Bettye is a walking encyclopedia of amazing stories and great sayings and soon I was attempting to capture that defiant voice into a song that would somehow sum up her story. Finally, after a particularly good day of recording, I played her the song I had written and was shocked and amazed when she agreed to record it. She then took my finished song and completely reworked it (Don’t tell me you’re not a writer!) and the result is “The Battle of Bettye LaVette” which we recorded shortly before finishing the album.

The album’s tour-de-force and true gravitational center is the old Elton John song “Talking Old Soldiers.” The song, a strange oddity of a track in it’s original form is transformed by Bettye into both a defiant statement of her survival and an exorcism of the demons brought on by years of mistreatment and indifference from a musical industry that prefers cookie-cutter formulas to artistic genius. To call it one of the most profound performances in the history of soul music is an understatement. In twenty-two years of playing in bands and a lifetime of being obsessed with music and art, I’ve never heard anything like it. Witnessing it’s recording, stripped bare to just piano, bass and a slight hint of pedal steel and that voice, that terrifying and magnificent voice, shook all of us to our cores and continues to every time I hear it played. I may be prouder of those four and a half minutes than anything I’ve ever been involved with.

Reminds me of some of the more upbeat moments on that new Mavis Staples record.

I'm thinking that this may be one of my Borders purchases.
How's it holding up for y'all?

I didn't think it was all that special. More importantly, assuming you don't own any Lavette buying this would be kind of akin to buying A Bigger Bang as an intro to the Stones. If you want some Lavette, go with "Child of the Seventies" or "Souvenirs"