Bettye LaVette: Worthy

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Bettye LaVette

Worthy

Café Carlyle, NYC, January 29, 2015

Reviewed by Elizabeth Ahlfors for Cabaret Scenes

Bettye-LaVette-Cafe-Carlyle-Cabaret-Scenes-Magazine_212Exuberant, holding high a flute of champagne, Bettye LaVette celebrated her 69th birthday, a life of struggle, and the release of her latest CD, Worthy, at the swanky Cafe Carlyle. LaVette is a fearless performer, as worthy and raw as you can get, diving into her emotions and memories of the past, inhabiting her blues-driven music with earthy, thrilling passion. Her interpretations are carved from her own life, the tough side of show biz.

A Detroit girl, she had a hit single at age 16, “My Man—He’s a Lovin’ Man.” Then for almost five decades, she struggled through rejections, bad choices, bad luck. “But I was always here,” she insists, having played small clubs and recording early soul music for basically a European market. Her experiences were grist for her music.

In the past decade, LaVette began to gain popular recognition, performing at the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors and at President Obama’s pre-inaugural concert.

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She was booked into major concert venues and one album, The Scene of the Crime, was nominated for a 2007 Grammy Award. The British Rock Songbook earned a second nomination in 2011.

In this show, LaVette proves she’s “Worthy”—“It took a mighty blow to crack me to the core/To finally come to know I could ask for more.” She gets right into it with Bob Dylan’s “Unbelievable,” her ragged voice driving demanding the desperate attacks she gives every song. “Bless Us All” by Mickey Newbury blasts out today’s truth and “When I Was a Young Girl,” brings more than gender-difference in LaVette’s version of the Chris Youlden/Savoy Brown rendition.

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“Wait” is a blistering world away from The Beatles’ original.

LaVette relishes in the sexy tango beat of Joe Henry’s “Stop,” warning “Tell me everything I’m not/ But don’t tell me to stop.” And the audience agreed. Leaving the stage singing “Worthy” (Beth Neilsen Chapman/Mary Gauthier), she faces her demons and looks back with her strong sense of drama. She made her way back for encores, taking requests, including a visceral “Streets of Philadelphia” (Bruce Springsteen).

Backing her is a fierce quartet: Alan Hill on keyboards and vocal backup, Brett Lucas (guitar, vocal backup), Darryl Pierce on drums, and James Simonson on bass and vocal backup.

Elizabeth Ahlfors

Born and raised in New York, Elizabeth graduated from NYU with a degree in Journalism. She has lived in various cities and countries and now is back in NYC. She has written magazine articles and published three books: A Housewife’s Guide to Women’s Liberation, Twelve American Women, and Heroines of ’76 (for children). A great love was always music and theater—in the audience, not performing. A Philadelphia correspondent for Theatre.com and InTheatre Magazine, she has reviewed theater and cabaret for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia City News. She writes for Cabaret Scenes and other cabaret/theater sites. She is a judge for Nightlife Awards and a voting member of Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle.