"The Great Lady of Soul" Brings The Who to Tears.

As far as tributes go, the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors for The Who was among the best that I have seen. This star studded tribute brought honorees Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey to tears multiple times but none of the performances were as moving as Bettye LaVette’s cover of The Who’s Former hit, “Love Reign”. This performance made many in a younger generation, which is infatuated with the classic rock of the 1970’s, stand up and take notice of an artist, and really a genre, that has been almost forgotten about. I know when I watched the performance, I was moved by her soulful rendition of this classic song.
Recently gaining the nickname “The Great Lady of Soul”, Bettye LaVette has had a tumultuous career filled with more emotional highs and lows than last night’s Steelers game. Fortunately, LaVette never gave up on her career; even after her studio mysteriously decided not to release an album that she had just recorded with “the Swampers” in Muscle Shoals in 1972. This incident, while devastating her emotionally, did not cause her to give up on her dreams. The album was later bought by another label and released in 2000, with high acclaim, as Souvenirs. Souvenirs is now regarded as one of the top 5 albums that every fan of Soul music should own.
I am personally excited to see “the Great Lady of Soul” perform in person. I have seen her on the Kennedy Center Honors, Barack Obama’s Inauguration Celebration and a benefit concert with Ringo Starr and Sir Paul McCartney and I think that it will be a see her in the intimate setting of the Singletary Center’s theater. In my opinion, there is no soul singer that has bridged so many styles of music with her albums. Her voice is moving and soulful, fitting perfectly into many different genres; though it always carries with it the same emotional dedication that she shows to her music. It is no wonder that she could take a classic rock song written by someone else and so make it her own that the original artists were brought to tears.

The Intern