A Woman Like Me

by Bettye Lavette

  I was a raggedy mess. I had these thin little pants, a cheap cotton blouse, and a pair of worn-out slippers. My hair was disheveled. At one point I must have had fifty wigs. Now I had none. I knew I needed help.

  They say when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Well, that certainly was the case with me. But given my headstrong personality, I didn’t think I was ready to learn. No matter how badly New York had beaten me up, I came home with my know-it-all attitude undiminished. Fortunately, the teacher knew how to handle me. He was as hardheaded as I was. He taught me in spite of myself. He saved my professional life and prepared me for a future I was too shortsighted to see. He planted artistic seeds in my head and heart that took decades to flower.

  This was Jim Lewis, the musician’s-union man I’d met just before leaving for New York.

  “Thought you swore you weren’t ever coming back,” he said when he saw me at the Chit Chat Lounge.

  “That was my intention.”

  “And what happened?”

  “New York was a little rough.”

  “A little rough?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Okay, a lot rough.”

  “So you came home to get that training you need.”

  “What kind of training are you talking about?”

  “Singing training. History training.”

  “What kind of history?”

  “History of the singers who can teach you a thing or two about singing. You ever listen to Billie Holiday?”

  “I don’t like her.”

  “You’re showing your ignorance, girl.”

  “You’re getting on my nerves.”

  “Just take my card. When you come to your senses, give me a call.”

  I took his card, swearing I’d never call him and figuring I wouldn’t have to. He’d call me.

  • • •

  Returning home wasn’t easy. Admitting defeat never is. But if you’re really a singer, you gotta sing. Your need to sing is greater than your pride. You sing whenever and wherever you can—and that’s just what I did.

  Many of the Motown people didn’t even know I’d been gone. They were absorbed in Berry Gordy’s ever-expanding empire. If I had had a smash in New York, they might have taken note. And while “Let Me Down Easy” made some noise, it was not enough to get the attention of my Detroit friends riding high with number-one pop hits.

  Of the Motown singers, I was closest to the two I considered the best—David Ruffin and Marvin Gaye. And because Marvin was aligned with Clarence Paul, I was with him often.

  While Marvin’s marriage to Anna Gordy got him into the Gordy family, he was never happy with either his wife or his wife’s brother, boss Berry. The Marvin I knew was submissive and easily intimidated. Anna pushed his career and got him into the recording studio when no one else could. But, as everyone in Detroit knew, she was also involved with other men.

  Diane Ross played the Motown game with more skill than any girl up there. She slept her way up the Motown command, beginning with Smokey, Berry’s first lieutenant and best friend. Then she moved on to Brian Holland, one-third of the Holland-Dozier-Holland team that was writing and producing the Supremes’ hits. Most of the female singers felt the same way about Diane as I did. We saw her as a stuck-up bitch with a small voice and big ambition. So it was with special delight that we witnessed her comeuppance.

  It happened at the 20 Grand, a sophisticated Detroit club where the Motowners met after hours. I was there with Martha Reeves. She and her Vandellas were riding high. At the adjoining table were Brian Holland and Diane Ross. At about two a.m., the mellow evening suddenly got messy when Brian’s wife, Sharon, came storming in. Mrs. Holland was no shrinking violet. She pointed to Brian and screamed, “You, get in the goddamn car.” Brian jumped up and did as he was told. “And you,” said Sharon, pointing to Diane, “I’m gonna kick your scrawny ass.”

  With amazement and delight, Martha and I watched Sharon beat down Diane with such thoroughness, tearing off her clothes with such ferocity, that America’s Supreme sweetheart was left standing in her slip, panties, and bra.

  • • •

  If I had been smarter, I would have modeled myself after Diane, who reached the summit by screwing Berry and having his baby. Instead, I chose Clarence Paul, a man with limited influence. Clarence’s clique, which included his partner, Morris Broadnax, was on the outside looking in. The Paul–Broadnax team had molded Stevie. They got him going. Together with Stevie they wrote “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do),” which became a hit for Aretha. But it was really Sylvia Moy and Hank Cosby who took Stevie into the stratosphere. Together with Stevie’s own critical contribution, they were the main forces behind “Uptight (Everything’s Alright),” “I Was Made to Love Her,” “My Cherie Amour,” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours,” the songs that turned Stevie into a superstar. Clarence, however, never moved up into that first tier.

  • • •

  I know you’re crazy for Clarence Paul,” said Jim Lewis, when he called me for a date. He didn’t hide the fact of his marriage, nor did he hide his desire to fuck me.

  “Clarence and I are close,” was all I said.

  “If you want to run with the Motown crowd, you picked the wrong horse.”

  “I can live without that crowd.”

  “But haven’t you ever wondered, given how you can just about outsing anyone over there, why Berry has never approached you?”

  “That’s just it. He doesn’t want me to outsing his stars.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Jim. “Berry’s a businessman. The more successful the stars he signs, the more money for him. No, it isn’t that he doesn’t know about your talent. It’s that he doesn’t like your man Clarence. He’s blacklisted Clarence and anyone associated with him.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Then you’re blind. Look how Holland-Dozier-Holland has taken off. Look at the money Mickey Stevenson has made. Is Clarence seeing that kind of money? I don’t think so. Look, I know Berry well. As a union rep, I’m in touch with him all the time. He’s a smart guy and a brilliant salesman, but he can also be vindictive. He’s not a guy you wanna cross.”

  “And you think Clarence crossed him?”

  “Clarence got in early. Given his talent, he should be wielding real power over there. But he can’t even get you a deal on Motown, can he?”

  There was no arguing with that.

  I later confronted Clarence with Jim’s theory.

  “Jim thinks Berry is holding you back. He thinks Berry has something against you. Is that true, Clarence?”

  “The only thing I can think of,” he said, “was this time we were all at the 20 Grand. Ray was there without Berry.”

  Ray was Berry’s second wife, the one who had been instrumental in helping him start Motown.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Ray got drunk and didn’t have a ride. So I took her home. She invited me in and poured us some cognac. We blew some coke and the next thing I knew I was out.”

  “Did you fuck her?”

  “No.”

  “Then what was the problem?”

  “Berry. When he got home later that night, Ray and I were both laid out on the floor, naked.”

  “But you said you didn’t fuck her.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then why in hell were the two of you naked?”

  “I can’t say. All I know is that we’d been blowing cocaine.”

  “And to blow coke, you gotta get naked?”

  “That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.”

  “And Berry believed you when you said you didn’t fuck his wife?”

  “Berry was plenty pissed.”

  “And you think he’
s held that against you?”

  “I guess there’s a chance of that.”

  “You guess! Think about it, Clarence—the man walks in and sees you and Ray naked on the floor.”

  “But he isn’t even seeing Ray anymore. They broke up long ago.”

  “What difference does that make, Clarence? Husbands don’t forget shit like that. Ever.”

  Clarence would never leave his wife for me, but he’d also never give up on me. Before Frank Kocian gave up on the music business, he began a little label called Big Wheel. I cut a couple of songs that Clarence had written. The first, “Tears in Vain,” had already been recorded by Stevie as well as the Supremes. Clarence composed the second, “I’m Holding On,” a good description of my dwindling career, with Morris Broadnax, a consummate writer. Nax’s lyrics for Marvin’s “When I’m Alone I Cry” are among the most beautiful in Motown history. In my own history, Nax never stopped hitting on me. I’d cry on his shoulder about how Clarence didn’t love me, only to have him say, “But Bettye LaVette, I do. Why mess with Clarence when you can have me?”

  “Nax,” I said, “you’re betraying your best friend.”

  “For you,” he answered, “I’d betray God in heaven.”

  “Put it in a song, Nax. ’Cause you sure ain’t putting it in me.”

  The Big Wheel songs died a painful death. Maybe it was their lack of success that made me a little more receptive to Jim Lewis’s continual campaign to not only manage me but train me as well.

  • • •

  In 1967, Jim and I became lovers. I was twenty-one and he was forty-five, a happily married man happy to have a hot little thing on the side. He was also sincere about teaching me the art of singing.

  “It’s not an art,” I told him one day, as we were driving around Detroit, “it’s a natural-born talent.”

  At that very moment, Sarah Vaughan was coming on the radio with her version of “I’ve Got a Crush on You.”

  “What would you call this?” he asked as he turned up the volume.

  “I don’t like it,” I said. “She’s oversinging.”

  He slammed on the brakes, turned to me, and barked, “Get out of the car.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re not gonna talk about Sarah Vaughan that way. Not in my car. Your ignorance is exceeded only by your arrogance.”

  And the man put me out. Good thing I was only five blocks away from my house.

  The next week, though, we were back at it. Jim’s passion for female singing was so deep that he required a protégé. He needed someone to teach. I needed someone who could get me gigs. Jim was that guy. His union position afforded him all sorts of opportunities to hire a singer for meetings, banquets, conventions, and political rallies. I also began to see that I did, in fact, need his training. His insistence that I learn my craft was strong enough to crack my arrogance. Jim was one of the few men who could get me to shut up.

  “Have you heard of Anita O’Day?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, you need to. She started out as a big band canary with Gene Krupa. Most of the great singers had big band experience. Ella with Chick Webb, Billie with Basie and Artie Shaw, Sarah with Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine, Dinah with Lionel Hampton.”

  He played me Anita’s vocal on “Let Me Off Uptown,” done with the Krupa band and trumpeter Roy Eldridge.

  “She phrases like a horn player,” I said.

  “That’s the point,” said Jim. “That’s the paradox. The best horn players—Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young and Johnny Hodges—model themselves after singers. They sing through their horns. And the best singers use their voices like instruments. Listen to this record Anita made fifteen years later with Oscar Peterson. Listen to how she phrases as brilliantly as Oscar, the most brilliant pianist since Art Tatum.”

  “This jazz talk is wearing me out,” I said.

  “This jazz technique is what’s going to let you sing in any style you choose. It’s going to give you class and freedom. Listen to how freely Betty Carter sings. She also started out with Hampton. She was the girl singer and Little Jimmy Scott was the boy singer. Have you heard them?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you will now.”

  Jim put on records by Carter and Scott. Betty sang like Charlie Parker played, fast and frenetic, while Jimmy hung back far behind the beat.

  “Now listen to Betty’s duets with Ray Charles,” said Jim.

  I still wasn’t crazy about Betty, but I could hear why Jim considered Ray the absolute master.

  “Here’s a man,” he explained, “who began by doing flat-out imitations of Charles Brown and Nat Cole. He was singing a kind of cocktail blues, very correct and yet intimate. Then he breaks out with his rhythm-and-blues stuff—‘I Got a Woman,’ ‘What’d I Say.’ And then, just when everyone considers him the best gospel/soul singer ever, he hits with country—‘I Can’t Stop Loving You.’ In between, he’s singing standards—‘Am I Blue?’—and, just for good measure, has pop hits with ‘Georgia on My Mind’ and ‘Ruby.’ The reason Ray is such an important model for you, Bettye, is because, like you, he’s a rough-and-tumble soul singer at heart. But that doesn’t mean he’s restricted to that category. His base is soul, but tenderness and sensitivity allow him to go all over the map. He makes any material his own. That’s your goal.”

  When Jim talked about Ray, he made sense. I related to Ray, but I still had problems relating to Ella, who did not reach me emotionally, and Billie, whose poignant and pained delivery I appreciated only years later.

  Jim’s lessons kept coming. He schooled me on Gloria Lynne and considered her “I Wish You Love” a masterpiece. He insisted that I study Dakota Staton and Nancy Wilson. “Nancy,” he said, “is the female version of Jimmy Scott.” He made sure I ignored none of the white singers. Beyond Anita O’Day, he had me listening to June Christy, Chris Connor, Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, Julie London, Jeri Southern. “Listen to their intonation,” he said. “Hear how they enunciate, how they never cut off the word before the meaning is clear. It’s all about storytelling.”

  Jim considered Carmen McRae a great storyteller. “She listened to Billie,” he said. “Billie listened to Bessie and Louis, so when you hear Carmen you hear a whole chunk of history.”

  After that little lecture, he started making me sing songs like “The Man That Got Away.”

  “Judy Garland?” I asked.

  “Hell, yes, Judy Garland,” he answered. “Judy Garland is brilliant.”

  After Judy, it was Sinatra. After Sinatra, Tony Bennett. After Tony, Johnny Hartman. The list kept growing. After a while, the list was just too damn long.

  “Your lessons are getting on my nerves,” I told Jim.

  Jim’s response was always the same: “Just listen. Keep listening.”

  I listened to Helen Humes, Lena Horne, Arthur Prysock, Irene Reid, Joe Williams, Rosemary Clooney, Jon Hendricks, Bill Henderson, and Shirley Horn, who sang as far back behind the beat as Little Jimmy Scott.

  Hour after hour, week after week, month after month—listening, listening, listening, with Jim pointing out every last nuance of every single song sung by every singer.

  These free lessons were blessings, though at first I saw them as burdens. I was shortsighted.

  “Whatever happens with your recording career,” Jim was quick to say, “the techniques I’m showing you will allow you to sing professionally for the rest of your life. Study them carefully and you’ll become a master.”

  Five years had passed since “My Man.” I had suffered the humiliation of New York. I had recorded other singles and, other than the slim success of “Let Me Down Easy,” none of them had hit. And while humility was not—and will never be—central to my character, I was forced to admit the truth: My Motown friends had beco
me national stars while I was back home playing Phelps Lounge.

  That’s why Jim Lewis’s confidence meant a lot. If he, with his encyclopedic knowledge of music, thought I was good enough to be great, I could tame my cockiness and listen to the man. It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t happy being told what to do. But his notions of how to phrase a lyric, how to present myself onstage, how to feel my way through all the genres, how to learn the standards—even the toughest ones like Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” and Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight”—were too sensible to deny. Besides, the beauty of the singers he loved best was finally breaking down my hardheaded defiance and warming my heart.

  As I came of age, I was slowly becoming a different kind of singer. My early education had been strictly in the streets. Now a teacher had come along, sat me down, and got me to pay attention to a legacy that he considered critical to my artistic development.

  “Artistic development?” I asked. “Who the hell thinks about something like that?”

  “Hardly anyone,” Jim answered. “But hardly anyone ever grows in this business. If you want to grow, you’ve got to develop. Either that or you die.”

  I didn’t want to die. I just wanted another hit.

  Higher and Higher

  It would be hard to argue that 1967 wasn’t the hottest year in the hottest decade in the history of R&B. Ted White proved to be right in putting Aretha on Atlantic. Jerry Wexler became her producer and her first single, “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” set her career soaring. Not many months later, she was on the cover of Time while I was considering slitting my wrists for not covering Otis Redding’s “Respect” before she did. In years to come, I’d have many more wrist-slitting moments.

  Of course, I was the one who told Wexler to get lost while Ted was smart enough to get Jerry into the studio with Aretha. Wexler had the right feel for tough-minded rhythm-and-blues in a way that Aretha’s original producer, John Hammond, did not. Jerry was also the reigning king of the Muscle Shoals scene where the rhythm section, funky and loose, gave Aretha exactly the support she needed.

  Other Detroiters, friends who’d been scuffling with me, were also enjoying sensational success. Martha and her Vandellas had “Jimmy Mack” and the Supremes had “Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone.” Little Stevie, produced by Sylvia Moy and Hank Cosby—not my man Clarence Paul—went number one with “I Was Made to Love Her.” Jackie Wilson, the Detroiter we singers admired most, came out with his last smash hit, “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.” The Motown producer I couldn’t stand—the nasty, bad-tempered, overly aggressive Norman Whitfield—had “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” with Gladys Knight & the Pips. Norman was as brilliant as he was hateful. A year later, Marvin would also go number one with “Grapevine” and have Whitfield hits with “That’s the Way Love Is” and “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby.” In the case of men like Whitfield and James Brown (whose 1967 smash was “Cold Sweat”), I could recognize their genius and still find them repulsive. As much as I love men, I have no tolerance for men devoid of charm.