Betty LaVette – Nearer To You
Betty Lavette
Listen/Download Betty LaVette – Nearer To You
Greetings all.
I hope all is well in your corner of the soulful world.
Before we get started, I should mention that I’ll be joining the HPRS vinyl collective to sell some records this coming Saturday 3/31. The sale runs from 11-5 at 960 Green Street in Iselin, NJ (not too far off of Rt1). I’ll have a couple of boxes of LPs (lots of soul jazz and 60s rock) as well as a few boxes of 45s (funk, soul, jazz, rock etc) and some ephemera. If you’re in the area and have a taste for records come by and sample the wares.
A while back I decided to dip back into the crates to pull out some choice stuff for to digimatize for the Funky16Corners Radio Show.
There are so many records in my little record room (too many, at least for the allotted space) that every once in a while I can start flipping through boxes and pull out all manner of unjustly neglected (by me) records to listen to anew.
All of the good ones eventually end up in this space or on the radio show (usually both).
I picked up today’s selection many years ago out of some dollar bin or other.
It was long before I really had any idea about Betty LaVette (I knew her name, but little else) and grabbed it because it was a cover of one of my favorite Betty Harris tunes, ‘Nearer to You’.
It was Harris’s biggest hit, making into the R&B Top 20 and the Pop Top 100 in the summer of 1967.
‘Nearer To You’ is one of the finest ballads to flow from the pen of the mighty Allen Toussaint, and it is one of Betty Harris’s best performances.
Now Ms LaVette has been featured in this space before.
Though she never really much chart success to speak of (though the flip side of today’s selection grazed the R&B Top 20), her discography, beginning in 1962 and moving through the next two decades on some of the finest soul labels in America is very solid indeed.
She recorded a handful of 45s for Shelby Singleton’s Silver Fox and SSS International in 1969 and 1970, the first of which featured today’s selection on the B-side.
Produced by Lelan Rogers*, LaVette’s version of ‘Nearer To You’ is a vocal tour de force.
LaVette’s voice is a powerful and flexible instrument and she manages to wrap it around Toussaint’s melody tightly, with a great southern soul backing.
She has had a career resurgence in the 2000s, recording a number of new, and excellent albums.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back on Wednesday.
Peace
Larry
*Lelan, brother of the famous Kenny and producer of the 13th Floor Elevators…
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Themocracy
I really dig this! Her voice is so powerful and convincing that the lyrics ring true throughout the entire song. Must be a great feeling to pull a gem from your own collection after such a long time!
On the same note, there’s a very different feeling when you think you’re pulling a gem from a rare picture sleeve, only to find that it’s a mismatched 45 and you’re stuck holding an Elton John single instead. (Happened to me recently).
Betty Lavette was on Atlanic in 1962.She cut Just dropped in (to see what condition my condition was in) before Kenny Rogers & the First Edition and a great record called Let me down easy (Calla label)
Her current album if called Great British Songbook