Saw Bettye and Booker T tonight!

[daviddesper]

It is late but I just wanted to zip off a quick report to let you guys know that you were certainly right! I had mentioned a while back that I was going to have the chance to see Bettye Lavette in concert and you guys had unanimously encouraged me to go. Well tonight was the night for the show [[in Charlottesville, VA) and she was on a double bill with Booker T.

Bettye more than lived up to her billing with incredible energy, a great four-piece backing band, and she looked amazing. She was very well-received by the crowd, although from looking at them I would have bet that many of them had never heard of her.

She was in fine voice and featured about a dozen songs in a roughly 75 minute set. Several were from the Interpretations CD but she made a point of featuring at least one song from her other "comeback" CDs. She received a standing O at the end and came back for two encores, however well-planned they may have been.

After about a half-hour intermission to set up for Booker T, which explains why the show went till after 11:00, we were treated to about the same length set from him. So in terms of value, the $39 ticket was well worth it in my opinion.

Although I came primarily for Bettye, I was surprisingly impressed with BT. He featured his personal major hits of course, but also covered hits from other Stax artists, such as Otis, Sam and Dave, and Albert King. The biggest surprise to me was the amount of vocal material in his show, since you normally don't think of him as a singer.

All things considered, he seemed to be the better received of the two, at least if you measured it by the amount of dancing in the aisles. But of course you could argue that his music is more danceable than Bettye's.

So overall an excellent show and I am glad I went. Since this was my first time ever seeing either one of them live, is this a normal pairing of artists or was this the first time they were on the same bill?

[stephanie]

Thanks for the review. I guess Bettye is getting written up in so many magazines and having so many television appearances people who dont know her are coming to see what she is all about.

[paladin]

And thats a good thing, I can think of no other current entertainer so deserving. You could pair Betty with dam near anyone who has talent, ironically the people that know and recognize Booker T, should also be aware of Betty. The first time I saw her "Live" was in a small but famous Blues Club in Chicago called Rosa's, and I was captivated from the opening licks of the band and she came out smoking, with a take no prisoner attitude and that was about ten years ago, time flies but Betty is like fine wine. She still exhibits the professionalism and stage presence that I saw then, in her performances now, she is a Queen indeed......