A Woman Like Me

by Bettye Lavette

  “But when did the war start and stop?”

  “It started in the thirties. It stopped in the forties.”

  “But when in the forties?” she asked. “When was Pearl Harbor?”

  “The day the Japs bombed the shit out of us.”

  “Why express it with vulgarity?”

  “I’m guessing the guys who got their asses blown up saw it as pretty goddamn vulgar.”

  “Stop cursing! It does not become a lady. You must read your history book more carefully.”

  “I don’t wanna read it at all.”

  “What is it that you want to do?”

  “Smoke and drink.”

  “You say that to shock me, young lady. But I don’t shock easily. I know you have a good mind and native talent. I’ve heard you sing.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard you sing in the schoolyard. Your voice is strong and clear. You have good diction. I’d encourage you to sing in the upcoming talent contest. Consult Sister Bradford, who leads the choir, and she’ll find you suitable material.”

  Naturally, I didn’t consult anyone. When it was time to perform at the talent show, I looked over the assembly of students, priests, and nuns, and gave them a taste of the Coasters’ “I’m a Hog for You.” The song talks about how one piggy went to London, another to Hong Kong, but me, I’m wigglin’ over to your house to love you all night long.

  As you can imagine, the kids started squealing in delight, but Mother Ernesta, poor lady, nearly had a heart attack.

  She interrupted me halfway through, waving her hands as if the school had caught on fire. I was never asked to participate in another school activity.

  • • •

  If I had to be in school, I wanted to go to the public school where my friends were carrying on. Public school had places for lazy students like me to hide. But Mama, a wine-loving Catholic, saw religious school as a way to gain greater social mobility.

  The mobility that interested me the most was the kind that would get me out of the house. By age fourteen, I thought I was ready to move out. This was the late fifties, when the music that spoke to me loudest was Etta James’s “Dance with Me, Henry” and “Good Rockin’ Daddy.”

  I was eager to find the right rockin’ daddy. I don’t know why, but my folks put me in a bedroom in our house with three steps under the window. It was as though those outside steps had been built to make it easy for me to climb out whenever I wanted—or for someone to climb in.

  In 1958, a fourteen-year-old boy climbed in for the sole purpose of deflowering me. I was twelve. I didn’t like him for his looks; I liked him because he was bad. He was manic and violent, and he was considered the biggest bully in our North End neighborhood. No one liked him, and the cops were always on his case. When he threatened to beat me up if I didn’t give him sex, he didn’t know that he didn’t have to bother with the beating-up part. I wanted to have sex. I was curious.

  Because I had no one to compare him to, I couldn’t rank the bully’s technique. He didn’t last long and neither did the pain. I was relieved. I viewed my virginity as a burden finally lifted. The fact that my first lover—using that word lightly—was a notorious bad boy was an omen of things to come. He was a dangerous character who didn’t survive long on the streets of Detroit. He came to a violent end.

  My initial goal was simple: I wanted someone who could get me out of my house and into a mink coat. If sex was part of that, fine.

  I met Alphonso Mathis, called Pinky, when I was thirteen. I went after him because he had a job at a dairy loading milk trucks, making $18.75 a week. He was also a slick dancer. The boy had Jackie Wilson moves. He could drift like the Drifters on “There Goes My Baby.”

  I also liked that his parents paid him no mind because he was one of eighteen kids. They were busy running after his siblings. That made him independent, and independence was my goal.

  • • •

  While I was working at getting Pinky, tragedy struck. My daddy, only forty-six, died of a stroke. I was devastated. Suddenly everything changed.

  I need to get a little psychological here and say that once Daddy was gone, I went hunting for him the rest of my life. He was everything to me. I had challenges with Mama—the older she got, the bigger the challenges became. Mama and I loved each other dearly, but the woman got on my nerves. Daddy never did. I adored him. As far as he was concerned, I could do no wrong. I never felt his judgment or his scorn. So his absence punched a gaping hole in my soul.

  He left a little insurance money that let Mama buy a house on Trowbridge on the north end of Detroit. I still own that house. I still own the sweet love that Daddy offered me without condition or expectation. He saw me as someone special and never tired of telling me so.

  Who was gonna tell me that now?

  • • •

  It was even more urgent now that I win over Pinky. He was cool. He was older. In the years to come, with one great exception, they’d all be older. Pinky also had enough quarters to feed the jukebox down at Mr. Jerry’s, our teen hangout. We danced to Bo Diddley and Fats Domino. We’d watch American Bandstand on TV, and I learned to love Bobby Darin. I’d sit and listen to Bobby “Blue” Bland, who brought me to tears. I didn’t know any other kids my age who were crying to Bobby “Blue” Bland.

  I was proud to have won over Pinky. And at fourteen, when I learned I was pregnant, pride turned to happiness and happiness to fear. I was happy because I figured being pregnant meant Pinky would be mine and love me forever. I was scared because I knew Mama would kill me.

  She tried. When I told her, she grabbed my hair, put her foot on my neck, and attempted to separate my head from the rest of my body. She flipped all the way out.

  Pinky’s reaction was panic.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do?” he asked.

  “You tell me,” I said.

  “I don’t know. This hasn’t ever happened to me before.”

  “It didn’t happen to you, it happened to me. I’m the one having the baby.”

  “I’m gonna ask my mama what to do,” he said.

  “What’s your mama gonna tell you? She already has eighteen kids of her own.”

  I was right. His mama didn’t care, but his daddy did. His daddy said we had to get married. So, at fifteen, I married Pinky, the best dancer in the ’hood. In some sense it was mission accomplished—I found a way out of my house and out of school. Pinky and I got a little place of our own, right down the street from Mama and Sister, who promised to pitch in.

  We ran over to Toledo, tied the knot before a justice of the peace, and, just like that, I was a happily married woman—at least for a minute.

  The birth of Terrye was a beautiful thing. Everyone loved my infant daughter, saw her as a blessing, embraced her, and nurtured her with all their might. In short order, though, I saw that I was not cut out for motherhood. While Sister and Mama cared for Terrye, I decided I wanted to rejoin my friends. But I was not going back to St. Agnes and Mother Ernesta.

  Northern High was different. Northern was where the cool gals and cute guys congregated. To get back into the swing of things, I decided to enroll at Northern. I’d never been to a public school but was certain I’d be happy there. I was confident I’d do better at my studies.

  My confidence was misplaced. I didn’t do better because of something I hadn’t expected, something that was taking over my life. That something was, is, and will always be music. Ever since I was a two-year-old rolling my stomach to the backbeat, I had been drawn to music. What I was about to learn was the deepest truth of my life.

  More than simply loving music, I am music.

  Chapter by chapter, music is what drives my story forward.

  Black Bottom

  Seems like my marriage was over before it began—six months
, seven months max. Pinky wasn’t much of a husband and I wasn’t much of a wife. I do admit, though, that the boy did give me something I hadn’t had before—an orgasm. For that, I say, Thank you, Pinky.

  When it happened, I thought I was having a stroke. Strokes were on my mind because of Daddy’s death. The orgasm was so powerful that I was convinced I was dying. My heart beat like crazy as my limbs went limp. Because I was preoccupied with my health, I actually missed the pleasure part. It took me a while to realize that an orgasm was the goal of sex. By then, though, Pinky was long gone.

  I left high school in the ninth grade when they told me I had to take swimming lessons. Northern had a fabulous pool, and everyone was expected to swim. Not me. I don’t take to water. It’s even hard for me to take a shower when water’s coming at my face.

  “If you want to be excused from swimming class,” said the principal, “your mother’s going to have to come in and sign a form.”

  “I’m a mother,” I said. “What do you need my mother for? Besides, she’s working. She doesn’t have time to fool with your forms.”

  “Then we don’t have time to fool with you.”

  “You won’t have to,” I said. “I’m gone.”

  The only things I missed about school were those red-devil pills, the kind that got you high and hyper. So instead of going to Northern every morning, I’d go to the shack across from school and hang out with the pill poppers and weed smokers. That was our little teenage drug community, where no one was reprimanded or kicked out.

  I heard some of the older kids talk about the Black Bottom, the entertainment area of colored Detroit centered on Hastings Street. They talked about the Flame, where big-time acts like Della Reese and B. B. King performed. They also talked about the slick operators and fast women who frequented the area. That talk fascinated me. So did the older guys who hung outside Northern High accosting the sexier girls. They were Black Bottom pimps looking to recruit. My first thought was Choose me! Choose me! but I didn’t get chosen. Why not? I was shapely. I had a big booty and a cute face, but I guess that wasn’t enough. Maybe I lacked that come-hither vibe that makes a successful hooker.

  A girlfriend and I hitchhiked to Black Bottom so we could see it for ourselves. It was love at first sight. I loved seeing all those long Eldorados, all those fast-moving people, all the action on the street and in the clubs. If you had told me I could be a singer in one of those clubs, I woulda never gone home again.

  Ladies of the night in stacked heels and push-up bras!

  Pimps in green silk suits, fancy fedoras, and spit-polished alligator shoes!

  This was life, this was Paradise Valley!

  I just wanted to stretch out on the sidewalk and take it all in.

  I just wanted to stay there forever.

  I was never the same. Never.

  A taste of Black Bottom had me searching for any place where there was music and action. A girlfriend told me about the Graystone Ballroom on Woodward Avenue where Berry Gordy, a part-time songwriter and full-time hustler, was signing acts for his fledgling local label called Motown. Mama warned me to stay away from the Graystone, which, of course, made it more enticing. She suggested that I stay home with Terrye, but she and Sister were doing a fine job of caring for my little one. Long as they were around, I knew Terrye was in safe hands. Mama liked to say to me, “Betty Jo, it’s your red wagon. Either push or pull it.” So I pushed it and went to the Graystone.

  They were all there: Otis Williams and the Distants, who would soon become the Temptations. The great David Ruffin, who would soon lead the Temptations. The Miracles with green-eyed Smokey. Mary Wells, who was singing Smokey’s songs.

  In music-crazy Motor City, no one was crazier for music than I was. At an early age, I was listening to music that adults loved. I loved jazz. I loved Etta Jones’s version of “Don’t Go to Strangers.” I thought that was the most sophisticated music I had ever heard in my life. Music gave me a crazy kind of confidence. I had a voice. I could project. I could belt it out. I was ready. But I had no entrée. I needed a connection.

  I saw that connection in Johno, the first of many pimp-mentors who passed through my life. He was also from the West Side, where the pimps were classier and richer. At twenty-five, he was ten years older than I was. He was also possessive. I was his and his alone, not a working girl, but a girlfriend. Like Mama, Johno didn’t want me around the Graystone.

  “I don’t want nobody looking at you, sweet-talking you, or even touching you,” he said.

  But given Johno’s business obligations, he couldn’t keep track of me all the time, so I snuck off to the Graystone on a regular basis.

  By 1961, Motown was slowly starting to show signs of success. Even their younger singers, at eighteen or nineteen, were several years older than I was, but I had every intention of catching up. The Primettes, from the Brewster-Douglass projects, had become the Supremes, while the Marvels, from nearby Inkster, had become the Marvelettes.

  The only place I went during that year was to my sick bed. After Terrye’s birth, I had major medical problems. I was in the hospital when the girl in the next bed over was visited by her boyfriend. He had a handsome face, a black mohair suit, black patent-leather shoes, red socks, and slicked-down hair. When his girlfriend went to get her blood work done, he stayed in the room and introduced himself as Willie Jones, a singer with the Royal Jokers. I knew their hit on Atlantic, “You Tickle Me, Baby.” Willie was deep Detroit. He talked about having been in a kids’ choir with Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, and Della Reese.

  “I’m singing at the Parisian,” he said. “You want me to take you down there when you get outta here?”

  “I’d love that,” I answered honestly.

  A week later I was at the Parisian with Willie Jones. He had one of the most beautiful high voices I’d ever heard.

  “I sing too,” I told him that night.

  “Cool,” he said, “’cause I got a song just for a sweet little girl like you. ‘Shut Your Mouth.’”

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “I just said the name of the song—‘Shut Your Mouth.’”

  When he sang it to me, I kept my mouth shut.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I love it. A song about a young girl who makes her mama mad by staying out late is perfect for me.”

  “Then it’s yours.”

  Not much later, Willie was mine—or I was his. Any way you look at it, we became a couple. I’d found a way into the small world of Detroit’s about-to-bust-wide-open music scene. In the early sixties, that scene was fluid. In the days before Motown turned into a tight unit—and ultimately an exclusive club—the hustling producers / pimps / promoters / music-makers all overlapped. There were no boundaries or rules. The game was a free-for-all. And I wanted in.

  No one could keep me out of the Graystone. There, I made friends with Sherma LaVette, who called herself Ginger. She knew absolutely every singer and musician; she grabbed everyone worth grabbing. Ginger was the first real groupie I’d ever met, a superfan. I became a fan of hers and wanted to be with her every minute.

  I had formed a girl group called the Diamonettes. We lasted for only a couple of weeks, and I don’t believe Ginger ever heard us sing. But one night in the girls’ room at the Graystone, I was doing “Bye Bye Baby” because the tile acoustics made me sound better than Mary Wells.

  “Hell, girl,” said Ginger. “You can really sing. You got something.”

  “You got something too,” I said. “That LaVette name. I like it.”

  “Take it. It’s yours.”

  At that moment Betty Haskins became Bettye LaVette. For years I fooled with the spelling, but essentially I’ve been Bettye LaVette ever since.

  At the same time, Ginger said something else that changed my life.

 
; “I got someone I want you to meet.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Timmy Shaw.”

  “The one who sings ‘Thunder in My Heart’?”

  “That’s him. He needs to hear you.”

  “He sure does.”

  Not only did Ginger know the singers and writers, she knew the deejays, promoters, and pimps. When I brought her home to meet the family, Mama hated her. I loved her to pieces.

  When Ginger introduced me to Timmy Shaw, I saw a man who was extremely ugly. I had no desire for him, but I went to bed with him anyway. I realized that if I went with Timmy, I’d get to meet the entertainers. He was in the record business, he was talented, and that was enough for me.

  “I think I should take you to meet the woman who’s been making my records,” said Timmy. “She’s my writing partner.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  We rode over to the West Side, an exciting move for me. Until then, I didn’t know that part of town. The apartment was on Broad Street.

  The woman, Johnnie Mae Matthews, looked like Humphrey Bogart after a bad fight. She had cuts up and down her face, and forearms as big as Popeye’s. Ugly as sin, but she had a voice that could shatter glass. I knew her from her records. Her hit was “My Little Angel,” a song my mother loved. Johnnie Mae sang in the powerhouse style of Big Mama Thornton with a smidgen of Ruth Brown thrown in for good measure.

  So there I was, standing with two singers who had songs on the radio. This was the big time.

  Timmy went to the piano and Johnnie Mae sang something written by her and Timmy, “My Man—He’s a Lovin’ Man.” She sang the shit out of it.

  “Now you do it,” she demanded.

  I started, but after a few notes, Johnnie Mae stopped me.

  “Don’t play with it, baby,” she said. “Don’t pamper it. Hit it. You can’t keep it in. You got to sing out.”

  I started again, and again Johnnie Mae held up her hand.

  “Look here, child, if I was a little younger and a lot prettier, I’d cut this goddamn song myself. But I’m giving it to you ’cause you got the right package to sell it. You young and fine. But if you gonna be shy singing these here words, ain’t no one gonna buy nothing. When I’m talkin’ ’bout ‘My man, he’s a lovin’ man,’ I might just as well be saying ‘My man, he’s a fucking man.’ That’s the feeling I want behind it. Now can you give me that fucking feeling?”