Bettye Lavette grew up immersed in the fabled nightlife of Detroit, at its peak in the '50s and early '60s with hotspots like the Flame Show Bar, the Greystone Ballroom and the Twenty Grand. Although the Motor City has always hosted a strong gospel scene, Bettye disavows any religious influence in her singing; rather, her vocal style was strictly honed in the blues nightclubs that populated her North End neighborhood.

Still a teenager at the time of her earliest hits, "My Man - He's a Lovin' Man" (1962) and "Let Me Down Easy" (1965), Bettye sang with maturity, intelligence, and raw honesty - qualities that have become hallmarks for her career. On a record like 1972's "Your Turn to Cry," she used her powerful voice to burrow deep into the emotional truth of the song, alternating intensity with moments of quiet reflection.

Always a dynamic live performer, Bettye maintained a solid ideal of showmanship that served her well in the late 1970s, when she performed with Cab Calloway and Honi Coles in the touring company of the Broadway musical Bubbling Brown Sugar. Her recordings have cut across a wide swath of styles, from hard-core southern soul ("He Made a Woman Out of Me") to disco ("Doin' the Best That I Can"). Always, her marvelously sultry voice and impeccable sense of timing have been on fine display. It's no surprise that in the '90s she was discovered by a new generation of fans in the U.S. and Europe, where her scintillating stage performances always drew packed houses. This wave of interest led to two European CDs released in 2000: the scorching Let Me Down Easy - In Concert on Munich Records and Souvenirs on the Art & Soul label.

Bettye's vocal strengths are amply evident on A Woman Like Me, perhaps her finest artistic statement to date. On the heels of her acclaimed European releases she was approached by producer Dennis Walker, a three-time Grammy winner known for his work with Robert Cray and B.B. King. Walker immediately set to writing a sterling batch of songs for her, and with Bettye's creative input, the two soon developed a fruitful artistic partnership. "I had a feeling of how I wanted the album to be," she says, "but I didn't have a finite sense of it. But then, when the songs just started to fall in place, I said, 'this is how I want it to be, and all the songs that I need are right here in this group of songs he's sending me.' I saw that he was an intelligent writer, and he had more to write about than 'my baby done left me.' He writes for adult listeners."

Walker arranged an album deal with Blues Express^®, a new label dedicated to promoting great blues artists through television exposure and strong production values. Recording in LA with a top-notch band that included guitarist Bobby Murray and the late Rudy Robinson (Bettye's longtime musical director, who died suddenly in February, 2002) on keyboards, Bettye infused the sessions with a passion rare in contemporary music - the expression of a singer in complete control of her craft. As she explains: "I wasn't going to let anything happen like all of the songs sounding alike, me trying to stretch out and sing something I shouldn't, or sing something more youthful than myself. I didn't quite know what I was going to do, but I knew everything not to do." The proof lies within each track: after four decades of soulful dedication, Bettye LaVette has become a master storyteller.

- David Freeland
Author of "Ladies of Soul"
Published by University Press of Mississippi