{"id":3004,"date":"2015-02-17T12:20:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/?p=3004"},"modified":"2015-02-26T16:05:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T21:05:51","slug":"bettye-lavette-worthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/bettye-lavette-worthy\/","title":{"rendered":"Bettye LaVette <br>Worthy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/bettye_lavette-worthy.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-3005\" src=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/bettye_lavette-worthy.jpg\" alt=\"Betty LaVette, Worthy\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/bettye_lavette-worthy.jpg 250w, https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/bettye_lavette-worthy-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a>Despite all the proof to the contrary, it\u2019s a commonly held belief that rock &amp; roll is a young man\u2019s game. Generally speaking, the mainstream market favors youth while older artists either inter icon status or work the oldies circuit. R&amp;B doesn\u2019t have the same constraints, so it\u2019s possible for stars of the past to make a comeback. One such artist is singer Bettye LaVette. LaVette was a singles artist, starting when she was 16 in 1962, and didn\u2019t have a proper album release until 20 years into her career. She did record an album in the early \u201870s that was shelved, so it was the singles and a stint on Broadway that sustained her. She seemed destined to be a footnote until the serendipitous simultaneous release of <i>Souvenirs<\/i>, the aborted record from 1972, and <i>Let Me Down Easy: In Concert<\/i> in 2000 renewed interest in LaVette. Riding the momentum, she released <i>A Women Like Me<\/i> in 2003, and that officially kickstarted her comeback. Since then she\u2019s maintained a steady stream of releases, which brings us to her most recent, <i>Worthy<\/i> (Cherry Red Records).<\/p>\n<p><i>Worthy<\/i> reunites LaVette with Joe Henry, who produced 2005\u2019s <i>I\u2019ve Got My Own Hell to Raise<\/i>, as well as many of the same studio musicians from that record, including Doyle Bramhall II on guitar. For those unfamiliar with LaVette, one of the most important things to know going in is that she\u2019s doesn\u2019t try to tap a nostalgic vein and generally doesn\u2019t have time for being a throwback. She often melds rock and blues with her personal style of R&amp;B with little to no regard for what\u2019s currently on the charts. Also, LaVette isn\u2019t a songwriter so her forte is in the interpretation. She\u2019s often delved into the classic rock catalog, including an entire album titled <i>Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook<\/i>. Here, she tackles The Beatles\u2019 \u201cWait,\u201d Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cUnbelievable\u201d and the Rolling Stones\u2019 \u201cComplicated,\u201d among others. But even with such familiar songs, she exudes such a lived-in quality, it\u2019s hard to imagine that she didn\u2019t write them. And there\u2019s a power and rawness to her performances that draws you closer.<\/p>\n<p>One of the best things about <i>Worthy<\/i> is the collaboration between Henry and LaVette. The performances are so well executed it\u2019s hard to believe that this hasn\u2019t be an on-going collaboration for the past decade. The playing is tasteful, but with some underlying tension and energy on the slower numbers and the right amount of push on the up-tempo numbers. This is the type of record where you can tell the musicians actually listened to one another rather than just banged it out. If LaVette weren\u2019t knocking it out of the park so consistently in the past, <i>Worthy<\/i> would be a revelation. Still, it\u2019s an extremely excellent album by someone who has the good sense not to listen to conventional wisdom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite all the proof to the contrary, it\u2019s a commonly held belief that rock &#038; roll is a young man\u2019s game. Generally speaking, the mainstream market favors<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[34,1123,387],"class_list":["post-3004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","tag-album-review","tag-bettye-lavette","tag-cherry-red-records"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Bettye LaVette Worthy - The Agit Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/bettye-lavette-worthy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bettye LaVette Worthy - The Agit Reader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Despite all the proof to the contrary, it\u2019s a commonly held belief that rock &amp; roll is a young man\u2019s game. 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