Bettye LaVette Makes Her Tonight Show Debut On March 3
DT: FEBRUARY 26, 2009
FR: TRESA REDBURN
BETTYE LaVETTE MAKES HER TONIGHT SHOW DEBUT ON TUESDAY, MARCH 3; PERFORMS A SPECIAL INTIMATE SHOW WITH HER PIANIST AT JOE'S PUB ON MARCH 8 AND PLAYS WITH HER BAND IN DC ON MARCH 9 AT THE 9:30 CLUB
BETTYE LaVETTE will be making her Tonight Show debut on Tuesday, March 3 performing the lead track "I Still Want to be Your Baby (Take Me Like I Am)" from her Grammy-nominated CD, The Scene of the Crime. Later that week on March 8, Bettye will be making a rare performance with her pianist at Joe's Pub, singing material that she has never performed on stage previously, songs she hasn't sung for a very long time, as well as a few favorites. Bettye will be back in DC with her band on March 9 performing at the 9:30 Club.
All of this comes hot off the heels of her two earth shattering performances in the Capitol when she performed "Love Reign O'er Me" at the Kennedy Center Honors for the Who tribute and then again, when Bettye sang "A Change is Gonna Come" with Jon Bon Jovi at Obama's Inaugural Ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial just days before the new president was sworn in.
Since those stunning internationally televised performances in DC in December and January, Bettye has been highly touted in the press and had television audiences wondering where she'd been all of their lives. According to an interview with Bettye in the Dallas Morning News she says of her appearance at the Lincoln Memorial, "When I got to the line 'I always believed a change would come,' my eyes fixed on him and I was kinda stunned. Our eyes locked and he was mouthing the words along." The paper went on to note: "For LaVette, it felt like the defining moment of a career that began when she was 16, when she recorded the hit single 'My Man--He's a Lovin' Man.' That led to a tour with blues icons Clyde McPhatter, Ben E. King, Barbara Lynn and newcomer Otis Redding, but not much happened until 2005, when she recorded I've Got My Own Hell to Raise." Her Anti- Records follow up, Scene of the Crime went on to win a Grammy nomination. Bettye may have taken the long and winding road to get where she is now, but the destination has been well worth it.