So what if she did not bring home this year's Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Bettye LaVette at least got to the finals with The Scene of the Crime. It only took 46 years.

Amy Winehouse is a peanut compared to Bette LaVette, the meat and potatoes of soul singing. Even with the more pop oriented tunes, like Don Henley's "You Don't Know Me At All," LaVette scrubbed off the polish and revealed the wrenching under layer, reminiscent of singers like Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Tina Turner and Ray Charles. LaVette brought her years in music and life to Lincoln Center's American Songbook series. This lithe, wiry musician from Detroit (with only one Motown recording), sings from the inside out, exposing as much guts, soul, and heart as she can.

"I Guess We Shouldn't Talk About That Now" (Pettersen, McKean), a ballad with the mix of country and soul, was tough and regretful. "They Call It Love" (Davidson) cut to the heart of loving and leaving with the following words, "….but I don't know." LaVette's ragged voice, as sharp as her stiletto heels, recalled Redding in "Choices" (Billy Yates and Mike Curtis), her fiery rendition bringing moans, growls and wails, fiercely honest with the sounds she was making. "Talking Old Soldiers," by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, was infused with pain and regret. When she turned to one of her musicians, she listeneds to his riff with intensity, absorbing and mingling it with her own music. She phrased with savvy, threw out the lyrics with clarity and, dancing across the stage, LaVette was immersed in the feel of the song.

LaVette's band, like her own influences, comes from a blues base and featured Al Hill on piano, guitarist Brett Lucas on guitar, Chuck Bartels on bass and drummer Daryl Pierce.

Like all the other performers in the Allen Room, LaVette turned to look at the view: "I used to live on those streets." Her realism is palpable. Her stories are her own, but not really. There is a universality in her music. Her personal tale is told with "Then the Money Came (The Battle of Bettye LaVette)." LaVette ended this show, however, with the gritty mantra that rules her life, singing a cappella, "I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got" (Sinead O'Conner).

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
February 8, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org