A Woman Like Me

by Bettye Lavette

  I had some numbers for David, but no one was answering. I finally reached Jack and told him the situation.

  “My nephew is a fuckup,” he said. “He’s disappeared. No one knows where he is, not even me.”

  “He’s left me in the lurch,” I said.

  “Look, honey, get out of the hotel situation as best you can. I’ll give you an address of one of my buildings up in Harlem. Go to the penthouse apartment. Got a beautiful view. You’ll like it. You can stay there.”

  I traded my jewelry for my clothes and, without enough money for a cab, hopped the A train, the quickest way to get to Harlem. When I got to the apartment and knocked on the door, a man answered. He was wearing a woman’s slip.

  “Come in, sugar,” he said. “Are you here for V?”

  “No, I’m here ’cause Jack gave me this address.”

  “He wants you to stay here?”

  “I think so.”

  “V gonna like you, baby. Come on in.”

  I looked around the apartment and saw a dozen gay guys from the ages of seventeen to thirty. They were watching TV, trying on clothes, reading books, napping on the couch. They looked me over from head to foot.

  “V!” one of them cried. “Jack done sent you a fresh one.”

  The bedroom door opened and out came V—not a gay woman, but a genuine, government-inspected, prime-cut bull dyke. Arms like Popeye’s, cuts all over her face, a mouth of messed-up teeth.

  “Don’t you worry about these sissies,” said V. “They just mad they ain’t cute as you. Come on in, sugar. You’re safe in here.”

  I wondered. I worried. I still had my occasional nights with Cindy, but Cindy was cute and feminine and not threatening in the least. V was a monster. I didn’t want a monster making love to me.

  “Here’s the deal, honey,” said V. “I ain’t doing nothing you don’t want done.”

  “The thing is, I just need a place to sleep.”

  “You got your side of the bed, I got my mine, and if there’s any action, it’s gonna have to start with you.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “The real action,” said V, “is out there in the living room. You should see what happens when Jack comes by.”

  It turned out that Jack was a voyeur. He showed up every night, a coke crust of white around his nose. He got the boys good and high and then got them to put on a show for him. It was a sex circus. They’d do three-ways, four-ways, this-ways, and that-ways. They were practically acrobats. I’ve never seen so many positions for sucking and fucking. No orifice went untouched. Jack never got in the middle of the ring. As one of the boys sucked him off, Jack simply watched until he passed out.

  After a few days, one of the gay guys just wanted to watch me. Fact is, he wanted to be me. He started dressing up in my clothes and parading around the apartment. V, who turned out to be an absolute doll, told him I was a singer and I was soon teaching him all my songs. Soon there were two Bettye LaVettes living in Jack’s apartment.

  During the day, the boys would go out and steal. They’d bring back mink coats and gowns, cosmetics and jewelry. V was the house mom. If any of them didn’t bring back enough merchandise, V, the ferocious but friendly dyke, would slap them upside the head and bring ’em back in line.

  I stayed for a few weeks. I have to admit that it was entertaining. But the gangsters who kept showing up with Jack were dangerous. The scene was fueled by endless amounts of cocaine. I felt like something was about to pop, and when it did, I wanted to be gone.

  So what did I do? The usual. Called Jim Lewis.

  “Jim,” I said, “I fucked up again.”

  “Ain’t surprised.”

  “I need to get outta here and don’t have the money for a ticket home.”

  “Junior,” he said, “when you ever gonna learn that you’re a star. If you want people to treat you as one, you have to act like one.”

  “I don’t need a lecture, just a plane ticket.”

  “I’ll get you the ticket.”

  “And work? I haven’t sung in months.”

  “I got something that might keep you for a while.”

  “Something permanent?”

  “As permanent as a band funded by a numbers man can be.”

  “My own band?”

  “Led by Rudy Robinson.”

  “That’s great.”

  “I even have a name.”

  “Something better than Bettye and Her Boys, I presume.”

  “Much better—Seven Below Zero.”

  “Is that the temperature I’m coming home to, Jim?”

  “Cold front coming in from Canada. But this band’s so hot, you’ll feel like it’s June.”

  “Bless you, Daddy.”

  “I’ll see you at the airport, baby.”

  • • •

  Jim pulled off the coup. The man was always pulling off coups, and all out of regard for me. What had I done to deserve this kind of treatment? I know he loved my talent and saw me as a serious student who had learned his lessons. Great teachers thrive on serious students, but Jim had deep kindness in his heart and felt my need for a professional ally. He had seen how all these record companies had dropped me for no reason. He knew the heartache I experienced and wanted in the worst way to make up for it. That’s why I’ll love him forever.

  He helped me put together a couple of bands. The first had been The Fun Company. But Seven Below Zero sounded so hip that, even though I was still far from the big time, I was in good musical shape playing local gigs making minor money. I was back home with Mama, Sister, and my daughter, now a smart and lovely teenager.

  Maybe the local grind would lead to something. Maybe one of the big-shot execs I’d known through the years—Ahmet Ertegun or Jerry Wexler—would return my calls. Maybe they’d finally find a hit song for me. Maybe they’d offer me a production budget, a top-flight studio, and a hot producer.

  But the phone stayed silent, and the small gigs stayed small.

  Sometimes old friends from New York would check in. One was Don Gardner’s bass player.

  “Bettye LaVette,” he said. “This is Win.”

  “Hey, baby, you in New York?”

  “I am. Married Debbie Allen.”

  “I didn’t know that. That’s beautiful.”

  “The thing is, they wanted Debbie for the national company of Bubbling Brown Sugar. But it’s more a singing part than a dancing part, so naturally I thought of you.”

  “That’s so sweet, Win. But if there’s any dancing, I’m not a good choice.”

  “Oh come on, Bettye, you got your dance moves. Can I have the director call you?”

  “A call can’t hurt.”

  The call came an hour later.

  “Yes,” said the director. “It’s mainly singing. It’s a musical revue and you’ll have four featured numbers. But there is dancing.”

  “What kind of dancing?”

  “Tap.”

  “I’m out.”

  “You can tap.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Look, you can’t just call someone up and say you can tap. It doesn’t work that way. I can’t do it.” And I hung up.

  Five minutes later, the director was back on the phone. I don’t know what made him so persistent. “I’m sending you a plane ticket. Come to New York and we’ll teach you to tap.”

  “I’m unteachable.”

  “It’s easy.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  It turned out to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

  Bubbling

  When I arrived in New York, I stayed with my friend singer Jean Dushon and her husband. They helped me get throu
gh the tap-dancing ordeal, giving me pointers and, after the arduous rehearsals, even washing and massaging my feet.

  Beyond being inept, I felt silly. Throwing my hands up in the air and jumping all around, I felt like some rag doll. I had a complex, but I didn’t give up. I stayed. I learned. And I got the part.

  The part was good. There was no real story, just an excuse to see dances and hear songs loosely connected with the Harlem Renaissance of the twenties and thirties. It opened on Broadway in 1976 and ran for 766 performances. When I joined the national touring company in the summer of 1977, it was an established hit.

  Once I got past the trauma of tapping, I was thoroughly thrilled. This was what I had imagined show business to be all about—you put on a fabulous costume, sing a song or two, receive a standing ovation, and then go to a chic bar to sip champagne with your sophisticated friends. I thought I was Ginger Rogers. Of course, Ginger could dance, but she couldn’t sing “God Bless the Child,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “(In My) Solitude,” and “Stormy Monday” like I could. I had no problems when I replaced Vivian Reed from the original production. I had big moments and took advantage of them. As Jim Lewis had so patiently taught me, I drained the drama out of every song. Because of his tireless training, I commanded the stage. I reveled in the spotlight. At thirty-one, after a lifetime of corner bars and sleazy juke joints, I was ready for legitimate theater.

  The star of the show was Charles “Honi” Coles. He had danced with the Cab Calloway band in the forties before forming the famous duo of Coles & Atkins. His partner, Cholly Atkins, was the man hired by Berry Gordy in the sixties to teach all his acts—the Temps, Tops, Supremes, and Vandellas—to dance for their gigs at the Copacabana.

  The fact that Honi was thirty-five years older than I was made absolutely no difference. I adored him. He was sweet as honey and reminded me of my beloved Clarence Paul. Honi was the one who showed me the nuance of tap dancing. He was a master. After working with me for a week, I was ready to take him to bed.

  “I’m too old,” he said.

  “No, you’re not, baby. Old is good.”

  “When you turn fifty, I’ll be eighty-five. I won’t be able to fuck.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “You’ll leave me for a young man.”

  “Never. I’ll be yours forever.”

  “I already have a wife. She’s a beauty. She was in the Cotton Club chorus line.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “But I could never leave her.”

  “Why not?”

  “She makes the best spaghetti.”

  “I’ll learn to make it better.”

  “But I have a mistress who was also in the Cotton Club line. Been with her as long as I’ve been with my wife.”

  “You mean I’d be number three?”

  “At best.” He laughed.

  I kissed him, saying that I’d stand in line for him anytime. We became the best of friends. We went on the road for nine months where he regaled me with fabulous showbiz stories—how he worked on Broadway in the original Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at the Ziegfeld Theatre with twenty-eight-year-old Carol Channing and choreographer Agnes de Mille.

  As the national touring company made its way around the country, I fell into a satisfying routine. Nine months into it, though, I received a bad shock—Honi was leaving to do a show in Paris.

  “Take me with you, Daddy!” I begged.

  “Wish I could, Bettye, but they need you here.”

  “I’m replaceable,” I said. “You aren’t.”

  “Are you kidding? They got Cab Calloway taking my place.”

  “Cab’s cool, but he can’t dance like you.”

  “Cab has other virtues.”

  “Will I like him?” I asked Honi.

  “No, but he’ll like you.”

  As it turned out, I did like Cab—but no one else in the company did.

  He was in his seventies and cantankerous as hell—so cranky, in fact, that no one wanted to work with him. I had a different point of view. To me, Cab Calloway was show business history, and I was honored to work with him. Besides, he had the best stories. I liked how he had something bad to say about everyone. And he did take a liking to me.

  He liked me so much that I was the only one he’d listen to. That’s why the cast voted me the equity deputy, the leader of the actors. First I had to tell him that he couldn’t wear his signature white suit for the entire show. We wore white in the last act, and if he wore white earlier, the effect would be ruined.

  Cab didn’t give a shit. “Been wearing white before those assholes were born,” he said. “Why should I change?”

  “It’ll help the show, Cab,” I said.

  “Fuck the show.”

  “You are the show. You wanna do everything to keep it going.”

  “All right, tell them to get me a blue suit.”

  The next day I brought him a blue suit. He ran his hand over the fabric and said, “It’s cheap. I ain’t wearing cheap shit like this.”

  Costume lady found another suit with a finer fabric.

  “That shade of blue is too dull,” said Cab. “Get an electric blue that the audience can see. I need to be seen.”

  During one of the performances, he stuck out his foot and tripped one of the dancers. She wasn’t hurt, but she could have been. She wanted to bring charges and I had to talk her out of it.

  When the show moved on to another city, I was the only one he let ride with him in his town car. We had to stop every hundred miles so I could run in and put down his bets at the OTB machines. I didn’t mind. I liked how he complimented me.

  “Look at how those bitches dress when they’re offstage,” he said. “They got rollers in their hair. They’re wearing sweatpants and baggy T-shirts and raggedy slippers on their feet. But you, Bettye LaVette, you get dressed up every day ’cause you know what it means to be a star.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes, ma’am, you sure do. That’s why I let you ride with me.”

  We had dinner together every night. I’d ply him with questions. One night I asked him about Duke Ellington.

  “Couldn’t stand the muthafucka,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Egomaniac.”

  “Well, Cab . . .”

  “I know, I got an ego too. But, see, Duke was jealous of me. I had my shit together before he did. And I was a big star. Bigger audience. Made bigger bread.”

  “But he was a brilliant writer.”

  “That was Billy Strayhorn. Billy was the brilliant writer—and he was Duke’s ghostwriter. While Billy was downstairs in the band room writing ‘Satin Doll,’ Duke was up in his bedroom with two or three of them satin dolls.”

  “You sound jealous.”

  “Duke was fair-skinned. Not as fair as me, but in those days fair skin got you any gal you wanted. That’s why Basie was jealous of us both. He was darker.”

  “But I’m sure he got his fair share of ladies.”

  “Not the prime pick, my dear.”

  “You weren’t jealous of Duke and Count because they had royal names and you didn’t, were you?”

  “You’re funny, little missy, you just say those things to provoke me. But I’ve got nothing to be jealous about. Duke’s six feet under the ground, and I’m the star of a show and having dinner with a beautiful lady like you.”

  “Keep talking, Cab.”

  • • •

  On our night off in San Francisco, Cab and I went to see Peggy Lee at the Venetian Room in the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. Jim Lewis liked Peggy. He thought of her as a singer who did the most with a small voice. Jim said it wasn’t about volume or power; it was about dynamics. He not only praised her ability to phrase with great subtlety, but instructed me
to appreciate her sense of drama. Back in the late sixties, when I heard her do “Is That All There Is”—written and produced by Leiber and Stoller, the guys I had always wanted to produce me—it was another wrist-slitting moment. Given the chance, I know I could have killed that song.

  Peggy certainly killed it. In the high-class environment of a cabaret club like the Venetian Room, she was at her best. The feeling was intimate. She was in your face in a way that made you love the lady even more. Sitting there, I wondered if, in a million years, I’d get a chance to play a club like this, where the hefty cover charge meant that patrons were willing to pay dearly for the privilege to hear you and only you. Peggy’s audience listened with rapt attention. I was envious.

  • • •

  On the other side of the cultural divide, disco was at its height. It was 1978, and Donna Summer was red hot with “Last Dance” and “MacArthur Park.” Candi Staton had hit with “Young Hearts Run Free” and Gloria Gaynor would soon top the charts with “I Will Survive.” I was no fan of disco, but if I had been given an anthem like “Ring My Bell” and made a quick million, I would not have complained.

  At the same time, at age thirty-two I didn’t see myself as a disco diva. I was something of a Broadway star—and that was fine by me. I knew I could outsing ninety-nine percent of the disco dames out there, but the music didn’t interest me. It was monotonous, formulaic, and, for the most part, silly bullshit.

  Then one day disco came my way in the form of nineteen-year-old Cory Robbins, who said that he and his partner had a track they wanted me to dub my voice over. It was called “Doin’ the Best That I Can.” I recorded it for West End Records without much thought. After a few days, I left the city with one of the Bubbling road companies. When I returned a month later, Cory called.

  “‘Doin’ the Best That I Can’ is a disco favorite, but it’s about to get even bigger.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Because Walter Gibbons is about to remix it.”

  Gibbons was famous in the disco world. His remix was mainly an instrumental with my vocal buried somewhere two-thirds through what seemed like an hour-long song. He invited me to sing in one of those barnlike Manhattan gay clubs where the boys were popping pills and making merry. I had heard the version once, but I didn’t remember how long the instrumental introduction was. I didn’t even know when to start singing. My performance was a mess, but the boys were too fucked up to notice. For a night, I was a disco diva. Years later I saw that the remix made a list of best disco songs, a fact that does not fill me with pride. The result of all this, though, was the same one I had been seeing since I started out singing sixteen years earlier: no royalties.