Bettye LaVette is one of the best-kept secrets in the music industry. A classic soul stylist with a down-home,
southern-blues edge, LaVette’s first single was cut at the tender age of 16 in 1962. Now experiencing a musical renaissance due in no small part to 2005 cover album I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, The Scene of the Crime is LaVette’s first new album of original material since 2003.
Musically, the album is a down-home gumbo of soul, country and blues served by LaVette—a
flint-voiced Tina Turner soundalike. Growling and spitting out the lyrics to songs like “You Don’t Know Me At All,” 61-year-old LaVette’s age doesn’t show as she serves up piping-hot fresh tunes like the autobiographical song “Before the Money Came (The Song of Bettye LaVette),” a song describing her life in music and the unwillingness of record companies to give her a shot at a recording contract.
Some would argue that LaVette is a relic of the past, an antiquated Southern brassy songstress whose voice wouldn’t appeal to the new generation. If she is a relic, then the music industry needs to invent a flux capacitor to travel back in time to find more singers like her. The Scene of the Crime is a combination of all the best music of the past 50 years into a cohesive, inevitably enjoyable whole.