Bettye LaVette
“I’m just trying to hold the fort,” Bettye LaVette told us before she began a smoky take on Ray Charles’ “They Call it Love.” Hold the fort? LaVette commanded it all through her opening set of the Sisters in Soul show at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. The 63-year old soul singer doesn’t just sing songs – she inhabits them, with a towering vocal attack and an animated stage presence that makes Tina Turner seem introverted: LaVette wrung every last gram of passion out of Pete Townshend’s “Love, Reign O’er Me”, turned Dolly Parton’s “Little Sparrow”” into a deep dark blues, and she took the message in George Harrison’s “Isn’t It a Pity” far beyond where the ex-Beatle left it.
“I remember that when I was 13 years old, my Aunt Olympia bought me Elvis Presley’s first album on Sun Records – the one with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky.’
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