A Woman Like Me

by Bettye Lavette

  My own musical charm, considerable in my own mind and in the minds of my champions like Jim Lewis and Clarence Paul, was not winning me a wide audience. I compared myself with other artists who were selling. I heard Sam & Dave, whom I had met through Marrie Early in Miami, sing “Soul Man” and loved it. I heard Wilson Pickett, who had come up in Detroit, sing “Funky Broadway” and loved it. Sam & Dave and Pickett were working for Wexler. I was working for peanuts. Why? I was certain that I had good taste in music, was in tune with the times, and could sing my ass off, yet I was going nowhere fast.

  I was out of town working when Detroit broke out in a riot that same summer. I called home right away to make sure Mama, Sister, and Terrye were okay. They hardly sounded alarmed, but I was a little disappointed that I had missed the excitement. I wanted to see the tanks roving the streets. My own political consciousness was closer to the Panthers than to Martin Luther King, Jr. It took me many years after King’s death to realize that his methodology was practically and spiritually more sound than my eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth attitude. At the time, though, I was not impressed with what felt like his submissive approach. I related to warriors, not pacifists. And given my attitude toward the hypocrisy of the church, it didn’t help that he was a preacher who had formed his politics from a Christian perspective.

  • • •

  Later that same year, I started working with Grover Washington, Jr. Any sane woman would have to fall in love with Grover. He was going on twenty-four, handsome, immensely talented, good-hearted, and one of the most lyrical saxophonists of his generation. In addition to being a wonderfully kind man, he had an open-hearted approach to music. Unlike a lot of the jazz guys who looked down on R&B, Grover was a musical liberal, not an elitist. He knew it was all good. That’s why in the seventies, when other jazz artists were complaining about the crass marketplace, Grover had commercial success. Social snobs are bad, but jazz snobs are even worse. Sweet Grover didn’t have a snobbish bone in his body.

  We became a couple and went round and round about getting married. He even took me home to meet his parents in Buffalo. But for all the genuine love between us, we were caught up in romantic dramas outside our relationship. I was still carrying a torch for Clarence Paul and Grover had fallen for a prostitute he’d met in Philly. Distracted by hopeless situations, we thought our affair would help us forget old flames. It didn’t. But for a while we did make beautiful music together.

  We played Small’s, my old stomping grounds in Harlem. Like Jim Lewis, Grover became my teacher. He had me sitting at the piano, learning chords and voicings. He taught me about saxophonists—Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Cannonball Adderly, Paul Desmond—the way Jim had taught me about singers. One night King Curtis, one of the great R&B saxophonists, stopped by the club.

  “Oh, man,” Grover said, “I can’t play with that cat in the room.”

  “You not only can play, baby,” I said, “you will play. And you will play your ass off.”

  Grover blew beautifully.

  “You’re so bad you worry me,” King said to Grover’s face. “But you got no worries yourself. You gonna be bigger than all of us.”

  In December of 1967, Grover and I were working Newark, New Jersey. He went for a walk while I napped in our hotel room. I woke up in the early evening and saw him sitting in a chair next to the bed with a newspaper in his hand. His eyes said something was wrong.

  “What is it?”

  “Your friend is dead.”

  “Which friend?”

  “Otis Redding.”

  “How . . . why . . . what happened?” I was shocked.

  “Airplane crash in Wisconsin. Him and some of the Bar-Kays.”

  “Otis is gone?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  He was twenty-six, this rolling thunderball of soul. I thought about those times, only a few years back, when he had opened for me with a show ten times more powerful than mine. Then I thought about his climb to the top. That made me happy, not only because he was a good man, but because he proved that our kind of singing has universal appeal. As a vocalist, he never compromised. Compromise raw soul and you wind up with no soul. Otis was all soul. In 1968, a couple of months after his death, you heard “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” on every radio station and every record player on the planet. He died young, but he died strong. And his music keeps getting stronger.

  • • •

  I met Rudy Robinson playing the clubs in Detroit. His group was called Rudy Robinson and the Hungry Five. Rudy was a bum, a drunk, and a genius. I hated him with all my might and I loved him even more. He was my musical twin. He read my musical mind. He was probably the best keyboardist in the city, Earl Van Dyke included. Like Earl, he could play lightning-fast jazz and molasses-slow blues. He read and wrote music like a professor, and he drank like a fish. He had a huge complex about never being called by Motown. The Motown session players—the Funk Brothers—got all the work and, ultimately, all the major recognition. Rudy lived and died virtually unknown.

  He was a regular at D-Town, the anti-Motown label begun by Mike Hanks, a guy who loved going around town saying, “Fuck Berry Gordy. He was falling off his tricycle when I was buying my second Eldorado.” Along with Johnnie Mae Matthews and Robert West, Mike was among the early label pioneers who were overshadowed and outshone by Berry. Hanks never got over it. He bought a little house down the street from Motown on East Grand—Berry was on West Grand—and kept turning out records that got little play. Some say Berry shut him down with the deejays. Who knows? All I know is that Rudy was his main music man and that Rudy, with his major-league talent, always felt stuck in the minors.

  Jim had opposed the merger of me and Rudy from the start. Because he didn’t know Rudy, he didn’t understand the depth of his musicianship. And while Jim was always arguing that I needed a band of my own, he was certain Rudy was the wrong bandleader. Until . . .

  One night Rudy came to the musicians’ union to pay his overdue dues. Jim and I happened to be there. I seized the opportunity. I said, “Jim, Rudy can play anything.”

  “Let’s go over to the piano and see,” Jim challenged.

  “Cool,” said Rudy.

  Rudy calmly sat down at the keyboard, looked at Jim, and said, “Name any tune.”

  “Let me hear ‘Lotus Blossom.’”

  “Billy Strayhorn. Ain’t nothing by Strayhorn I don’t know.” And with that, Rudy played the thing like he had written it.

  “You got lucky on that one,” said Jim. “Give me ‘If You Could See Me Now.’”

  “Tadd Dameron out of Cleveland,” Rudy remembered. “Sarah sang it. Beautiful changes.” Next thing we knew, Rudy danced through the changes of that song with such grace that I could swear he wasn’t drunk. But he was. And yet the drinking only improved his playing.

  After a half-hour, after Woody Herman songs and Dizzy Gillespie songs, Irving Berlin songs and Percy Mayfield songs, Jim conceded. Rudy had played every single one flawlessly.

  “You’re a brilliant stupid muthafucka,” was all Jim could say. “You deserve Bettye and she deserves you. If you two don’t wind up killing each other, you’ll do fine. Rudy Robinson, you’re the best fuckin’ piano man in town and, Bettye LaVette, you’re the best fuckin’ singer even if you are a stubborn bitch.”

  Having made the final statement of the night, Jim went out like a light. And I had myself the accompanist I’d always dreamed of. So when I heard songs like “What Condition My Condition Is In,” I knew that, between me and Rudy, we’d find a way to make it my own.

  One night at some local joint, I was singing my set—the usual mix of my singles together with my interpretations of songs by Marvin and Bobby Bland—when Ollie McLaughlin came in. Like Mike Hanks, Ollie was another small-time Detroit label owner. His track record wasn’t bad. He had a smash with Barbara Lewis, “He
llo Stranger,” another with the Capitols, “Cool Jerk,” as well as Deon Jackson’s “Love Makes the World Go Round.” He was no one I could ignore. When he heard my version of “What Condition My Condition Is In,” he told me, “Bettye, if you’re willing, we’re cutting this thing next week.”

  You know I was willing. I recorded it along with a few other songs—“Almost” and “Get Away”—for his Karen label. “Condition” made some noise in Detroit. Everyone who heard it liked it, but it was strictly local. I was feeling strictly local.

  “No need to feel that way,” said Ollie. “I’m getting Ahmet Ertegun to release those Karen singles of yours.” Ertegun ran Atlantic.

  “And he’s heard my stuff?”

  “Heard it and loved it.”

  “And he’ll put money behind it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Count on it.”

  Maybe Ahmet heard those singles, maybe Ahmet loved them, maybe Ahmet even put money behind them. But the result of my second go-round with Atlantic was virtually the same as the first: an initial burst of enthusiasm followed by an alarmingly loud silence.

  Back to square one.

  Muthafucka.

  Changing Conditions

  Marvin Gaye was a delicate soul, a soft-spoken man with an easy laugh and a poetic spirit. Later, people said he was a rebel at Motown, but the Marvin I knew was get-along go-along. Clarence Paul, who called him Gates, was always on his case for not being assertive enough.

  Marvin’s close friends were always concerned about his marriage to Anna Gordy. Along with her sister Gwen, they were the Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor of Detroit. (I didn’t know their younger sister, Loucye, who died young. Sister Esther, who ran Motown’s management department, was a straight arrow, although her husband, George Edwards, a Michigan state representative, spent years trying to lure me to bed.) We knew how Anna took advantage of her husband’s mild-mannered vulnerability. We all knew of her close relationships with other men, including Aretha’s dad, the Reverend C. L. Franklin. We never stopped urging Marvin to beat her ass. But Marvin never would. He knew that injuring the boss’s sister would injure his career.

  Meanwhile, the people who loved Marvin—everyone in Detroit—kept on him: “Leave the bitch! Beat the bitch! Get the fuck out of that marriage!” So when Clarence called me one day and said, “Gates called and said he threw the bitch’s clothes out on the street,” I screamed with delight. Marvin, Clarence, and I partied all night. The liberation of Marvin was like the liberation of France. A beautiful spirit was renewed. Shortly thereafter, he started writing What’s Going On, his gift to the world.

  • • •

  While Marvin started to use his art to express philosophical and theological feelings, I was witness to another major shift in music. It happened only a few blocks from where I lived on Trowbridge—at my old stomping grounds, Phelps Lounge on Oakland. George Clinton, who had once written for Motown, had the Parliaments. “(I Wanna) Testify” was the hit they were promoting during their gig at Phelps. Like all the guy groups at the time, they were dressed in standard show threads—slick silk suits, alligator shoes, processed do’s. Funky as the devil, they put on a great show. We were booked for a week solid, but after the first night, something strange happened. George and his boys started dropping acid.

  On the first night, before taking LSD, George wore his process in waves. By the second night, he was tripping; he soaked his head under water so that his do became undone. That was nothing compared to night three. Instead of his usual razor-sharp suit, George came out wearing nothing but a diaper held by a big pin! Everyone in the club screamed. What was this crazy muthafucka doing?

  George gave me some acid and decades later I’m still having flashbacks. I never took it again, but George got deeper into it. Just watching him, I could feel myself tripping. Between this gig at Phelps and another ten days at the 20 Grand, I witnessed the birth of psychedelic funk.

  Norman Whitfield, that nasty Motown producer, witnessed it as well. He was there every night taking notes. He knew that George was reacting to the crazy changes happening in the youth culture—the explosion caused by the hippies who said, as far as style goes, that the sky was the limit. If Jimi Hendrix could kiss the sky and burn up his guitar onstage, George wasn’t going to be left behind. George had the foresight and guts to take it to the next level. Funk didn’t have to be restricted to the past. Funk could be the future. So he had his band put on futuristic outfits, and under a banner of different names—Parliament, Funkadelic, P-Funk—Clinton blazed a new trail in Detroit at about the same time Sly and the Family Stone were carrying on in California.

  Following George’s lead, Whitfield went to the studio and came out with his psychedelic productions for the Temptations with Dennis Edwards, who’d been singing around town for years, replacing David Ruffin. Whitfield managed to follow Sly and Clinton into the Age of Aquarius with his big hits for the Temps like “Cloud Nine,” “I Can’t Get Next to You,” and “Ball of Confusion.”

  While Clinton and Whitfield were listening to Sly Stone, I was listening to Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. I liked my version of “What Condition My Condition Is In,” but Jim Lewis didn’t. He never liked any of my records. He didn’t think they did me justice. But when he learned that Kenny Rogers was coming to the 20 Grand, he was sharp enough to urge me to meet him and play him my interpretation of his hit.

  “And what am I supposed to do—slip backstage and give him my record?” I asked Jim.

  “Exactly.”

  “Why don’t you do that?”

  “Because you have a better-looking booty than I do.”

  “It’s not my style to chase down some singer and beg him to listen to my record.”

  “I’ll take you over there. I’ll hold your hand.”

  Jim accompanied me to Kenny’s dressing room. It was a good meeting. Kenny had great smoke and a portable record player. He put on my version of his song, closing his eyes as he listened. I didn’t know what the hell he was thinking.

  “Goddamn!” he said, when the record had played.

  “Goddamn good or goddamn bad?” I asked.

  “Goddamn great! I like your version better than ours.”

  “You do?”

  “Do you have a deal?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m calling my brother right now. He’s down in Nashville starting a new label.”

  Kenny picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Hey, Lelan, have you heard of a singer called Bettye LaVette?”

  I didn’t know what was being said on the other end of the line. I only heard Kenny say, “Wow! That’s amazing!”

  “What’s he saying?” I asked.

  “He’s saying he was the national promo director on your ‘Let Me Down Easy.’ Not only has he heard of you, he’s crazy about you. He wants to cut a record right away. Talk to him.”

  Lelan Rogers was excited. He had just named his new label Silver Fox after his silver mane. His financial backer was Shelby Singleton whose Plantation Records was riding high after selling six million copies of Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.” Singleton had also bought out Sam Phillips’s Sun Records, Elvis’s original label, along with Sam’s entire catalogue.

  “Shelby has money to burn,” said Lelan. “He trusts my instincts and my instincts tell me that you’re the next Aretha.”

  “Keep talking, Lelan,” I said. “That’s music to my ears.”

  “The way Wexler took Aretha to Muscle Shoals, I’m taking you to Memphis. You heard of Jim Dickinson? He got him a rhythm section down there with Charlie Freeman on guitar that’s on fire. They’re gonna burn you up.”

  “Burn, baby, burn,” was all I could say.

  • • •

  Sounds of Memphis, the studio where we worked, had a different vibe than studios in Detroit
and New York. Punctuality was not a priority. Neither was preparation. In Detroit and New York, most of the session players were accomplished jazz musicians who read and wrote music. They were precise and accustomed to working on a schedule. Detroit was an assembly-line city. Products kept moving. New York was a time-is-money city. No fooling around in the studio. Memphis was all about fooling around.

  Not to criticize, because the fooling around was fun. The fooling around created some sweet funk. Wexler understood that when he stole the Muscle Shoals rhythm section for Aretha from Rick Hall’s FAME label and brought them to Atlantic. Later, he’d do the same thing with these boys I started working with—Jim, Charlie, Tommy McClure on bass, Sammy Creason on drums, and Michael Utley on organ. After Wexler landed in Miami, he recruited Dickinson’s band to Criterion Studios. They renamed themselves the Dixie Flyers and eventually became Kris Kristofferson’s band. When I knew them, they had no name and no money. Same thing for the horn players on my Memphis sessions—Wayne Jackson, Floyd Newman, Andrew Love, and Ed Logan. They got famous later as the Memphis Horns, but during our time together recording for Lelan, they were as broke as I was.