Bettye LaVette - Scene of the Crime
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Artist: Bettye LaVetteBrand: Baker & Taylor
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2007-09-25
Music Label: Anti
Soundtracks:
- Take Me Like I Am (Still Want To Be Your Baby)
- Choices
- Jealousy
- You Don't Know Me At All
- Somebody Pick Up My Pieces
- They Call It Love
- Last Time
- Talking Old Soldiers
- Before The Money Came (Battle Of Baeetye LaVette)
- I Guess We Shouldn't Talk About That Now
Free Music Notes for Scene of the Crime
Free Music Review: Bettye LaVette: "Talking Old Soldiers" -- A Masterpiece!
Hit: 5 Stars
Without a doubt, Bettye LaVette is among the very best singers performing today. Much has been written about her astonishing "comeback," which, when compared to others who had big records years ago, came back onto the scene with a hit and then vanished again, there is no "comparison." LaVette is now where she should always have been -- with her peers, the greatest of singers. "When The Money Came" tells it all. I can't get enough of that one.
This new CD really grows on you. That's the case with every album I purchase because usually, I get stuck on one or two tunes that I can't leave alone. On SCENE OF THE CRIME, I became mesmerized by "Talking Old Soldiers," which I listened to 12 times straight before I could pull myself off the floor. Another recent LaVette recording did the same thing to me, her version of Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia," which one critic noted, "doesn't belong to Bruce any longer." Well, "Soldiers" is now Bettye LaVette's.
It's been said, "don't let Aretha Franklin get near one of your songs," well, the same can be said of Miss LaVette. Not only have Bettye's records catapulted her towards the heavens, her electrifying stage performances have "time-traveled" people back in time -- a period when singers didn't need 20 dancers prancing behind them, pyrotechnics and other special effects. LaVette is from the school of "hit the stage, grab the mic and sing your butt off."
With the Grammys being handed out to "artists" of questionable talent and abilities, who just happen to sell a lot of records, wouldn't it be refreshing to see some REAL ARTISTS win for genuine QUALITY work?
Note: Bettye just picked up a Grammy nomination for this album for Best Contemporary Blues Album of 2007.
Scene of the Crime Poster
Her 2005 acclaimed release, "I've Got My Own Hell To Raise", brought well-deserved recognition to this R&B maverick who's been recording since the early 60s. Now comes the almost autobiographical "Scene Of The Crime". To make music this raw and direct, Bettye enlisted "dirty south" rockers The Drive By Truckers as her backup band. With swampy guitars, slippery Wurlitzer piano, and a driving backline, this record conjures up the spirit of great loose 70s bands like the Faces while offering Bettye an urgent, vital setting for her razor-sharp vocals. Recorded in Muscle Shoals, AL, where she recorded "Child Of The Seventies" in 1972 - a masterpiece that was shelved then released 30 years later. Returning to Muscle Shoals was like returning to the scene of a crime; thus the album title, and the intense, personal music within."I've got my mem-mor-eehees," sings Bettye LaVette at the chilling finale of her version of Elton John and Bernie Taupin's obscure "Talking Old Soldiers," holding the last syllable as it fades into a hum while Spooner Oldham's ghostly piano underpins the pain. The singer's whiskey-stained voice infuses those words with a fierce mix of pride, hurt, resignation, sadness, strength, and humility--traits that make her one of the finest R&B singers of her generation. There are other riveting moments rivaling that from this deeply moving set that finds her recording once again at Muscle Shoals' FAME Studios, the same place she created an album in 1972 that Atlantic inexplicably never released. Accompanied by Oldham and the swampy, tightly wound Drive-by Truckers, LaVette digs into material from John Hiatt, Willie Nelson, Frankie Miller, Eddie Hinton, and Don Henley, among others, finding the hidden soul in songs as she rips them apart from the inside out. It's a magnificent performance from a singer who shoots straight, especially on her autobiographical "Before the Money Came (The Battle of Bettye LaVette)," this disc's sole original. The Truckers dial down their raunchy Southern rock, concentrating instead on rugged R&B and creating a greasy collaboration that's as inspired as it is unlikely. Lavette grinds out the intensity, alternating between ballads and roots rockers on a set that never lets up for 40 passionate minutes. Soul music just doesn't get any more fiery, as Bettye Lavette creates indelible images of loves and lives with the voice of one who has walked the talk. --Hal Horowitz
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