundation. Jewish klezmer music is also a branch of the “roots music” tree; it came from Europe and developed in the U.S., absorbing many of the same influences as the other genres while making great use of the accordion. – Will Holshouser

“Together Again” – Steve Jordan

The incredible Esteban “Steve” Jordan grew up playing conjunto music in Texas and expanded his repertoire to include country, Latin music, rock, zydeco and more. He was known as “El Parche” for the patch he wore over his blind eye and also as the “Jimi Hendrix of the accordion,” since he played through an effects pedal (flanger or phaser). On his version of this Buck Owens tune, he plays many roles brilliantly: lead vocals, accordion solo, fills and accompaniment.

“J’ai Eté-Z-Au Bal” – Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys

Steve Riley is one of the finest Cajun accordionists working today; this blistering version of a classic Cajun tune (“I Went to the Dance”) shows his virtuosity, the Cajun (diatonic) accordion in a lead role, and his band’s deep groove.

“Tennessee Waltz” – Pee Wee King & His Golden West Cowboys

Pee Wee King was born Julius Frank Anthony Kuczynski to a Polish-American family in Wisconsin. He learned accordion from his father, who played in a polka band, and went on to become a famous Western Swing bandleader and write the music for this country classic. His beautiful, single-reed accordion fills and moving thirds sound totally country, while revealing a Slavic touch.

“Blues de Basile” – Amédé Ardoin

Amédé Ardoin made some of the very first accordion records in Louisiana and is a common musical ancestor of all zydeco and Cajun accordion playing. His innovative, rhythmic, virtuosic accordion style and haunting vocals won him a great reputation both inside and outside his Afro-Creole community. He often played dances and made records with his close musical partner, Cajun fiddler Dennis McGee, including “Blues de Basile” in 1930. His life ended tragically when he was beaten by white vigilantes.

“Hard to Love Someone” – Clifton Chenier

Known as the King of the Bayous, Chenier brought together southwestern Louisiana zydeco rhythms and Delta blues. On this slow blues tune recorded in 1970, his fluid improvising and support of his own singing is nothing short of glorious. His brother Cleveland Chenier plays the rubboard.

“Bluegrass Special” – Bill Monroe (with Sally Ann Forrester)

Most people know that Bill Monroe defined the classic bluegrass sound. Some may not know that an early version of his band, The Blue Grass Boys, included a Blue Grass Girl, Wilene “Sally Ann” Forrester, on accordion. Her solid rhythm playing and all-too-short accordion break add warmth to this early instrumental, a 12-bar blues. If things had worked out just a little differently, maybe every bluegrass band today would include an accordion! (Hey, it’s not too late, folks.)

“Root, Hog or Die” – Mother Maybelle & The Carter Sisters (with Helen Carter)

Later in her life, Mother Maybelle Carter of the iconic Carter Family had a long performing career with her daughters. The group featured Helen Carter playing great accordion and often Chet Atkins on guitar. Here, too, the influence of swing and blues is readily apparent. “Root, hog, or die” is an old expression that means “you’re on your own.”

“Alon Kouri Laba” – Corey Ledet Zydeco

Corey Ledet, one of today’s most exciting zydeco accordionists, plays beautifully and sings in Louisiana Creole on this high-energy tune from his album Médikamen (2023).

“American Without Tears” – Elvis Costello (with Jo-El Sonnier)

Accordionist Jo-El Sonnier brings his sensitive touch and gorgeous Cajun waltz style to this song from Elvis Costello’s album King of America. (Rock producers and engineers, please take note: this is where an accordion should be in the mix – loud enough that it can breathe dynamically and find its place among the other instruments.)

“Shouting Song” – Will Holshouser

Here’s a tune from my new album, The Lone Wild Bird. I wrote “Shouting Song” with the sound of shape note singing in mind. This is a choral tradition in the rural U.S., mostly in the South, with a unique sound: shape note composers ignored (or just didn’t know about) many European harmonic rules which disallowed features like parallel fifths and chords with only two notes. Along with influences from various folk traditions and camp meeting spirituals, that stark approach to harmony gives the style its sound, which I use here as a point of departure.

“Un Mojado Sin Licensia” – Flaco Jimenez

The creative genius of the great Flaco Jimenez is on full display in this conjunto song about the hardships faced by a Mexican immigrant in Texas. His rhythmic drive, melodic inventiveness, and roller-coaster chromatic runs are thrilling to the ears.

“Streets of Bakersfield” – Dwight Yoakam (with Flaco Jimenez)

Here’s Flaco again, on a recording that went to the top of the country charts in 1988. This song was written by Homer Joy, first recorded by Buck Owens in 1972, and re-done here by Dwight Yoakam with both Buck and Flaco as guest stars.

“Spadella” – Spade Cooley (with Pedro DePaul)

Accordionist and arranger Larry “Pedro” DePaul grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where he studied music at the Hungarian Conservatory. Spade Cooley, originally from Oklahoma, was a popular Western Swing bandleader in the LA area. There’s a grisly tale behind this tune: Cooley wrote it for his wife Ella, who he was convicted of murdering in 1961.

“Second Avenue Square Dance” – Dave Tarras with the Abe Ellstein Orchestra

Any discussion of the accordion in American roots music should include klezmer, Eastern European Jewish music that came to the U.S. and absorbed influences such as the drum kit, certain jazz band formats, etc. On this tune the great clarinetist Dave Tarras plays the lead, but the anonymous accordionist is heard prominently, playing beautiful fills and rhythm, harmonizing with the melody, and using rich chords to blend with the horns. Second Avenue in Manhattan was the epicenter of the Yiddish theater scene, which had a huge impact on Broadway. The title could be just a lark, or a nod to the musical kinship between klezmer and country music!

“Atlantic City” – The Band (with Garth Hudson)

Garth Hudson’s adventurous playing with The Band carved out a role for the accordion in that kind of rock music. (He also played the horizontal keyboards: organ, etc.) I had the thrill of meeting him when we both played on Martha Wainwright’s live Edith Piaf tribute album (Sans Fusils, Ni Souliers à Paris). Unfortunately, the producers had us playing on different tunes, not at the same time! On this cover of a Bruce Springsteen song, recorded in 1993, Garth creates a fantasy using multi-tracked layers of accordion and organ.

Photo Credit: Erika Kapin

The Show on the Road – Bettye LaVette

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on The Show On The Road, we feature an intimate conversation with beloved soul and R&B singer, Bettye LaVette.

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Covering her remarkable six decades in show-business, we dive deep into LaVette‘s beginnings as a Detroit hit-making teenager during Motown’s heyday (her neighbor was Smokey Robinson), to her early career touring with Otis Redding and James Brown, and the hard times that followed, as a music industry steeped in racist and sexist traditions largely turned its back on her.

While other soulful song stylists like Sharon Jones, Tina Turner, Mavis Staples and others saw their status and popularity rise with time, LaVette remains an underrated, best kept secret on the Americana circuit, with younger listeners just discovering her remarkable work covering anyone and everyone from The Beatles to Neil Young to Billie Holiday.

After nearly dropping out of music, her remarkable comeback began in 2005 with a string of acclaimed records — bringing her from half-filled bars to singing “Blackbird” at The Hollywood Bowl with a 32-piece orchestra, being nominated for five Grammy awards, and being inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

One thing you’ll notice immediately is her fiery laugh, which punctuates the episode — even when telling the darkest stories, like her early manager getting shot and her 1960s hits being recorded by white artists, leaving her versions largely forgotten. Her Grammy-nominated newest LP Blackbirds, produced by legendary drummer Steve Jordan, shows her at her most vulnerable best.

Photo credit: Mark Seliger

On ‘Blackbirds,’ Bettye LaVette Honors Black Women Who Inspire Her (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

When Bettye LaVette sings “I Hold No Grudge,” she brings the weight of all her years to it. The 74-year-old vocalist draws out certain notes, delivers certain lines almost in a speaking voice, as though she wants to show us how difficult, but also how essential, it can be to let things go. “Deep inside me there ain’t no regrets,” she declares, “but a woman who’s been forgotten may forgive but never, never forget.” She draws out that second “never” to underscore its harsh finality, to remind you that she’ll live with the memory of this slighting forever.

“I Hold No Grudge” has never been merely a song about romantic betrayal — not when Nina Simone recorded it for her landmark 1967 album, High Priestess of Soul, and not when LaVette recorded it more than sixty years later. This new version sounds like it’s addressed to anyone who stood in LaVette’s way so many years ago, in particular those executives at Atlantic Records who saw fit to shelve her debut album in 1972 without so much as explanation, much less an apology. That decision crushed her and thwarted her promising career. “That’s exactly what it is,” says LaVette. “I probably have some grudges, but they aren’t big enough to make me stop. I’ve not been defeated. I’m extending the olive branch once again.”

“I Hold No Grudge” opens her latest album, Blackbirds, which collects her interpretations of songs made famous by Black women in the 1940s and 1950s, including Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, Nancy Wilson, and Billie Holiday. She calls them “the bridge I came across on,” referring to that era between big band blues of the 1940s and rhythm & blues of the 1960s, when these artists were pushing popular music in new directions.

With a small band led by producer-arranger Steve Jordan, LaVette runs through deep cuts like “Blues for the Weepers,” a song first sung by Ruth Brown (and later made famous by Lou Rawls). It’s a song dedicated to “all the soft-singing sisters and torch-bearing misters,” she sings. “They just come to listen and dream.” She understands that we go to songs now for the same reasons we did sixty or seventy years ago: to find sympathy and solace, but also to find a way forward, perhaps some promise of a better life.

The most familiar tune on Blackbirds is likely “Strange Fruit,” popularized by Billie Holiday ninety years ago at Café Society in New York City and covered by countless singers ever since. As a result it’s difficult to make the song sound new and urgent, yet LaVette manages to do just that. Against her band’s dolefully trudging rhythm, she tilts the melody forward just slightly, as though pulling us toward some horrific destination, and she shreds the syllables of the song’s climactic declaration: “Here is a strange and bitter crop.”

That middle word is frayed almost beyond recognition – “stra-ya-ange” – to make the song’s metaphor sound tragically real. LaVette recorded it nearly a year ago and was startled when it became so heavily relevant again. To hear her sing “Strange Fruit” in 2020 is to be reminded that the injustices so many Americans are protesting — the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many other Black men and women — are not new or specific to the current era.

In the second installment of our Artist of the Month coverage, LaVette talks about growing up with a jukebox in her living room, giving these formative artists their due, and how Paul McCartney fits into all this.

(Editor’s note: Read part one of our Artist of the Month interview here.)

BGS: This record is rooted in the history of popular music. Can you tell me about this particular period and what it means to you?

LaVette: People — especially white people — they throw “rhythm and blues” and “blues” together a lot. And now today, they’re throwing “rhythm and blues” toward young blacks and young whites who want to sound black. When people talk about rhythm and blues, they go back about as far as Etta James, but these women are the bridge that Etta came across on as well. Rhythm and blues was a music that came from blues, of course, and from gospel. When people ask me the difference between “blues” and “rhythm and blues,” I always tell them that you can cry to blues, but you can dance and cry to rhythm and blues.

It’s a short bridge, from about 1948 or ’49 to the burgeoning of Atlantic and Motown’s rhythm and blues, which was about ’61 or ’62. That’s when I came along. We took away the saxophones and added more guitars. We took the blues guitar and sped it up and put it in our tunes. The people who took us from the late ‘40s into the early ‘60s are rarely mentioned, and that’s why I chose this group of women.

I didn’t even know there were Black women who sang, other than Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge. And then, hearing LaVern Baker and Ruth Brown and Little Esther, I don’t know whether it gave me hope or whatever, but it really surprised me. I didn’t know that women who sung in such a bawdy way even existed.

When did you first hear these women?

When rhythm and blues came about, that was when I was young and I was dancing. That was when I was coming up and my sister was a teenager. We had a jukebox in our living room in Muskegon, Michigan, which is where I was born, and it had all the current tunes of the day, which my sister played daily when she got out of school. They were all rhythm and blues songs. You know, they weren’t into jazz — they were either blues or rhythm and blues songs on the jukebox. And gospel and country-western, no less. At one point, my favorite singers used to be Doris Day and Dale Evans.

Wait, you had a jukebox in your living room?

My parents sold corn liquor in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Muskegon was extremely segregated, so if you wanted a drink after dinner or after work, you had to come by my house. These were homes that had been built for the soldiers returning from the Second World War. So they were theoretically projects, but they hadn’t started making them out of brick yet. They looked more like barracks, and everybody’s house was just alike.

It was living room, dining room, small kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. My parents sold corn liquor and chicken sandwiches and barbeque sandwiches. There was no gambling. Nobody could cuss but my mother. But they could get shots and pints and half pints. And the jukebox was there in the living room where most people’s couch probably was. I was about 18 months old when I learned all the songs on the jukebox — all of them.

How did you choose the songs for this record?

I keep several files. Or, I should say, my husband keeps them for me. I’ve got all kinds of files. I’ve got a country and western file. I’ve got a strictly George Jones file. What I do is, I offer my label two or three ideas based on these files, and they tell me which one they like best. So I have some ideas that I like, and that way I don’t have to take their suggestions. If they find one they believe in and are willing to spend money on, I’ve got the songs already in.

I had this file here of standards, some of which I had done when I did little gigs in places around, just me and a keyboard player. Some of them, like Nancy Wilson’s “Save Your Love for Me,” I had done in other venues that most people haven’t seen me in, because they didn’t come where I was. A song like “I Hold No Grudge, which I heard eighteen years ago, it’s been in my file since then. I thought, if I ever get a chance to do that kind of album, I will do that tune. I wasn’t going to throw it away.

When did you discover that song?

I was living in Detroit, and I was getting my hair done. Usually in Black salons, there’s a radio on that plays Black music, and this song came on. I had never heard it before! And because Detroit is one of the places where I can pick up the phone and call whoever is playing whatever it is and I’ll know them, I called them up and she told me it was Nina Simone. And I said, well, if I ever get the chance, I’m gonna record that tune. That was eighteen years ago.

Just a few years ago I performed at a party for David Lynch, the movie producer, and this gentleman came up to me and said, “I loved your performance. My name is Angelo Badalamenti, and I do all the music for David Lynch’s films.” My husband, who loves David Lynch’s films, was ecstatic. Angelo says, “I have a tune. Years ago, I used to work with Nina Simone, and I wrote this tune for her that I think would be perfect for you.” I said, “What’s the name of it?” “‘I Hold No Grudge.’” I said, “I know you aren’t going to believe this, but I’ve had plans to do that tune for the last fifteen years!” So when I got the opportunity to do this album for Verve, I got in touch with Angelo and sent it to him, and he said he could hear Nina listening to it, closing her eyes, and saying, “Yeah, she got it.” Of course that made me feel very good.

Another song I wanted to ask you about is “Strange Fruit,” which seems sadly very timely right now.

But it just became timely! When we recorded it back in August, it was one of the oldest tunes on the album. And then all of this mess broke out, and the tune became timely! But all of this wasn’t going on when we recorded it. That’s not why we recorded it. We recorded it to fill in the Billie Holiday slot. While we were waiting for the album to come out, all of this happened. And it was just timely — as if we went to look for a tune to describe what’s going on now. So it’s bad that it’s timely — it’s awful that it’s timely — but it’s timely.

I knew the tune had not lost any of its power, and I knew I had to do it completely different from Billie. I’m blessed to work with Steve Jordan because he doesn’t hear these songs the way they were originally recorded. He hears them the way I sing them, because his age is closer to mine. He was born and raised in Harlem, and he grew up with these rhythm and blues tunes. He knew that I wanted “Strange Fruit” to be terse and sad and black and dark, and when we finished recording the music, I said, “Steve! I didn’t want it to sound exactly like they’re standing by the tree playing this song,” but it does. It’s just haunting. That’s the thing that makes Steve so important to me.

The outlier on the album is your interpretation of the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” What made that song fit this project?

The reason that I chose it — and I chose it for the title — is because many Americans don’t know that Brits call their women birds, and Paul is talking about a Black girl that he saw standing up on a picnic table singing one night in a park. He’s talking about a Black girl singing and I thought that that would just be perfect for it.

(Editor’s note: Read the first half of our Artist of the Month interview with Bettye LaVette.)

Photo credit: Joseph A. Rosen

 

How Bettye LaVette Finally Learned to Let The Songs Sound Like Her (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

When Bettye LaVette covered “Your Time to Cry” nearly fifty years ago, she wrung every ounce of hurt and drama from the lyrics, but especially on the chorus. She stretches out the word “time” until it breaks into two syllables, implying a similar emotional break that doesn’t undercut the song’s determination, but shows what cost she has paid for it. It’s a riveting performance, a raw, southern soul slow burner that should have established her as one of the finest R&B voices of the 1970s.

During those same sessions, she also covered Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” and John Prine’s “Souvenirs,” among other tunes, yet for reasons that were never made clear, Atlantic Records shelved the project, declining to promote “Your Time to Cry” as a single or to release her debut album. That has been a defining moment in LaVette’s long career — and one she subtly and slyly addresses on her new album, Blackbirds. She is the woman wronged, the embodiment of the music industry’s disregard for talent, especially that of Black women. For three decades LaVette continued to work, developing and strengthening her voice and expanding her repertoire. She explains, “When people say I had a resurgence, I want to say, ‘No, I never stopped. You just didn’t come to where I was!’”

Now, nearly fifty years after recording “Your Time to Cry” in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, she has become one of the finest and most accomplished singers in R&B or any other genre for that matter, with a string of albums that showcase her stylistic range as well as her deep understanding of pop history. After releasing a comeback record on the tiny Blues Express label in 2003, she caught the ear of Andy Kaulkin at Anti- Records, who signed her as a new artist at the height of the soul revival of the 2000s.

Since then, she’s covered The Who for the Kennedy Centers Honors ceremony (famously bringing Pete Townshend to tears), recorded with Drive-By Truckers (back in the Shoals, for an album appropriately titled The Scene of the Crime), and reimagined Dylan tunes so thoroughly even his own bandleader didn’t recognize them. And those original Shoals sessions did finally get an official release, first in 2000 on a small Dutch label and again in 2018 from vinyl specialists Run Out Groove.

Blackbirds is among her most powerful albums: a collection of songs by female artists active from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, including Nancy Wilson, Dinah Washington, and Nina Simone, whom LaVette refers to collectively as “the bridge I came across on.” It’s an album that celebrates these artists, but also emphasizes their shared experiences as Black women in the music industry. “Every broken promise broke my heart,” she sings on “Book of Lies,” a song made famous by Ruth Brown. Her voice is lower than it was in 1972, but no less expressive, and she makes that sentiment more than just romantic; it’s also a professional lament, addressed to the industry that derailed her career so long ago.

We spoke with LaVette about Blackbirds in our second half of the interview; here, she tells BGS about her early hopes and disappointments.

BGS: What was your impression when you were down in Muscle Shoals? Had you been there before you recorded?

LaVette: No! What would I be doing there?! What would you go there for, if you weren’t going to record? They had to win me over. I’d wanted to record in New York and Chicago. I always wanted to be very bougie. But after I had accepted how different my voice was — how un-girly-like it was — I identified more with Solomon Burke and Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. After I was down there for a day, I was absolutely as happy as I could be. They were absolutely wonderful — and wonderful to me. When I got back to Detroit, I could not stop talking about them, especially with the way they wrote and read music.

Were you ever told why your ‘72 sessions were never released?

That has been one of the big mysteries in my career. I can think of that album and my dog Mickey, that I had when I was 11, and just burst into tears at any time. I had Brad Shapiro, who was Wilson Pickett’s producer. I had the Swampers, who I had wanted. I was at the label that I had loved. But when they told me they weren’t going to release the album, I got up under the dining room table and stayed three or four days. My friends brought me food and wine and joints. I’m telling you, I’m about to cry now. It was to be my first album, after having already had a string of singles. For years, all I had was “Your Turn to Cry.” Whenever people would come in with their latest whatever-it-is at my house or at a party, I always kept that song handy, maybe on a cassette. I’d say, “I made a record that was really, really good one time. Y’all wanna hear it?”

I just found out — when I say “just found out,” I meant in the last twenty years, maybe — that it was a split between Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. Jerry Wexler was on my side and Ahmet was on Aretha’s side. For the longest time I never knew what happened. I had no idea, and it sounded so stupid, for thirty years, to tell people, “I have no idea.” Many people had heard “Your Time to Cry,” and they said, “If that stuff is anything like this, I can’t understand.” When Atlantic put “Your Time to Cry” out, it was just out. They didn’t mention it to anyone. They just put it out. What you wanted at a label was to have one of everything, and maybe a junior one of everything, too. So they could see where that wouldn’t work with me and Aretha. I think Diana [Ross] is probably the reason I was never at Motown. Those personalities wouldn’t have worked.

Judging by reissues from those sessions, you had already worked up a pretty diverse repertoire.

My manager, Jim Lewis, who was the assistant to the president of the musicians’ union in Detroit and a trombone player with the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, was a hard, hard taskmaster. When we started to work this management thing out, he said, “You’re cute. You’ve got a cute little waistline and a cute little butt, but you’re going to have to learn some songs, because there’s a possibility you may not be a big star.” That’s not a given, but you can be a singer for the rest of your life, if you will learn a lot of songs. He said, “You’re a different kind of singer, and you should learn that.”

How so?

I’ve accepted that I sound more like James Brown than Doris Day. But I used to think I had to sound the way Nancy Wilson sounds, which discouraged me from even wanting to learn how to sing. The thought that I could sing it and it didn’t have to sound beautiful didn’t even occur to me, until Jim came along. He told me, “Just let ‘em come out of your mouth. They’re gonna sound like you.” So I had to satisfy myself with the songs. I had to choose songs that I really like, and I would tell people, “Do you like the song or do you like the record? Because those are two different things.”

Jim made me learn a lot of songs. He insisted I learn “Lush Life,” which permitted me to be comfortable at the Carlyle Hotel for ten years. He insisted I learn “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “God Bless the Child,” which put me in the lead role in Bubbling Brown Sugar. He made me learn country and western. Otherwise, I would have been fighting with the local songwriters over them giving songs to Aretha and not giving them to me, you know? I was able to say, “Hey, I can go on and just be real good.” So I approach what I’m doing a little differently. I thought Jim was telling me to sing these songs like these people, but he just wanted me to sing them how they came out of my mouth. However they come out, sing them like that. Now that I’ve accepted that, I’m not so concerned about how it sounds, but how I feel about the song. That helps me present it. I’m very grateful to him.

That comes through on these sessions from 1972, where you’re covering Neil Young and John Prine and doing a song that Bowie was doing at the same time. There’s that range.

Well, it was after that that I did “What Condition My Condition Is In” by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. And that got me another record contract. Kenny Rogers came to Detroit and Jim said, “Why don’t you take it and let him hear it?” I didn’t think he’d like it, but Jim said, “You don’t know how it’ll sound to him.” So I took it to him and Kenny loved it. His brother, Lelan Rogers, was just starting a record label called Silver Fox, and they flew me down to Nashville. I was with them for four or five years, but still no album. All these albums were set to come out and didn’t come out.

After finally breaking out in the 2000s, you established yourself as an interpreter of songs. What do you bring to a song? How do you make something familiar sound like you? Or is that even something you’re thinking about at this point?

That isn’t something that I plan or set out to do. When I hear the song and start to sing it, that’s just the way I sing it. The thing that makes it new is that it’s different. I doubt I could come up with anything new. But it is different, and so I need for people to change their attitude about it. That was one of the things with Interpretations, my British rock album. The thing that helped me the most recording that album was that I didn’t know most of the songs. I had never heard most of them. They didn’t play them a lot on Black radio. So all I did was just lift the lyrics and sing them the want I wanted to.

Michael Stevens was brilliant, and he did the arrangement of “Love, Reign O’er Me” by The Who that I did for the Kennedy Center Honors. When I went to rehearsal, they got ready to go into the tune, and I told him, “I can’t sing it like that.” And he said, “Well, sing it the way you want to sing it.” So I sang the song to him a cappella, and he took a break and after a while came back and redirected everybody. He’d been listening to this song for thirty years — since he was a teenager! — and I’d only been listening to it for three or four days.

Something similar happened on the Bob Dylan album, Things Have Changed. We had Bob Dylan’s guitarist, Larry Campbell, playing on it, and he had a ball. He said, “I’ve wanted to hear these a different way for seventeen years!” Because he knew about the inner workings of each one of the tunes, more than any of us, he started to find clever little things, probably, that he had always wanted to play, and he played them for me.

How was working with these songs on Blackbirds different?

Working on this album was intimidating, in that I didn’t want to bastardize any of the songs or cast them off. I didn’t want to do anything to them just for the sake of doing something, you know? That was kind of daunting. But that’s the thing that makes Steve [Jordan, producer] so important to me. When we develop an arrangement, what I usually do is I’ll get my keyboard player to go in the direction that I want to take the song.

When Steve hears me with the piano, singing it the way I want to sing it, that speaks to him to put something else in there. He no longer hears Billie Holiday’s interpretation of “Strange Fruit,” and he arranges what he hears in his head, not what the other record was. I’m not going to change any of the notes — I’m just going to put them in different places and say them differently, so you can’t follow that trajectory that you know from the record. It has to be different.

(Editor’s Note: Read part two of our interview with Bettye LaVette.)

Photo credit: Joseph A. Rosen

Throwing Out the Rulebook: A Conversation with Bettye LaVette

Posted on by Editor

There are singers, there are songwriters, and then there’s Bettye LaVette. She prides herself on being an interpreter, on using her voice to guide new melodies out of lyrics that have become a second skin to many listeners. But don’t you dare call her a covers artist. The septuagenarian’s new album, Things Have Changed — her first major label effort since 1982 — marks the first time LaVette has ever released an album focusing on one artist exclusively, and it just so happens to be Bob Dylan.

The idea sprang out of her 2008 Kennedy Center Honors performance in which she interpreted the Who’s “Love Reign O’er Me” and effectively stunned Pete Townshend. She eventually translated that moment into her 2010 album, Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook. But Dylan is a different beast. LaVette shape-shifts his Nobel Prize-winning words into growling, bluesy affairs and soul-laced R&B, each track so unlike its origin that it’s a wonder they ever came from his mouth in the first place.

LaVette uses her voice to guide her interpretations in ways that defy the traditional notion of covering a song. “I got with my keyboard player, and he played it the way I sung it,” she explains about her process on Things Have Changed. With that basic foundation in place, she approached her producer, Steve Jordan, and Dylan’s long-time guitarist, Larry Campbell — who plays on the album — to work out the arrangements. “It was going a completely different way, and they had to go with it,” she says.

One of Dylan’s most iconic songs, “It Ain’t Me, Babe” (from 1964’s Another Side of Bob Dylan), sounds like a soul-infused ditty straight out of the Stax era, while LaVette picks up on the menacing quality running throughout “Ain’t Talking” (originally “Ain’t Talkin’ from 2006’s Modern Times), lacing it with equally ominous strings. “I thought about these naked banshees running through the forest playing violins,” she says. Dylan being Dylan, there’s a certain aura surrounding his music, but LaVette strips away all that pomp and circumstance, and reimagines these songs as new possibilities for the modern age. After all, things have changed.

Even though the title of your album pulls from Dylan’s song, it seems so appropriate today. As an artist, how are you trying to cope with the changes we’re witnessing on an almost daily basis?

Well, my husband says I do better some days than I do others. Some days he tells me I’m just too angry about it and I have to calm down. When I do these lyrics to “Political World” and “Times They Are a Changing,” it sounds as though they were written for today, so I don’t know if Dylan is prophetic, along with brilliant, or if he just didn’t have any faith in anything getting better and he was right!

The central sentiment on “Things Have Changed,” how do you push past that to still care?

Oh, honey, I am 72 years old. I basically don’t give a fuck. Nothing at this point wears me down. I know that all of this going on right now, either it’s going to pass or we’re going to pass. Something’s going to stop, though. I hope it’s not us.

You said Dylan’s lyrics were almost prophetic in a way. How does contemporary art need to respond to this moment more than it has been?

I don’t know. I don’t really like for people to sing about what’s going on; I’d rather them say it. If you’re a big enough star, then go somewhere important and say something. I want our entertainers to be well informed and to know everything that’s going on politically really does affect all of us. I’d like to see us become a little more serious-minded, instead of sitting around and singing about it all day.

I was looking at something the other night — Jay-Z was on something — he and Snoop Dogg both are speaking so much better than when they first started, and about so many more important things. I watched them when they started, and to hear what they speak about now, it warms my heart. I still am not a fan of hip-hop, but I’m glad that, since they’re making so many millions, they’re trying to contribute something now.

Absolutely. It’s an interesting conversation taking place. So, can you take me back to the moment when you first started listening to Dylan?

I’ve always heard him, but he’s never sounded appealing to me. I’ve recorded four of his tunes — those were the only ones that I could break down to size. Otis Redding said he’d never do one. It’s too damn many words! [Laughs] He was not played a lot on Black radio, and I didn’t like, necessarily, the way he presented his songs, and I always had a whole bunch of other stuff to sing about. He hasn’t been a mainstay in my life.

As I understand it, the album’s executive producer, Carol Friedman, brought the idea to you. What was it that excited you from a creative perspective?

This was more than just a big musical opportunity. This was a big business opportunity, as well. This is my 57th year in show business, so I’m not fascinated or enamored with anyone right now. I was fascinated and enamored that I would get a chance to get a really big shot and, because the company thought it was a really great idea, I thought I would tackle it for that reason. When I started to choose the tunes — which was very difficult for me to do because there’s only so much of what he says that I want to repeat — it was quite a daunting thing. I wasn’t going to tributize him, and I don’t do cover tunes. I can sing, so I don’t have to do the song the way you do it.

Right. You’ve described yourself as an interpreter.

No. I am an interpreter. That is what I do. I had to write a whole bunch to make it fit into my mouth. I had to change the gender in a lot of places, and I got to know him a lot better. I understand him much better. I would like to talk with him, though, because I’d like to know why he feels the way he does.

Has he gotten wind of this project?

Oh, I’m sure. His manager loved it. He gave me license to change the lyrics and gave me license not to license it. So I assume Bob has heard it.

As we know, white folk artists in the ‘50s and ‘60s covered or referenced Black artists in their music. And, here, it’s thrilling to see a Black woman interpret a white man’s music. Did that ever strike you during the project?

Oh, yes! I definitely thought about it. I listened to John Lennon and Paul McCartney say that B.B. King is their idol, and I know that B.B. came very close to dying broke and unheard of, so when I did the Interpretations album, that was pure vengeance. I thought of it that way. I wanted to do the tunes well enough for whites who were in love with these guys to realize that they’re just writers. These songs are not hymns; they’re just songs. Having a husband who was a white teenager who grew up with all of these guys and has been enamored of them forever, one of the greatest joys of my life was for me to make Pete Townshend cry and for him to see it. So I enjoyed that tremendously. [Laughs]

They are considered sacred among a set, but I love what you’ve done on this album, because these songs don’t sound like what we know Dylan’s catalogue to be!

As I said, I had to sit and think about them for a long time, whereas the ones that I’d chosen to do by him before, they were just songs that I liked and I just did them. But with 12 of them facing me at one time, I said, “Now, here, let me think about them.” I had to really listen because they weren’t going to be a part of what I was doing. They were going to be what I was doing. I had to make them definitely fit into my mouth perfectly, squarely, just as if they’d been written for me. The greatest joy for me now is that the people I’ve been seeking out are Bob Dylan fans. I’m not asking my fans what they think about it; I’m asking Bob Dylan’s fans what they think about it.

And what’s the reaction?

I wanted them not to recognize them, and I wanted them not to be able to sing along with them.

You said you selected songs you could fit into your mouth. What did you want this project to say exactly?

The only words I don’t use are, “If you do this, I’ll die” and “Boy.” I’ve never said, “If you do this, I’ll die,” because that just ain’t gon’ happen. And, when I was 12, my boyfriend was 18, so boys have never been a part of my life. As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be grown. But I can’t think of anybody who can write a song that I couldn’t sing because you don’t have to sing it the way they write it. Sing it the way you sing.

I think some of the best songwriters are those that can be interpreted in any genre.

I find when people cover Bob Dylan songs, they worship. They don’t change them or do anything. That’s no fun!

It’s like you said, they’re not hymns.

Listen, I would not want anyone to say, “My goodness, she captured Bob perfectly.” No! No!

In terms of process, how much time do you need to spend with a song in order to hear it in a new way?

When I start to sing it without the recording, that kind of dictates the way mine is going to go. So, when I sat down with Larry Campbell, he knew immediately he could not play the way he’d played for Bob [Dylan] with the way I was singing it. I was really like a director in that, “This is no longer going this way. This is going this way.” When we did Interpretations, the first thing I said to all the musicians was, I said — all of them were white — ”I know all of you grew up with these tunes, but I want you to suspend thought about them, and don’t play anything other than what is on the paper. Play this as if it’s a song you’ve never heard before.” Some were easier for them to do than others.

Well, Things Have Changed is really something else. You’ve captured something, but it’s not his!

I’m so glad that you hear it. I wanted young people who have been given a Dylan album in their cradle when they were born, and they feel that that’s the way it should go to hear it. I would give anything to have seen [Dylan] hearing it.

To be a fly on that wall!

I would have liked to know did he recognize them all the moments they started playing, or if he didn’t recognize them, which ones didn’t he recognize? That would’ve been fun to me.