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I wonder if Bettye can out-do Willie Nelson's awesome cover of What Was It You Wanted ?

"Do Right To Me Baby (Do Unto Others)"

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[www.stereophile.com]

This article indicates Keith may have laid tracks on two songs. Hopefully true..

'Things Have Changed' trailer - [www.youtube.com]

Bettye LaVette
Things Have Changed

3.5 out of 5

by Josh Hurst
March 20, 2018

On Things Have Changed, Bettye LaVette offers reinventions of a dozen Bob Dylan songs. Taking liberties with such revered material is always a risky move, but the soul singer makes these songs feel new again, subverting them and, in the process, finding new layers of meaning within them. It's an act of reclamation that recalls what Dylan himself did on his Great American Songbook albums, like 2017's Triplicate. There's also precedent for these bold reinterpretations in Dylan's own live performances, which routinely find him refashioning his standards to sound like entirely new compositions.

Adding to the album's fresh feel is the fact that LaVette's mostly working from recent Dylan songs or relative obscurities. With the exception of “The Times They Are A-Changin,'” nothing here quite qualifies as a warhorse. The original melody of that well-known song is totally stripped away, replaced by a steady backbeat, dry keyboards, and grinding guitar solos; the song is transformed from acoustic folk to fiery funk. But as wildly as she deviates from the hallowed original, LaVette doesn't lose the song's central thematic thread, as her combative, upbeat rendering highlights the defiance in Dylan's lyrics.

Elsewhere, LaVette chooses songs from minor Dylan albums, redeeming material that was initially marred by poor production. “What Was It You Wanted” originally appeared on Oh Mercy, an album largely stifled by producer Daniel Lanois's heavy-handed atmospherics; here, it's beholden to a breezy, seductive soul groove. “Emotionally Yours” first appeared on Empire Burlesque, Dylan's most overt flirtation with synthesizers and drum machines. The album hasn't aged well, but LaVette's entirely acoustic arrangement of the song evokes the spare performances of Dylan's early-'60s work.

But all of LaVette's bold ideas can't completely save Things Have Changed from some of its own problems. The singer recorded the album with drummer and producer Steve Jordan, a veteran session player who's worked with Dylan himself. Jordan keeps these songs crisp and lean, but he favors a “classic rock” palette that's heavy on electric guitar solos, gently propulsive drumming, and simmering organ, all of which can make the album feel monochromatic. The worst offender is “Political World,” another Oh Mercy cut that's played here with a genteel island rhythm; the result is a draggy reggae-lite jam session that might appear on an album by Eric Clapton or Keith Richards. (The latter actually appears on the track as a guest guitarist.)

Even when the production feels a shade too restrained, however, LaVette transcends it with gritty, impassioned performances—chewing on every rich word and malleable melody. The title track is just the kind of material on which she thrives; over seven minutes, LaVette ratchets up the intensity, delivering wistfulness, vulnerability, and tough-talking attitude in equal measure. She's similarly compelling on the ballads like “Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight,” which give her a chance to relax into smoldering grooves. Songs like those find Things Have Changed making good on its promise: the chance to hear a legendary interpretive singer reach deep into one of pop music's richest songbooks, and to refashion its contents in her own image.

[www.slantmagazine.com]

Greil Marcus’s Real Life Rock Top 10: Bettye LaVette Rewrites Dylan

Bettye LaVette, Things Have Changed (Verve)

She started singing in Detroit in 1962 at sixteen; her career didn’t really begin to come into focus until fifty years later. Her first single was a hit; the next forty years were snakebit. In A Woman Like Me, her 2012 autobiography written with David Ritz, LaVette describes what her future looked like to her in the 1970s: “I’d walk into a bar, order a drink, and watch a woman in her sixties singing in front of a makeshift band. She was fifty pounds overweight. Her makeup was running. Her clothes were frayed. I could hear that once upon a time her voice had been strong, but now her voice was shot. Her eyes were sad. While she sang, she worked the room, urging the patrons to stuff a dollar bill or two in her bra. Some did, but most didn’t. At one point, a guy screamed, ‘Let’s turn on the jukebox. Anything is better than this bitch.’ I wanted to slug the guy. I wanted to cry. I wanted to stop seeing myself in this woman.”

That future that didn’t come to pass is in the performances of Bob Dylan songs that make up this album — most of them obscurities from the 1980s on, “Emotionally Yours,” “Seeing the Real You at Last,” “What Was It You Wanted.” What is not in them is whatever past the songs themselves might carry, even when they’re “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” or “It Ain’t Me Babe.” “I wasn’t going to tributize him,” LaVette said in an interview in Bluegrass Situation earlier this month. She had to make the songs “fit into my mouth,” she said, “just as if they’d been written for me.”

That’s how they sound. After the first few tracks, with the unforced unpredictability of the arrangements, the quiet, determined way LaVette enters the music, the open spaces of the band — with the guitarist Larry Campbell, who worked in Dylan’s band for years, playing behind LaVette as if he never played the songs before — you realize you have no idea how any song is going to sound: what it will be.

She needed the songs to fit in her mouth: “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” and “Ain’t Talkin’ ” — one a programmatic manifesto that has always sounded to me as if it were written by a committee, the other a long, twisting parable of knowledge and revenge — feel like real talk, to the point that you don’t even hear the lines rhyme.

She rewrites the songs by the way she sings them, but she also rewrites the words. Dylan’s “Do you remember St. James Street/Where you blew Jackie P.’s mind?/You were so fine, Clark Gable would have fell at your feet/And laid his life on the line,” in “Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight” here comes out carrying the double first name LaVette was born with: “Do you remember 14th Street/When you blew Betty Jo’s mind?/You were so fine” — as fiiiiiiiiine, the word caressed as it’s stretched over its own whole measure — “Tina Turner would have fell at your feet/And left Ike hanging on the line,” which is the crack of a completely different whip.

I keep coming back to LaVette’s closing track, “Going, Going, Gone.” It was a hole in time on Dylan’s Planet Waves in 1974; now there’s an Ennio Morricone feeling in the opening phrases of Larry Campbell’s steel guitar. Once Upon a Time in the West rises up in the background. But the music deepens, touching the small-label soul records made in the South in the Sixties and Seventies — George Perkins and the Silver Stars’ “Cryin’ in the Streets,” Bill Brandon’s “Rainbow Road,” or LaVette’s own “Let Me Down Easy,” where despair was like the lead instrument. “Going, going, gone”: LaVette takes the phrase, the idea, to such depths of defeat that the fat woman in her sixties in that nowhere bar is anything but the worst that might come, and as the song goes on, you can hear the singer die over and over again. And yet it’s a perfect last track: It makes you begin again from the start.

[www.villagevoice.com]

"The legendary artist, Bettye LaVette celebrates the release of her new CD, Things Have Changed featuring interpretations of songs written by Bob Dylan. Special guests on the CD include Keith Richards and Trombone Shorty.

This will be an amazing evening - a historic interview with an artist who has worked with everyone. It doesn't get much better than this. We will also celebrate the birthday of Dedry Jones, the host and creator of The Experience."

The Experience with Bettye LaVette
Friday, March 30, 2018
DuSable Museum of African American History
740 East 56th Place Chicago IL
Doors open at 6:30 pm
Experience is at 7:00 pm

Tickets available online at [www.amusicexperience.com]



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Bettye LaVette: Things Have Changed

LaVette revitalizes and shape shifts a dozen Dylan tunes into her own soulful reflection.

Written By Hal Horowitz // March 27, 2018



Bettye LaVette
Things Have Changed
(Verve)
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Take one of the world’s foremost soul interpreters, turn her loose on the songbook from roots music’s most respected singer-songwriter, bring in a veteran and sympathetic boardman who entices some of his celebrated musician friends to guest, and hang on — as this perfect storm yields a riveting meeting of the minds.

But Bettye LaVette doesn’t just saunter through Bob Dylan’s better known material; rather, she and drummer/producer Steve Jordan dig deep into Zimmerman’s catalog to excavate and reinterpret seldom anthologized gems spanning 1964 through 2006. And when she does tackle established Dylan fare like “It Ain’t Me Babe” or “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” she and Jordan take risks by rearranging them in ways so musically unlike their initial recordings, even long-time Dylan fans won’t recognize the songs until the lyrics kick in. The idea of covering his tunes almost borders on cliché at this late stage, yet LaVette and Jordan twist the model in so many unusual and interesting directions, the results sound fresh and inspired.

The relatively stripped-down backing includes such A-team names as bassist Pino Palladino (The Who), Leon Pendarvis (Luther Vandross) on keyboards, and guitarist Larry Campbell (Levon Helm), all established journeymen. Add Jordan buddy Keith Richards to lay his licks over a few selections, including a bluesy “Political World” injected with Neville Brothers funk, along with Trombone Shorty who, with fellow New Orleans-resident Ivan Neville, brings the seldom covered “What Was it You Wanted” (from1989’s Oh Mercy) into Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On territory with a stunning, revelatory performance.

Only dedicated Dylan followers will recognize obscurities like “Emotionally Yours” and “Seeing the Real You at Last” (both tucked away on 1985’s Empire Burlesque), “Ain’t Talkin’” (that closed out 2006’s Modern Times), the lovely ballad “Mama, You Been on My Mind” and the terrific title track, which first saw the light on the soundtrack to Wonder Boys. Everyone else will marvel at LaVette not only uncovering these often hidden jewels, but diving into them with her powerful, clearly enunciated and distinctive soulful rasp. She grabs onto “Do Right to Me Baby (Do Unto Others)” from Dylan’s somewhat maligned Slow Train Coming, wrestling it into a stunning muscular rocker far different and more intense than the original’s subtle jazz/blues. Gregg Allman tackled “Going Going Gone” on his final album from 2016 and LaVette now revisits it to close out this set in mesmerizing, ruminative form.

These dozen performances will make listeners reassess songs some already know. But more likely they’ll be stunned at how LaVette revitalizes and shape shifts them into her own soulful reflection. Dylan’s compositions have effectively been converted into Bettye LaVette songs, a transformation you can’t help but believe even Bob will appreciate.

[americansongwriter.com]

"Add Jordan buddy Keith Richards to lay his licks over a few selections,"

Let's hope so....

Music Review: Bettye LaVette transforms Dylan songs into her own
March 28, 2018 (Mainichi Japan)


This cover image released by Verve Records shows "Things Have Changed," by Bettye Lavette. (Verve Records via AP)
(AP) -- Bettye LaVette, "Things Have Changed" (Verve Records)

There are enough cover versions of Bob Dylan songs for a lifetime but Bettye LaVette's own dozen are a truly special kind. She doesn't simply sing them -- she molds, adopts and transforms them, taking possession of the songs like few other interpreters do or can.

If Dylan has often purposely confounded expectations, LaVette's career, which began in Detroit in the early 1960s, was plagued by disruptions and did not hit a consistent stride until some 40 years after its start. But it's been highlight after highlight since 2003's comeback "A Woman Like Me," including several Grammy nominations and a ceremony-stopping performance of The Who's "Love Reign O'er Me" when Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2008.

The repertoire of "Things Have Changed" sticks mostly to roads less traveled, leaning heavily toward Dylan songs from the 1980s onward, including "Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight," ''Emotionally Yours" and "Ain't Talkin'," while the title track is his Oscar winner from the 2000 "Wonder Boys" soundtrack.

Producer and drummer Steve Jordan proves the ideal foil, with guitarist Larry Campbell (a former Dylan band member), keyboardist Leon Pendarvis and bassist Pino Palladino playing key roles in the transformations. Keith Richards, Ivan Neville and Trombone Shorty are among the distinguished guests.

"The Times They Are A-Changin,'" the biggest hit on the album, gets a funky, swampy reading that injects the menacing track with a deep soul, while "Do Right To Me Baby (Do Unto Others)," from Zimmy's Christian phase, rocks with Led Zeppelin's intensity.

LaVette and the band take liberties with the songs -- changing or dropping lyrics, altering melodies, updating moods -- but the reassessments achieve their purpose: unburdened from a specific Dylan album or period, their kinship is clear and undeniable.

You could do much worse than to have Bettye LaVette interpret your songs but you really, truly couldn't do much better.

Bettye LaVette Takes Bob Dylan Where He's Never Been Before

On her new album, Things Have Changed, the great American soul singer reminds us just how fruitful reinvented songs can be in the right hands.


Mark Seliger

By Geoffrey Himes | March 28, 2018

Excerpt:

(Producer Steve) Jordan has played with Keith Richards for years, and LaVette’s producer asked the Rolling Stone if he’d play on her album. He wound up on two tracks and formed a quick bond with the singer. “I told Keith, ‘This is tantamount to helping an old lady across the street,’” LaVette reports with a laugh. “If I’d been big when they were big, he and I would have gotten into a lot of trouble. If we’d known each other when we were younger and had more time together, it would have been dangerous.”

Full interview - [www.pastemagazine.com]

Bettye will be the guest of Theodora's Off the Cuff radio show on SiriusXM.



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Things Have Changed : [www.youtube.com]

I just finished listening to this great record. "Ain't Talkin'" alone is worth the price of the whole record, but there's some other brilliant versions on it.

album of the year so far

Just started listening to the whole album on Spotify, sounds good so far ! She's a great singer, I remember being stunned by her 2010 album where she covered "Don't let me by misunderstood" among others. Great soulful voice and a knack to find people lay some good grooves for her !

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IORR Links : Essential Studio Outtakes CDs : Audio - History of Rarest Outtakes : Audio

Boring. And you can´t hear that it´s Keith. And she´s one of those singers who think that the words should be sung as laaate as possible...sooo much feeeeling...Hard to listen to: "Come on now...come on now!!! Spit it out!!!"

'Things Have Changed' on Spotify - [open.spotify.com]

There were conflicting reports on the number of tracks Keith plays on - he's credited on "Political World" only.

"Political World" - [open.spotify.com]

Quote
Bjorn
Boring. And you can´t hear that it´s Keith. And she´s one of those singers who think that the words should be sung as laaate as possible...sooo much feeeeling...Hard to listen to: "Come on now...come on now!!! Spit it out!!!"

Album on order, but the 90 seconds on ITunes is intriguing. Nice and slinky with a possible strong solo? What's next, his contribution to Buddy Guy's album next month??!! Good job Keith.

"Bob Dylan" for everybody that doesn't like Bob Dylan. Very predictable and slick to listen to, IMO.

I listened to all the songs; it's well done but I prefer Bob's originals.
Rockandroll,
Mops

Currently listening to it
Nice, but not THAT exciting

"#ThingsHaveChanged! Wonderful to work with you, Bettye. One love, Keith"

[www.instagram.com]

Keith laying down his licks for this..

[twitter.com]

Quote
MisterDDDD
Keith laying down his licks for this..

[twitter.com]

GREAT photo, MisterDDDD. Thanks for sharing!

Quote
rollmops
I listened to all the songs; it's well done but I prefer Bob's originals.
Rockandroll,
Mops

I've only listened to her version of Things Have Changed once, and that was my immediate impression as well.
Still might buy the whole collection, but my enthusiasm and expectations aren't as high as they were when this was originally announced.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

George Harrison did a Q & A with fans over the internet (through Yahoo) and my question got through: What did he think of Bob Dylan getting an Oscar nomination for THINGS HAVE CHANGED? Like a cathexis George said he thought Dylan should win all the awards he could get for the song.

Album's up on YouTube - [www.youtube.com]

"Political World" - [www.youtube.com]

"Really wonderful to work with Bettye. Love the tracks #ThingsHaveChanged"



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