Quote:
Originally Posted by Bulldog
Damn, that's a pretty bloody fine song there. I'm gonna have to investigate that a bit further when I've got the time - as you say, there's so much soul to that voice.
On another note, that Beyonce tune is the most annoying song since that one by the Ting Tings that I refuse to dignify by naming it. As if it wasn't irritating enough on its own, the fact it's been played in virtually every club I've walked into over the last year or so really doesn't do it a lot of favours with me.
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You're right about the Beyonce song. It's horrible and not "one of the greatest songs ever" as described by Kayne West when he disrupted the awards ceremony. All the song constists of is a drum machine and an annoying tape loop of an elaphantine sound without any discernable melody, which may be a great cheerleader routine but I wouldn't enter it into a songwritting contest for pre-schoolers.
For the past few years I've been telling anyone who'd listen to me that Bettye LaVette is the best soul singer since Aretha Franklin and Bettye was signed at Atlantic Records (
Aretha's long time label) at age 16, in 1963, three years before Aretha was signed. She had a couple of minor hits that got airplay on black radio stations but none of her singles or albums took off in the same manner Aretha's did. Aretha's very first album
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You in 1967, was the top selling R&B album of the year and with the #2 selling single,
Respect.
Finally Atlantic dropped LaVette in 1972 after refusing to release her album
A Child of the Seventies, which in hindsight may have been her big commercial breakthrough album, had Atlantic released it. At age 25, Bettye LaVette was without a music label and didn't record again on a major label for the next 10 years. In 1982 she was signed to do an album on Motown but the timing was bad because it was released just as rap music was breaking and at the dawn of the MTV revolution.
She was in her mid-thirties by then and considered too be a has-been from the Sixties generation by the "hip" programming executives at MTV. After that Bettye was tempted to give up her career but instead she continued to tour and didn't record again for another 15 years, except for a couple album releases in Europe. She was big in France and Germany and both those nations frequently adopt American blues and jazz artists who are way laid by career problems, as their own. In the late Fifties and early Sixties many American jazz and blues artists were expatriates living in Paris because they simply couldn't find any work in the USA.
Finally in 2007 the indie label Anti put together a session with Ms. LaVette in the famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studio being backed by southern roots rockers the Drive by Truckers. The ten tracks — all but one are covers, as LaVette considers herself in the proper soul tradition as an interpreter, not a songwriter — are gritty, loud, raw, and drenched in Southern soul, blues, and gospel-tinged R&B. The album actually enjoyed modest sales and reestablished her career.
The Scene of the Crime was released in late 2007.
The song I've embedded below was
Before the Money Came (the Battle of Bettye LaVette) was the song caught my ear. I knew about Ms. LaVette's previous history as a minor soul singer at Atlantic and her song told the sad history of her musical career with a powerful storyline. She sounded in better voice than she ever did in her youth. I think the album first got attention primarily because of the Drive By Trucker's well deserved reputation as a premier roots rock band and I hope she continues her association with them because she sure sounds good on this cut.