Bettye LaVette Didn't Know the Beatles' 'Blackbird.' Then It Helped Her Fly.

Steve Jordan, who produced and played drums on the album, heard LaVette’s performance of “Blackbird” from the Hollywood Bowl and got goose bumps. “A lot of people don’t realize Paul McCartney wrote this song about the civil rights movement and now you have an African-American woman who lived through the civil rights movement, so you’re getting a taste of what the song was really about,” he said.

LaVette’s albums over the past 15 years have often been thematic. There are LPs of songs by female writers, British Invasion hits, Bob Dylan covers, and a disc recorded at the Southern soul incubator FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., with the Drive-by Truckers. She admits that she doesn’t even listen to much music these days, and relies heavily on her husband, who’s both a musician and a record collector, to catalog songs she might one day like to sing.

Source: amedpost.com

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