Better late than never: for reasons alluded to in “Before the Money Came (The Battle of Bettye LaVette),” her career-summarizing personal anthem of bad luck, hard times and ultimate triumph, the 62-year-old Detroit soul singer Bettye LaVette is only now receiving the kind of recognition she should have enjoyed 40 years ago.
Bettye LaVette performing at the Allen Room as part of the American Songbook series.
Her sensational performance at the Allen Room on Friday as part of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series showed a singer whose phrasing and vocal texture recall Otis Redding and the younger Tina Turner with silk threads woven into the burlap.
Lean and agile, executing low kicks on high heels, Ms. LaVette, whose acclaimed latest record is “The Scene of the Crime” (Anti Records), is living proof that classic soul is as durable a style as any brand of American music. Ms. LaVette remarked that because she grew up in Detroit, Motown Records might have seemed her natural destination. But her voice and attitude were apparently too raw to be fitted into the sleek 1960s Sound of Young America envisioned by Berry Gordy; she eventually recorded for the label (briefly) in the early 1980s.
Like Ms. Turner since her resurgence two decades ago, Ms. LaVette has astutely broadened her repertory to include pop and rock songs outside the traditional purview of soul, and the earthy directness she imparts to them can be revelatory. Backed by muscular, gleaming blues arrangements featuring Al Hill on piano, Brett Lucas on guitar, Chuck Bartels on bass and Daryl Pierce on drums, she sang material by the likes of Lucinda Williams (“Joy”), Fiona Apple (“Sleep to Dream”) Joan Armatrading (“Down to Zero”) and Sinead O’Connor (“I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got”).
The most compelling performances were expressions of painful self-recognition by characters who have absorbed life’s lessons the hard way. Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s obscure “Talking Old Soldiers” (from the 1971 album “Tumbleweed Connection”), is the fatalistic monologue of a barfly who has outlived his hard-drinking army buddies. The alcoholic narrator of the old George Jones hit “Choices” acknowledges the destructive consequences of a lifetime of bad decisions.
“I’ve been bruised, hurt and cheated on,” Ms. LaVette sang in her devastating performance of the Australian soul singer Renee Geyer’s gut-busting blues ballad, “Close as I’ll Get to Heaven.” Even so, the narrator has plunged into a new relationship, eyes wide open, accepting the reality that if it is less than perfect it is better than nothing.
