Page 38 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2025 Digital Edition

“‘If you learn these tunes, you’ll be able to work for the rest the most important booking and management firm in blues
of your life,’ he told me, and he was right!” and roots, its extensive roster included Muddy Waters, Buddy
There was one problem, however. “They asked me if I Guy, Duke Robillard, Tommy Castro, Robert Cray and Bob
could tap,” LaVette recalls, “and I said no-o-o!” Marley and the Wailers, too.
Fortunately, Charles “Honi” Coles, a tap-dance hall-of- “Mike Kappus saved my life,” Bettye admits. “He put me
famer who appeared in the films The Cotton Club and Dirty on every little festival that he could find, and he let folks know
Dancing, was in the cast, too. And he taught her the ropes that I was there!”
enough, she says, “to hold down my part… it was the most And, boy, did the blues world take notice. Like a prodigal
wonderful thing I’ve ever done.” daughter, the blues community welcomed her with open arms
Toward the end of her six-year run in the play, Bettye and clutched her to its collective chest. Shortly after inking
fulfilled a childhood dream by signing with Motown and with Rosebud, she recorded the CD A Woman Like Me for
releasing her first LP. Entitled Tell Me a Lie, it included “Right in the Bay Area’s Blues Express imprint in 2003. It rocketed to
the Middle (of Falling in Love),” a slow-and-easy burner that the top of the blues charts and earned LaVette a W.C. Handy
hit the Top 40 charts. Award – precursor to the Blues Music Awards – ironically, for
Even so, her career languished. The only saving grace, she Comeback Blues Album of the Year.
says, was the Northern Soul movement, which flourished in England Her follow-up, I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, made
with fans who cherished sensational, but often overlooked, songs major waves, too, as did her next one. Recorded with the
generated by Black artists in Motown and Chicago. It was their Drive-By Truckers at the FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals,
adoration, she adds, that kept her alive for a decade. Scene of the Crime debuted in the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s
Then and now, LaVette has always identified herself as a blues chart and eventually earned her the first of her
rhythm-and-blues artist, noting: “Folks waste too much time trying Grammy nominations.
to put people into boxes they think they’re supposed to be in.” “I’m so-o-o happy that the blues world embraced me,”
But she found an entirely different audience when she Bettye insists. “I’m proud and excited about that.”
signed with San Francisco-based Mike Kappus and his blues And in the blues, at least, the awards keep coming.
and roots-focused Rosebud Agency in the early 2000s. Then She’s taken home the Blues Music Award trophy for Soul

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