Following Solomon Burke, Bettye Lavette recently has made a strong come-back. Over the years the sixty-year-old singer has built a cult status, that currently is coming to fruition. At the beginning of the sixties she scored a hit with her debut single My Man – He’s a Lovin’ Man. A couple of years later she had her last top 20 hit with Let Me Down Easy. What followed was an endless journey from record company to record company, that is best summarized with the conclusion that Lavette wasn’t always ‘at the right time, in the right place’. But the injustice fate imposed upon her is completely nullified these days. If the singer almost completely focused on live appearances in the nineties, in the new millennium she’s making regular appearances in the studios again. Thanks to her Joe Henry produced album I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise she makes a statement that hits the listener like a sledgehammer. Not alone, the album represents her opus magnum, but also the crown on a 40-year career.
