Betty LaVette

Vocalist extraordinaire.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome back to the Bob Leftstitch podcast. I guess today
is one and only Betty. Looked at Betty, what would
look like growing up in Detroit of the fifties.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I didn't necessarily grow up in Detroit. Grew up in
show business, so it was like when I was young
in Detroit, I was in show business. My granddaughter right
now is doing a documentary they're putting together for the
area that I grew up in Detroit, on the North End.

(00:39):
It's being declared historical this year. The North End is
where blacks moved from what was called Black Bottom. Sarah Vaughan,
Willie John, one of the Temptations, Smokey Robinson lived across
the alley from man Orrita lived across the street from him.

(01:01):
One of the biggest black stars of the early forties,
early fifties and mid fifties, Sugar shild Robinson, lived on
the next block from me. So it's quite a historical area.
Jackie Wilson del Reese. So I didn't know those people

(01:22):
until I started to sing, and the first time that
I went on stage was the first time I'd ever
seen the stage.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Let's go back, So what did your parents do for
a living.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well, everybody's parents worked for General Motors, and so Chrisler's
I'm a General Motors baby.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Which company? Did your father work for?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
General Motors? Everybody in my family worked for General Motors,
And it was almost like a Clannish or Cripson Bloods
kind of thing. It's like everybody's family worked at the
place because you could get your relative job if you
work there. So most of my family worked at all

(02:08):
of the General Motors companies and the part plants from
Canada to Muskegon, Michigan, where they made parts, which is
where my parents came to from Louisiana.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Tell me about your parents leaving Louisiana come into Muskegan.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Well, that's where I was born. And in nineteen forty six,
certainly if you were black, you could not drop in
on the bar after work and have a drink. You
had to come to my house and my parents sol
corn liquor. We had a jukebox in the living room,
which is how I learned all of my songs until

(02:50):
I was three, So my repertoire consisted of the songs
that were on the jukebox until I was three, and
I had developed my own.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Do you remember what songs from the jukebox.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, not all of them, but a song that I
do on my show even now, a song a woman
whose name was Annie Laurie, and it was called it
Hurts to Be in Love. And I could when I
tell the audience when I do it now. They used
to stand me on top of the jukebox and I
would sing the song, and I had on just a

(03:26):
little T shirt and my diaper, and I would roll
my stomach all the way down in time with the
music and all the way back. And I always tell
them I won't be doing that this evening, but that
is what I did. But there were I had a
teenage sister. She was thirteen years old, and when I

(03:49):
was born, and so all the current popular music was
on the jukebox, which she liked, which was Little Lester
and BB King and Chuck Willis and I've Hunter and
all those people. And then my father liked the gospel
so and blues, so there was all the blues songs.

(04:11):
And then my mother liked almost anything that white people sung.
She liked Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, gin Ow Tree,
read Foley, and I knew the words to all of
these people's songs. I didn't know they were different. I
just thought they were all songs. And of course, not
being able to go anywhere to drink other than my house.

(04:35):
In nineteen forty six, forty seven, and forty eight, all
of the five Blind Boys, the Soul Stirs, the Pilgrim
Travelers all came to my house to eat barbecue sandwiches
and fried chicken sandwiches and get drunk and sing it.
They rehearsed there and I heard them. I saw Sam

(04:56):
Cook the first week he was with the Soul Stirs
because they had a gig and Muskegon and they came
to my house see eat and drink.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
How did your parents meet?

Speaker 2 (05:09):
How did they meet?

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (05:11):
My father was working in Plain dealing, Louisiana, which is
where he's from, and one of the guys he was
working with knew my sister, my mother, who had five sisters.
And the women that like these guys who worked on
the railroad were they would come and bring them lunches

(05:35):
every day. You know, if you liked one, and if
you were hitting on one, that's how you introduced yourself.
You would come and bring in but lunch, and that's
how they met. I know, my aunt told me that
when my mother came and got off the train, she
had been talking about how fretty my mother was, and
it was so funny. My aunt said, she said, she

(05:58):
is pretty pretty, and my daddy certainly saw so.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Okay, tell me about the corn liquor business.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Well, that, of course, you know, was prevalent in the South.
It created the stock car races and everything several other things.
But all the people who in my family and cousins
and whatever, who moved to Michigan, they brought the corn

(06:31):
liquor with them, and they knew each other so they
could buy it from They didn't have to take a
chance of trying to go into a liquor store and
buy something. They all came to my house, so one
of my cousin's houses in Muskegon, it was. We were
in the projects that were built for the returning soldiers

(06:55):
in forty five and forty six. Then they turned them
into public projects and that's where we lived. And you
that's almost like living in a huge apartment building, except
it was all on the same level, so you could
go right up your back door into somebody else's front door,
you know, and they all they work together every day

(07:17):
at the parts plants, and you could run a tab,
and the half pintes cost fifty cents, and a pine
cost a dollar, and you could run a tab all
that week. If you didn't have a family or a wife,
you could comment. My mother had barbecue and fried chicken
and fried fish, and so it was. That was the

(07:41):
environment I actually grew up here.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Okay, are you a good cook? Can you cook barbecue
and fried fish?

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Oh? That's what my career has been so up and down.
You us, I learned to cook. You have to cook
if you around my mother and the people I grew
up with, you have to learn that, they say, all
like women know how to at least fried chicken, fry fish.
But I learned a lot of the others. And then

(08:10):
when I started to travel, I started to learn what
I was having an opportunity to eat. So now we cook.
I cook everything, and Kevin Nass quite an entertainment with
eating because I can cook almost anything.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
Okay, it sounds like your father had a big personality
that everybody gathered at your house. Was that the case?

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, Well, my mother had the big personality. Ah, she
had the food food. My father just wanted another drink.
But of course they all knew each other. As I said,
they worked on the line together. They saw each other
all day every day. And the ones that came from
Louisiana drunk or sober, went to Mass on Sunday, just

(08:58):
the way they do a New orleance. I always tell
the joke that in New Orleans and then mouskeige, and
you know how when the priest the minister said something
and then the whole congregation answers in some kind of
singing response, the whole church smells like alcohol for the

(09:20):
for the first one and then it melts.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Okay, growing up, I didn't know anybody who had a
jukebox in their house. That seemed pretty exotic to me.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Well, we actually brought it to Detroit with us, well,
not brought it to Detroit with us. We got in
line with another jukebox company. So we did for a
while have a juke box in our house in Detroit,
but then we became more sophisticated and had a record player.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Okay, So what was responsible for your family moving from
a squie into Detroit.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Well, my father his brother worked at General Motors proper
as they called it in Pontiac, and he got him
a job there, and so we moved to Pontiac.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Okay, you're singing it three years old, you're a star,
your role of your stomach? What happens when you turned four?

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Robert, I was not. I didn't never come a star
rolling my stomach. Well, I was a start at projects.
But we were in Detroit by the time I was four.
We left Detroit when I was maybe like, I mean,
left Muskegan when I was like maybe three and a
half and came to Pontiac, where we lived for about

(10:44):
a year or so, and then we moved to Detroit.
And I pretty much was always different from everybody else
their children. I never had a desire, first of all,
to be a child, so that made me a pretty
difficult child and a pretty different child. It wasn't that

(11:07):
I was bad, as they say children are bad. I
just wanted to do with grown people and that was
the way I acted.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Okay, And what was school like?

Speaker 2 (11:22):
I really was never scholastic. I did not. We just
believe it or not, had our fifth grade reunion and
all the people that I was in the fifth grade
with were there, and it was so funny because I
was voted most likely not to succeed at at all.

(11:45):
So for me to walk into the room and have
everybody say that he Joe asked, because I can't believe
your Betty loved did you finish high school? No, that
was really I really just didn't want to do what

(12:05):
they were doing at all, And then I didn't want
to meet them every morning. At the same time, I
wasn't interested in anything that they were saying. If Mother
and Nessa had known I was gonna love history the
way I do now, she would have just given me
the A and said she's gonna get better. But I'm

(12:30):
or the person now that Mother and Nesta would have
wanted me to be.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Okay, so tell me where you start singing after you
moved to a Pontiac in Detroit.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Well, but Pontiac's still just a little girl who didn't
go anywhere by herself Detroit up until I was like,
out this place. I'm telling you that my granddaughter is
doing the research on the North End. When we moved there,
I guess I was maybe seven, and so it was like,

(13:08):
did you know that Liverpool A John that's right up
the street, And did you know that Jackie Wilson. So
I knew these people's records, but I never saw them.
I just heard their names and I knew they were there.
So then we moved farther up the north end, and
I was in like the fifth grade, and did you

(13:28):
know Smoky Robinson lived across the alley from even whatever,
and they were more real to me then. Before that,
I had never seen people in person who sung, and
I had never seen a show. When I went on
the stage in nineteen sixty three with my man, I

(13:48):
had never seen a microphone, and I had never been
on a stage. I had never been to a night club,
had never I was invented out of all cloth right
there in one weekend.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
Tell me about your singing career from age three, where
you're singing along with the jukebox to then ultimately getting
on the stage for the first time. What is going on?

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Nothing but going to school being what they call bad
and being difficult because all I did was kind of
listen to music, and I did come. I found the
homework not difficult to do, so I did it, but
I didn't go all still. All I had was the jukebox.

(14:38):
My parents didn't go out to dinner or go to
hear people sing they came to our house, so they
were on the jukebox. So I'd never seen anybody walk
up on the stage or or anything like that until
that weekend that I started singing. I met. I wasn't

(15:00):
supposed to go, but there was a place called the
Greystone all Woman Detroit, which is where everyone you've ever
heard of from Detroit had to go and do performances
for the DJs to get your recording played. And I
heard about it on the radio every day. The DJs
were pushing it, and so I just went and I

(15:25):
met this girl whose name was Ginger and her full
name was Sure. Her middle name was Lovette, and she
knew every number man singer. I loved her. I just
adore her. My mother hated her, but Ginger kind of

(15:49):
took me under her wing, and I went to Graystone
for about two months, and I met Timmy Shaw, who
introduced me to Johnny May Matthews, who recorded My Man
on Me. And I swear to you all of this
happened in a month.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Okay, just going back, were you singing in school? Were
you singing at church? Were you singing in the living room?
Before this?

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Everywhere that I ever sung in school. They let me sing.
They let me in the talent show once, but I
sung I'm a Hog for you baby, and Mother Nesta
put me out of the talent show. They put me
in the Christmas show once, and then I said the
wrong thing to marry because I wanted to play Mary.

(16:41):
And then they put me in the choir and I
wouldn't stop hanging with the boys in their area. So
I got put out of all the singing things that
I ever did in school. But now I'm a Hog
for you baby was good.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
You go to the ballroom. How do you ultimately decide
to take the stage.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
I wanted to sing, but as I told you, I
never knew people who could sing. I just knew the
ones in the jukebox and then the ones that saw
on television. So then hearing about these people on the radio,
they were advertising them being at this place every weekend.
And so when I went and Ginger introduced me to

(17:28):
Timmy Shaw, well, first I met I was in the hospital, actually,
and I met a singer who came to see the
girl in the bed next to me. But she went
to have some X rays and he came to see
her and she wasn't there. So I talked to him

(17:51):
because it was eleven o'clock in the morning, and he
on a black mohair suit, sleep my care and some
pat leather shoes, and I was instantly in love. And
it was Willie Jones, who sung with the Royal Jokers,

(18:11):
and I'm like a real entertainer that I right here.
So he and I. I was sixteen, he was twenty four,
twenty five, but I was really I'm still precocious. I

(18:32):
don't think you're gonna apply that to an adult at
this point. But I met him and he wrote a
song for me. He was singing, and I said I
can sing, and he said that heres. So I started
to sing along with him one night when we were out.
And the reason I was able to go out with

(18:54):
him was because I had had a child, and usually
in the at point, if you had a child, you
were considered glowing. So I was able to go out
then after nine or ten o'clock or whatever. And when
I met him, he took me to see the Old
Jokers perform, and I knew someone then who was actually

(19:17):
on the stage singing, and he wrote this song for me,
and then he disappeared. I didn't know that he was
later white disappeared. But anyway, when I met Timmy and
he took me to meet Johnny May, I said, well,
I have a song. I said, A man wrote it
for me. His name is Willie Jones. She said Willie

(19:40):
Jones were old jokers. I said, yes, that's him, and
she said, let me hear it. So I sung the
something and the song was about a teenage girl. It
was called shut your mouth and don't talk back, and
it was about a teenage girl who had stayed out
later and she was supposed to and her mama met
her at the door in the whole bit, and she said,

(20:02):
it's a great song. And I sung it and and
she introduced me to my Man, which I sung and recorded,
and that was supposed to be the B side. But
when the DJ's her recording, which came out that week
after I recorded it, because they were playing demos and

(20:24):
you could get you could tell from how many the
response you got from the demos, how many initial records
you should have pressed up. People didn't just send it
to get thousands of records pressed so so the records
seemed to indicate. The response seemed to indicate that my
Man was what they wanted to play it, and what

(20:45):
they did play and put went into the national R
and B charts and cash box and billboard. All of
this happened, this started, in all this, This was only
like the end of September.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Okay, going back, You'd never been on stage before, you'd
never been in front of a microphone. You go to
the ballroom a few times. How do you end up
on stage.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
When the record came out?

Speaker 1 (21:22):
No? Wait, wait, weren't you on stage before the record
came out?

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Nope? I just knew that people then who are on
the stage. And when I recorded, gosh, you have the
recording studio, I was sixteen and the guitar player who's
playing the lead lick in my man, Leroy Manuel, was fifteen,

(21:49):
and they had stuck him out of his bedroom to
do the recording session. He's a really big person in
Canada now, and I just I'm so proud of him.
But he and I were just kids there. But the
people who were on the recording were grown recording artists

(22:10):
make grown musicians and whatever. And Johnny May was singing
in my ear and telling me how to sing the song.
And then they pressed up some them o's so that
next weekend, I had to go and do a record hop.
But we had at that time a new place which
was having you sing your songs with the band live,

(22:34):
and I had only done that the week before one
time when I recorded, so they called my name. I
went up on the stage and it said out it off,
and I said.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
And then okay.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
But wait a minute. Marvin Kate had at stubborn kind
of fell out, thick or chick, whatever it was, came
out the same day. He's sitting there stage, just kind
of a step up, and so he's sitting next to
it and he counts off, and I didn't know how
to make the man start playing.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
So okay. Do you think from a young age you
were desperate to be a famous singer? Did you have
that desire or just have the desire to get out
of the house or be famous or make money? What
was in your mind?

Speaker 2 (23:37):
I didn't know that I could be a famous singer.
I didn't know any famous singers. It was only after
we got to each White and I knew about Smoking
Poppinson and these other people. I didn't know. I just
anybody could do it. I thought these people were special
people somehow that I didn't know anyone who and I

(24:01):
never nobody in my family knew anyone who sung, so I,
you know, than the gospel people, and I didn't want
to sing in church, and so no, I. After I
knew them, then all of my thoughts this started if
like maybe the sixth grade. Then all of my thoughts
were strictly I want to be a singer, and then

(24:26):
after a while, I want to be a star. But
you're Smoky Robinson lived across the alley from me. He
wasn't a star, so he was just a finger. But
I liked the way they were doing it. I like
the way they lived, and I loved shiny suits and
the shiny hair and the shiny ear rings, and I
wanted to sing. So then after I got into it,

(24:50):
the next two weeks, I wanted to be a star.
And then oh god, after that, I wanted to be rich.
So it came in increments.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Okay, the record is ultimately distributed by Atlantic Records. Did
you have any contact with anybody Atlantic Records?

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yes, Robert West and Johnny Mae Matthews, because Johnny Maye
Matthews was one of the only producers in Detroit at
the time who had Big Contacts, which was at Atlantic.
I have no idea how that happened. Well, it was
because of the Falcons. He had the Falcons and they
had just had a big record, and Robert West knew

(25:37):
Jerry Wexler and I'm ed Hurdigain, and so when Atlantic
bought my man, I had the opportunity to talk with
them on the phone. And Jerry Wexler and I remained
friends for most of my early career. I used to

(25:59):
call him on the phone at home in the middle
of the night and say, mister Weckster, would you send
me fifty dollars, which was a big deal. Hey, she
can pick up the phone and call New York and
give fifty dollars at Western Union and a snap. So
I had I had the attitude that I've maintained since then.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Okay, your record is successful and you go on the road.
Tell me about that.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
It was. Remember now this is this is weeks old.
So I'm theoretically still my friend Ginger, who is a groofie.
Every time Clyde makes Fatter opened his dressing room door,
I was standing there. Every time any can over this
dressing room door, I was standing here. Barbara Lynne was

(27:00):
with her, so she had to act nice.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
But I was grown.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
I was just about seventeen, and I had a record.
I knew all these stars, and I was just doing
what I wanted to do. But that was the most
exciting thing. The very first tour I ever went on
was well, the very first one was kind of a

(27:27):
regional because Robert West was partners with Herman Griffin, who
was Mary Wells's husband at the time, and Robert West
was my manager, so he put a little tour together
and on that little tour was Mary Wells mac Rice

(27:47):
who had just left the Falcons and wrote Mustang Sally
and that's what he was singing and me and I
think that was it. I think that was it on
but we didn't go We just went like maybe three
or four places. Then I came back a full fledged

(28:09):
star of course by this time that month and the
Victual with Clide Macpatter and Benny King, Clarence frog Manning,
Henry Barbara Lynne. The band was.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
The the Royal Jokers, not the Royal Jokers, the Five
Royals band who was the leader of the fire Rolls.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
It was their ban anyway, El Pauling, it was the
El Pauling band. So like Robert, I gotta tell you
twenty years later, when I was madly in love with
Clarence Paul, I told him. I said, on my first tour,
I was on the opens band called an orchestra called

(29:02):
Oh Paul, and he said, that's my brother.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
I was like, Okay, how many days? How long does
this tour last? This big doer, and how far from
Detroit do you go?

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Oh gosh. We went from the trua audience that was
the Chitland Circuit. We did the entire Chipland circuit. Everything
that the children Circuit consisted of then is where we
went north and south Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee cities in those

(29:39):
places as well, maybe three cities in some places Alabama.
As you got west, the Chidland Circuit didn't go that
like when you started Arkansas. You were going west, and
it went that way for some people. Now when we
came back north looped around to come back and end

(30:04):
in Ohio, People like clib mcfatter, Benny King, Clarence frog Man,
Henry went on north to do places that at that
point weren't doing rhythm and blues. You know, it had
to have crossed over like the Drifters and Climac Flatter did,

(30:25):
and like uh frog man Henry had done. Barbara Lynn
and I turned around and came home. The rest of
them went north.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Okay, what kind of venues were you playing on this tour?

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Mostly halls? We went to north in South Carolina. They
were having the first dancers with their rope in between
the audience. And I always tell people, now, that's one
of the ways that I learned to cover the whole stage.
Because the promoter was saying, please don't look at one

(30:59):
one up on one side of the rope more than others.
Please try to go back and forth. And they were pleading,
please don't stay on one side of the rope. So
I had to keep going back and forth across the stage.
And so no, I just do that naturally, which is
a good thing.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Okay, you're traveling, what kind of bus? What kind of
rooms are you staying in?

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Oh, we were saying in only black places along the highway.
We were peeing along the highway a lot, and going
to places that they may have. If they had a
restroom inside, we couldn't use them. But if they were
nice and kind people, they had an outdoor restroom we
could use. It was quite everything that you've heard and read.

(31:50):
I know when we went to Mississippi, my mother was
who was from Louisiana, was just terrified. She said, you
keep your big mouth closed and don't be looking those
white books in their face. I mean, she was very
serious because she knew I would talk to anyone, and
she felt that I may step out of my place.

(32:12):
And she was so nervous so whole while we were there.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
Okay, you know you hear about going on the road.
You're seventeen years old. They're drugs, alcohol, sex, as grown
up as you are at the time. Do you grow
up a lot more?

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Oh? Absolutely. I always tell people there are no children
in show business. I don't care how cute they are.
I don't care if their parents up with them. I
don't care if they're Osmas and their moorings. There are
no children in show business. And it's probably even worse today.

(32:55):
But no, that's no, there are no children in show business.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
So you come off the road. Clyde McPhatter continues, But
you're now back in Detroit. What happens then?

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Nothing? So all my friends told me you should go
to New York and tell those people you want your
contract back because they should make another record for you.
So I went to New York and I erst in
the Cherry Wexell's office. I said, I want to release

(33:29):
from my contract. And he said, well why because I
told you I've been talking to this man on the
phone at his home in the bedroom and and I said,
my friends told me that you should have put another
record out on it by now, like I know. He said, well,

(33:54):
maybe we intended to do another record. I said, well,
I need a record now. It's been so many months
and I didn't even know how many. It's the most
stupid thing Robert I ever did in my entire career.
He said that we have we're working with this young
and who was working with a new singer, Dion Warwick Kenny.

(34:18):
He's working at what was the name of the record label, Scepter.
He said, he's working with Scepter. And he said, but
we're working with him too, and his name is were Back,
and uh, we're gonna have to we're gonna talk to
him about you. I ain't never heard of him. I

(34:40):
don't care. My friend said, I have to get a
release from this contract. So Jerry said here's one dude,
I'm gonna write to this check of my own personal
check for five hundred dollars. I'm gonna give you a
big ug. You go on and do it, do what

(35:01):
you think should be done. The most stupid mistake I
have ever made in my entire life. You know what?
That left road open for No who was the next biggarist?
He surprank. But I'm there with the president in love

(35:25):
with me. I mean not that kind of love, but
in love with me because she just thought I was
so cute and that I sung like a grown woman.
And so No, I got this shit all under my belt.
Now my friends and I know lots of people in
show business. Now, now you have to think the reason

(35:47):
they were available for me to talk to was because
they weren't doing shit. So they were telling me what
to do, and I left them. I have no idea
where I was going or I really just at that point, Robert,
I thought that I thought that it was they would say,

(36:11):
oh my goodness, she's cute and she had this record,
let's make another record with her. And I thought all
the record companies with me saying that, and then I
didn't call, So.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
So what happened next, uh something.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
That's when I say now in interviews, I'm grateful, but
I'm still pissed. But I'm really grateful because I've never
spent a dime in this business. Not of course, someone
has always called and asked to record me. So after that,

(36:54):
my the accountant at Shaw artist who was the booking
agent for all black artists, then left. They unless they
got big enough to be that King Cole or that
was the barrier that you tried to cross at that
point to give where that King Cole was? If that
not that you were with Shaw Artists Corporation and they

(37:17):
booked everybody, and they booked me. They worked all of
the Atlantic artists and the accountant because I was always
calling to borrow money, so he and I became very
close and he started to manage me. Then I introduced
him to the Falcons, who Robert Weston died and left

(37:40):
them as well, and so he started to manage me
and the Falcons, and I that because I stayed in
New York after I did come without being asked, are
we're still young people? Now? First, don't get in show
business first, but then if you do, don't go to

(38:02):
New York or LA unless they send for you. So
I've been kicked out of both New York and LA
but New York five times, but I you know, somebody
called Cali call that did it's uneasy and each one

(38:25):
of the times it's was my friends, the manager from
the accountant from Shaw. Then he made a woman out
of me. Leland Archers, Kenny Rogers brother. I went back
to Detroit and recorded for Condition My Condition is In

(38:45):
for Ali McLaughlin and his record label, which took me
back to Atlantic briefly. And after that Leland Archers I
did the show what Condition my Condition is In? And
Leland Rogers heard it. I'd not heard it. I took

(39:07):
it to him when he came to Detroite and he
loved it. And they couldn't poor that they didn't have
WoT the pitts in at the time. And he loved
it though, and he said, my brother is starting a
new record label in Nashville, and he said, I think
he was, So he sent it to him and Leland

(39:29):
called me. He said, I know you don't remember me,
but I was your national promotion man for left me
down easy. So my career has been just like that
all the way up till now. It's been just like
that I met you when this. Now I own this.

(39:49):
I want to do this for you. I remember when
we It's everything. It's never been a normal, straight ahead
kind of flop over hit.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Okay, what was your state of mind during all this?
Did you think things were going to work out? Or
would you think you know that the phone was gonna ring?
Or do you think it was over?

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Well, every time it ended, I thought it was over.
But here, get up, I said. The phone always rang,
somebody always called, and it's still kind of that way,
except that I'm kind of sick of that now. I'm
sick of it dying and then me wondering if somebody

(40:42):
is going to call or what's going to happen. And
everybody is called. Every time the phone is wronging, it's
been somebody is something with before and that makes me
feel good, though to note that anybody it's just like
when I left it not I can still call Jerry

(41:04):
Wexler and say send me fifty dollars. I can still
call any producer I've ever had that is still living
on the phone today and say send me fifty dollars. Well,
I'm glad. I don't have to. But I've just never
been a great record seller. If everyone that has hurt me,

(41:29):
that likes me can see me, and that hasn't happened.
Anytime I've been seen, it's been fine. But I don't
know right now. When you say I think it's over,
it's always over, because that's the way it seems to me.
But so I don't know what's gonna happen now. I

(41:50):
don't know. I want. I'm pissed at this point because
I shouldn't don't know what's going to happen at a
even even only paid twenty dollars, I shouldn't know what's
gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Well, but you have a band and you play live dates.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yes, yes, but it at this point, Robert, I had
thought that I would I call it a Ray Charles
my career. I have no desire to be Beyonce, but
I have a raging desire to be Ray Charles. I

(42:33):
met that lifestyle. I want to go fill an auditorium
and sing for two hours, them pay a large speed,
and then I do another one next week, all over
the world.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Okay, okay, what's the most important part here? The work
or getting paid or being known. When you say Ray Charles' career,
tell me a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
I had always thought that I would die broke and unknown,
and now I know I'm just gonna die broke.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
Okay, when you go on the road with your band,
that's not profitable.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
Not really. I hire the best musicians available. Now, when
I was able to have a band, I've been fortunate
enough in this fifth career I call it, which has
been going on for the last twenty years, and I
am extremely grateful for it. Well, twenty five years now,

(43:41):
I was able to have the same band that I
went into this fifth career from Detroit, and they were
with me for twenty years. But naturally, going all over
the world with me, everybody was looking at them. So
one went to this star, one went to that star.
And because we weren't a band, maybe they would have

(44:05):
felt compelled to be if we were a band. But
I'm not in a band. I have a man, and
in that I am unanimous. So that always causes a problem.
And I certainly can't anybody who's been in my band
who is left to go to be with someone bigger.

(44:25):
I can't say anything because I'm they're not. I'm not
in a band with them. They're my band, and that's
the way I wanted. That's the way Gambulist told me
to always keep it, and that's the way I've kept it.
So I probable I'm going to do some things now,
just some duos. Those will be profitable because they will

(44:48):
to be just and my new company at the end.
Stat Wick and he is very, very good and we're
kind of kind in spirits. Although he's younger than me,
although everybody is. But uh that I'm looking forward to you.
When I do the duet things, I sit and do

(45:10):
pretty much what you and I are doing now. I
tell stories about my career about other people that I know.
I lie on me and everybody and whatever. It's more
telling you, But it sounds like that. It's because so
much of it is so amazing.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
You talk about your fifth career. During that time, the
business has changed dramatically.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Atlantic you know was an independent company then owned by
Warner et cetera. So today although there are three major labels,
everybody's in their own business. You know, you could talk
you can talk beyond Sy you can talk Taylor Swift,
And there are plenty of people who don't know the music,
they might know the name, whereas when you were coming up,

(45:58):
when I was coming up, if if it was a
hit on the radio, literally everybody knew yes, yes, okay.
So the game has changed a little bit. So you
had this incredible recognition at the Kennedy Center Honors. First,

(46:18):
how did that come to be?

Speaker 2 (46:24):
But you know Kevin right, well, you know Kevin better.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Than you do me, right, that's your For those who
don't know.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
He knows everything everyone who has ever stepped up to
a microphone. And it really annoys me because he knows
more black people than I do. But anyway, he called
the Kennedy Center Honors and he said, my wife is
Petty Covett. They were honoring George Jones, and he said

(46:53):
she's as a new recording choices by George soon and
he sent it to them and they loved it. And
Michael Stevens, who is the producers that Ken honors, who
was the son of the movie producer George Stevens, he
loved it. He said, so many people are coming from

(47:15):
Nashville to honor George Jones. He said, we just don't
have anything else. Another song. They said, well, we do
have songs. One song by the Hoop and I said
the what of course my husband knew it and he

(47:39):
played it for me and I said, yeah, but I
learned the song and I met the music director Rob Mathis,
talked to him on the phone, told him and I

(48:00):
wanted to do well. Got a key really is mostly
what we did. So when we got there for the
sound check or the rehearsal sound check, I called he
and Michael's side and I said, I can sing the song,
but I can't sing it like that and they said,

(48:22):
like what I said, like it goes. So he said, well,
can you sing it to me Rob Matthitts, the music director,
I said, I can sing it to you fuck a
ball and you can just kind of pick up when
following because I knew how I wanted to sing it.

(48:43):
And I sung it to him and he told the
man he said, we're going to take an our break
and come back, and he went and sat down and
bote that arrangement for me in that hour and it
just went flawlessly. I was nervouses, I don't know what,

(49:04):
but it just went flawlessly. And when I walked out
into the stage, Robert it was looking at the stage
put the stage put to your audience in your mind.
When I looked out fourth row, Aretha Franklin was sitting

(49:26):
about halfway the audience. Over from her, like Beyonce. Up
in the balcony was The Who and Pete Townshend, and
next to them was Barbara Streisson. So see see where
you can see this, because it really happened like this.

(49:50):
I walked out there, I started singing, and after I
got settled into the song, Aretha's mouth said I thought
she was here. Then it was Beyonce Who.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Wait, you're mouthing the words from I know, but but
but you can say for my audience, what example I'm.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Telling you after because I want you to see what
I was saying. Okay, So I'm looking at them. I
couldn't hear them either, but okay. Then I look up
in the balcony and Barbara Streisen is looking at She
pulls Pete Townsend over. She says, did you write that?

(50:41):
And he was looking at her, perplexed with tears in
his eyes. And I call it my three Stooges slap.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
It was just a.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
I've never felt so good in my entire career. And
it went fabulously well and of course, Michael Stevens, the
music director, became a producer and did that out here. Again,
I didn't go to the studio. I didn't do anything.

(51:16):
He produced an album on me. The interpretations out that
one caused something else to happen. But I've not.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Wait wait, wait a little bit slower. Okay, you have
your experience on stage the Kenny Center Kenny Center Honors.
Certainly prior to the final version we had last year
was during Christmas. The ratings were unbelievable. Everybody saw you

(51:46):
and you were the star of the show. Everybody knew
so other than the moment and then making another label,
did it change your life in any way where people
coming out of we want an interview, We want to
do this. When you walk down the street, did someone recognize?
Did it change your life?

Speaker 2 (52:07):
That is why this is my fifth career, because every
time it happened, it changed my life. In other words,
the sugar always turned to shit, and I've seen more

(52:27):
of that than most people have. I even think that
things that's happened so instantaneously. Now, if this fifth career
had happened right now, it may have had more stick
to itiveness. But every when my man came out. It

(52:49):
was in the charts on a major record label. I've
been singing one month when let Me Down Easy it
came out. I was on the labels that was owned
by the mafia. I could do anything I asked for.
I wanted to be on Shindig and was. I went

(53:10):
everywhere I showed with James Brown. Then the next time,
every time it happened, it was the biggest life changing
thing that had happened to me. Yes, it changed my life.
When the thing you're talking about after that, it called

(53:33):
something else to happen.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Okay, just do a little fill in for a second.
How did you end up on Broadway?

Speaker 2 (53:45):
My manager Jim Lewis, who told me early on during
that period between coming back from New York and having
a lot of local regional records that I did not
pay for, but he had me learning songs like God

(54:08):
Bless the Child and Sweet Georgia Brown and it Don't
Be a Thing. And my band and I, who is sixteen,
seventeen and eighteen and I was twenty three, we were
like because we were rehearsing sin Family Stone and whatever

(54:30):
it was hot at the time. So he made us
learn these songs. Though and made us work with the
biggest or the stud air at the time, Jimmy Wilkins
and he was the biggest man at the Detroit Musicians
Union Local five, and Jim Lewis. So we were thrown
into this sing We did all the big gigs. We

(54:52):
sung at the mirrors and arc roll ball, we did everything.
So when they called me, Vivian Meade was being replaced.
The problem was Vivian Red created and won the Tony
for the lead role in Bubbling Brown Sugar. They called

(55:15):
me in they knew who I was. Debbie Allen, husband
had been our bass player when I came to New
York the first time fifteen years before that, and told
her to tell them to call me. So if the

(55:39):
irony of my career it has just been like I
was saying with Leland Rogers being Kenny Roger's brother, and
that same thing happened again. So Debbie had them called
me because Debbie could dance the role, but she couldn't
sing it, and I couldn't dance. I could sing it,
and that was most important part. So when the producer

(56:03):
called me, he said can you dance? I said, of
course I can dance. Some black and he said, well,
whatever he's say, can you tap dance? I said no.
He said, well look at it this way, you learn
the other dances. It's just another dance you're learning if

(56:24):
you can dance. So I went to the audition Jim Lewis,
who had taught me all these songs and had every
faith in me. He wasn't even thinking about dancer. He
was thinking, get her an understory and let her dance.
He was so thrilled that I was going to be
singing these songs that came out of the era. He

(56:47):
came from the Duke Kellington Jimmy Lunsword era, and he
had taught me all these songs. I never had a
call for these songs, which is why I didn't want
to learn them. But I had learned them. I went
up on this stage and a sun God child, I
had sung Speech Brown. They hired me that day. I

(57:08):
had to go to rehearsal the next morning. It took
three weeks for my clothes to catch up with me
because I went on tour that week. When they left
New York and Honey Coles was telling that directory, he said,
she's not a dancer, she's a singer. He said, don't

(57:31):
count to her, sing to her say ba a bute
bute bout as opposed to one and two and one
and two. And I didn't know one and two and
three went so honey, Coloes put his arm around me
and sung it to me and talked to me those
few steps that I had to do to get on

(57:54):
the stage at the end of that week, the first
time I had ever been in a show or on
a Broadway stage of my life. I did that. And
the next morning I got up and went to rehearsal,
and he taught me, and I did that all day,

(58:18):
and I did that that night. Then the next morning
I got off. And when I learned how to do
the book and win, every day I went to rehearsal.
My feet. I had never used all the muscles in
my feet like that. I danced all night. You know
how to dance, but I had never done that. Most

(58:41):
professional dancing is down on you. The balls of your feet,
the balls of my feet, if you touched them with
your finger, I would screamed. They were so sore. And
I got through that week. Then I got through the
next week, and the songs I was stopped in the show.
You know songs, So that was keeping the producer police

(59:04):
and they just had to teach me to dance, and
that to two weeks, and that's how I wound up
in the show.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
You're right, but you stayed with the show a long time, right.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
Yeah, because each show the closest like that was getting
ready to be the Broadway show, which was gonna stay there.
After the original stars left and went to Europe on
a Europe show, they made a road show as well.
The ones that didn't go to Europe, Honey Coals and

(59:37):
the people that were left with me, we went on
the road here in America, so we did that for
I guess. I did that for a year. Then they
had a bus and truck show. I did that for
six months. Then they had some old show and I

(59:57):
did that. So I did wrote three to times in
three different capacities. They get less and less, you know,
like when you get down the bus and truck, which
is what I did with Cab Caliway. It had gotten
down to where we were all traveling by bus and
all the equipment was being carried and costumes are being
carried by truck. And of course had learned more then

(01:00:20):
with Mabel Lee and with Cab, Caliway and Cab. When
I was doing this show, he disliked all the young
people on the show at first. He got like some
of them a little bitter. But he liked me because
of the ethic that Jim Lewis had given me. I

(01:00:41):
want make up. Every day when we went to the
airport to where I was dressed, and he always had
on an ascot or a tie or whatever. And he said,
that's the way it starts. It's supposed to look when
they when they travel, these chicks and these house shoes,
these rollers in theirs. He would be so mad, but

(01:01:01):
he let me ride with him when we were on
the road in his Lincoln Cottmental and I rode with him,
and then I told my husband, I said, I think
secretly the reason he let me ride with him is
because I would jump out of the car at the
ATM machines and go and put not ATM machines the

(01:01:22):
off track, betting the off track, betting the otb otbs.
I would run and put his bets in for him,
because we bet the whole while we were in New England.
They have in New England they have otv's, So I
would jump out of the car and go and put
his betsend for him. I said that was why he
had me ride with him. He'd have somebody cute who

(01:01:43):
could run and do all things he wanted done. But
I learned so much just in conversation. And since that's
the show business. I got in show business to be
in the one I had seen in movies and on television.

Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
He was it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
And he just told me so many stories and I
love them.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
Okay, when you were in the road show, since you
brought up finances, did you make good money working in
the show?

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
Yes, yes, more money than I had ever made before
because nothing had lasted that consistently before. But I've never
made consider just the way this is like. If I
understand the envy the way it's described, it's wishing that

(01:02:40):
the other person didn't have it and you did. And
I don't feel that way because I'm so glad for
all of certainly all the people I grew up with.
But look at who I grew up with. They're all millionaires,
and I have done the same thing that they don't
gone the same thing, but things have just fallen differently

(01:03:03):
for them than they have for me, And I think
that is what I mean when I say I'm absolutely
thrill and grateful because I had done things that no
one else in my family would ever dreamed of doing.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
But.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Pissed because I haven't got as much money as.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Okay, you're living on the north side of Detroit. You
mentioned all these household names irrelevant of finances. Are those
people your friends at this point? Do you know that
it's the ones who are still alive? Are they you say, Oh,
they're in show business, they used to live in the neighborhood.
I've crossed paths with them once or twice. Or are

(01:03:49):
these people you're friends?

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Oh? No, all of them were. You have to remember
we have a joke that white people think that all
black people know each other. In nineteen sixty two, they
did because they all went to the same church, the
same supermarket. I know all these people personally. The ones
who aren't dead or who have not gone to God,

(01:04:13):
I'm friends with. I was friends with the Tops Attempts,
oh until they died. Of so many of them. If
they aren't dead or having gone to God, I'm still
friends with them.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
Okay, you have this Broadway run in a show that
is touring that doesn't lead to another Broadway role.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
I wouldn't do. I'm not. Everybody think it's because I'm
so animated I can act, But all I can act
like is me. I can't act like my name is
Natasha and I have five children a husband who beats me.
I really think that actors, well, I I like actors
better than I do singers, because I think that that's

(01:05:03):
a either you can saying it's a gift or you've
got some kind of trick or something that you fool people.
But acting is you have to believe the person's name
is Ili May and they kill five people. And I
think acting is hard and I cannot do it. But

(01:05:24):
people think because I'm so animated in my speech and
just natural me that I can do it. I can't
remember all those words and assume a whole other attitude
that isn't me. So when I went to try out
for and then the dancing, I mean the things you
have to do in New York to do these shows.

(01:05:46):
Unless you've been somebody as a lead actor actress, then
they want you to come and read things and dance
and just auditioning itself. I mean, my thing to your
auditioners are can you say my attitude to be in
theater is not good. I do the best I can

(01:06:07):
to be in the recording industry and working nightclubs with
theater I could never do. I've done it once and
that was because they called n.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Okay, let's go back to the Kennedy Center Honors.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Let me call Kevin. Kevin. I did not rearrange it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
You said that you couldn't sing it that way. Do
you need Kevin?

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
No, he's here.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Well, I was just talking to you. But in any event,
how did you come up with the way you wanted
to sing it?

Speaker 2 (01:06:50):
That is so amazing to me. You don't think it
would be more difficult for me to sing something like
someone else then singing it like me. But the way
people understand it is the wrong way. I don't come

(01:07:13):
up with it. That's the way it sounded to me.
I don't. That was one of the early things with
Jim when he was teaching me all of these Sarah
Faun and Billy They songs. I thought I couldn't sing
them because I knew I couldn't sing them like that.

(01:07:35):
So I thought I was singing them wrong because I
couldn't sing them that way. But Jim said stupid woman.
That's the idea. You're supposed to sing them and sound different.
I said, but they only sound good if you sing
them like that, and he said, no that, no, no, here,

(01:07:58):
let's start all over again. Yeah. It was a long
time before I realized that it was okay for me
to sound different and sing the songs different. I wanted
to sing them like the people who sung them.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
Okay, so you've made albums of rock tunes, you've made
albums of admitting, album of Dylan tunes. You're telling me
there's not a long process of rearranging how you're going
to do it. You just hear the song and then
you do it your way.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Robert, it's the exact same thing that happens in bed. Okay,
you don't. You may have seen a sixth film or whatever,
and let may have given you the initial idea, but
everybody's different in bed. Credit says, Okay, Henry did this

(01:09:01):
just like this, so I'm gonna turn her face around.
Maybe when you were younger, but everybody's different. And singing
being a thing that you aren't taught. Either you can sing,
damn it, or you can't. And I really can't sing.
But I'm able to present the tunes and present my

(01:09:23):
feelings along with them. And my voice doesn't sound awful.
But when you listen to Louis Armstrong, he can make
you cry, he can make you laugh. He doesn't sound beautiful.
But I thought that as a girl, for sure, I
needed to sound a little more nanse elutionist. And it
was years before I accepted that the way I sung

(01:09:47):
was the way I sung.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Okay, you said you had a child at sixteen. Sometimes
I didn't say that I did that well, put was
that a bump in the road, a tragedy or was
that you know this? You know I'm pregnant. I have

(01:10:13):
a baby. That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
Now. It's pretty bad for my people. They always you
always want the guy to do right, and you take
care of the baby. But this thing I'm telling you.
When I met Lee Jones, my daughter was six months old,
and I had my sister, who was thirteen years older
than me, was still there and my mother and they

(01:10:39):
took the baby. They just took the baby. At one point,
I said, I'm leaving and I'm taking my baby. And
I always cry about it when I get drunk. It
was the first time that, the only time I pushed
my sister. She was trying to take the baby. Had
she not taken the baby, they probably wouldn't have even

(01:11:00):
been a baby. But they wanted me. I was the
first person my family make one hundred dollars in one
day in cash money and bring it home. They wanted
me to sing. They said, you all these women in
this house. My grandson now calls all his women, but

(01:11:21):
he's the first boy in one hundred years. But my
mother and my sister wanted me to sing. We've never
had anything or done anything. And people were talking about
me on a radio and recognizing me in a supermarket
and whatever. They didn't say, come home and be a

(01:11:42):
good mother. They said, we got this. You go sing,
and they raised her.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
How many children do you have?

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
What?

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
And be he's it?

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
And how many times you've been married?

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
Only only the times that were necessary? Three times since
it is my third husband.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
But wait, wait, wait wait wait now you sometimes didn't No,
I want to know what you meant, but you said
only when necessary?

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
What is that? Like? I just uh you? You you
tend to punk out in this business an awful lot,
and you just want somebody to share a misery with you. Uh,
so I married one time for that, and I married
one time because after I was pregnant at sixteen, they
said you're supposed to get married, and so we did,

(01:12:41):
and we're together for gosh, the whole six months, I
believe it was. But we stayed friends until he died.
He actually worked on Kevin's car. He's a mechanic. He
actually worked on Kevin's car when Kevin came to detit
after I met him and my ex husband was a

(01:13:02):
manager for the Hired hotels, and Kevin actually went with
me to his funeral. Every man, every producer that I
have ever been, anybody I've ever been involved with, unless
I stopped speaking to them, I can pick up the

(01:13:23):
phone and call them right now.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
How did you meet Kevin?

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
Kevin sent me an email after I've been online for
maybe two weeks or weeks, and he said, my name
is Kevin Kylie. I've been a fan of yours for
eleven years and I found out that you were heading
letting Black record you, and I one suggest that you

(01:14:00):
don't do that. It's been years since you've been several
years since you've had a record of any note, and
everybody he's recorded, it's been bad, and I don't want
you to do that. So I sent him a message back,
one of the first messages I ever because at first

(01:14:24):
I thought if I touched these keys, I'm gonna blow
up mere I say, someone from push the wrong ones.
But I said, who the fuck are you if you
don't have any money to take me in the studio,
sit down somewhere and shut off. And then after Ali

(01:14:45):
sent me one back and he said, I'm an antique
glass dealer and I will be doing a show in Leshroit.
I would like to take you out to dinner and
apologize whatever we were having. And he did, and he

(01:15:06):
took me out to dinner, and then I took him
to all the places in our own and that worked well.
They frightening. I always have if I have one white
person to my own, I always liked to take them
into the belly of the music that they say they
love so much. So that was what I did Kevin,

(01:15:27):
and he loved it, and he came back to do
another show. Then he came back to do another show.
Then it came back and he brought this with him.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
And which was a ring were audio only.

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
Oh I'm sorry, and he asked me and am. Actually
I was in the middle of a rehearsal with the
band that was going to be this fifth career band,
with a record that at the time the record company
owner had disappeared. We could not find him, and we

(01:16:05):
were just going to go forward and put the record
out and do the songs. So Kevin came into all
of that and helped me a lot with all of that,
but we thought that it was the best record at
that point that I had ever recorded. And in the
owner of record company just dispute.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
That show business.

Speaker 2 (01:16:30):
Tell me about it, baby, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
You talk about this parapatetic career ups and downs?

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):
What how did tarapathetic mean?

Speaker 1 (01:16:40):
Well, let's leave that for another thing. That's sort of
like a hollowns whatever. How did you survive.

Speaker 2 (01:16:50):
Well as somebody? If somebody was always willing to spend
thousands of dollars to record me, then other people like
I believe it's a line in Streetcar named desire, and
girlfriend says, I've always depended upon the kindness of strangers,

(01:17:12):
and I've never met a stranger who didn't like me,
and I've never been ashamed to say I need this
whole thing here. Will you help me get it, and.

Speaker 3 (01:17:27):
They have.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
I met. The business itself has been kind in one way,
and then the other people have helped me stay in
the business. But people have the stories, Robert, the things
that I've told you this evening. I mean, if we

(01:17:48):
went through it record by record, you could say it
really it's just been phenomenal. And that makes it so
much more frustrating how all of these people could have
spent all of these millions of dollars on me and
I still can't get it together work. I don't have

(01:18:09):
to hustle. And when I say hustle, I mean have
it doing smaller eggs, or not being able to have
the whole band with me, or like the Rolling Stones,
not being able being able to work when I choose
to work for as long as I choose to work.

(01:18:34):
And I think that is when somebody says you don't
I can't imagine anybody saying you don't deserve that. Nick
and I of the same age. I sing as well
as he does. I've had as many records as he has.
The only thing is mine just didn't sell. Like it's

(01:18:54):
so I just I am extremely grateful, but I'm I'm
just really pissed. At that. But I mean it's like
if you go and get into a crap game. I mean,
everybody at the table doesn't win, and I'm just one
of the ones who did not have that. But as

(01:19:15):
I said, I'm not going to die obscure. I know
that I've done some things that were milestones in this industry.
And I know that my granddaughter and my grandson will
be able to somebody's gonna want to talk to them
about me for all of their lives. Somebody's studying music,

(01:19:38):
somebody's studying black music. So I'm really grateful for all
those things. I thought those things weren't gonna happen, you know.
I thought it like the first of ten years, and
nothing happened from them. Of monument, I thought, I'm going
to die obscure. Nobody's gonna even know I was here.

(01:20:00):
Like the people, many of the singers that Jim played
recordings for that he listened to when he was a
teenager in the thirties, I've never heard of these people before,
and they work forever to get these recordings that I said,
I'm going to be one of them. But thank goodness,

(01:20:21):
enough things have happened to me. Just you I met
the people that know you. So many things have happened
to me.

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):
I know that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
When I get through bugging everybody and die, I know
I'm not going to die. I thought I was just
going to be dead and broke.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
Did you ever have to get a street job?

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
Yeah? I invented one the high schools that I went to,
I had to take my grandchildren to the school every morning.
One of the things that I did while I was
waiting for this fifth career. Right before it, my grandchildren
were going to school. My daughter was working. She's a
Detroit teacher for forty years. She just retired last week.

(01:21:19):
And every morning we'd stand there at the bus stop.
I mean where I had stood at the bus stop
going to Northern High School, and these young ladies were
sitting there, and he's smoking, and if he's sitting on
the little stupid they last gapped open. Well, combed it
boyfriend's hair or picking it out or whatever. So I

(01:21:41):
went and I went to the office. I dropped them
the kids off one morning and I came back to
the school and I said, I went to the school.
I said, my name is Betty. I'm a recording artist.
One of the first time I ever saw was here
at the Northern Gym and whatever. And I said, these
young ladies are sitting out here. They looked horrible. I said,

(01:22:03):
they looked just like I probably would have looked had
show business not saved me. I want to start a
class teaching them they can't cuss, they can smoke, or
I want to teach them how whole cigarettes, how to
cust appropriately, and how to sit up straight and not
fix their boyfriend's hair on the side of the street.

(01:22:24):
And they gave me a job doing that, and then
I got tired of it. It was boring.

Speaker 1 (01:22:34):
Wit did you get paid to do that?

Speaker 2 (01:22:36):
Yell? Shit, I am not a philathropist. I do not
do volunteer work, I told them, and I told them
how much I wanted, and all the other teachers in
the school, which was so thrilling to me. I had
a little gig. Then I was doing a little local
television show and Detroit and I had a little gig

(01:22:56):
which is three pieces, and all the teachers. It's came
to see me.

Speaker 1 (01:23:04):
Okay, you talk about your word daughter retiring, You're gonna
be eighty. You theoretically could retire.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
No, I can if I need money to live like this.
I could retire if I wanted to just live like
a normal person. But I don't live like a normal person.
I drink lots of champagne. All that stuff costs money, Robert.
I have to have my nails, all kinds of stuff,

(01:23:34):
habits I picked up for being in this swilthy business.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
How much of working is to pay the bills? And
how much of you still want that recognition and money
beyond what you have already?

Speaker 2 (01:23:50):
Oh? I still want. I am still hoping. I always
still hope that I have friends in Detroit Worth streets,
name at Roma on streets I used to play on.
But anyway, I think that that will always be nagging.
But I think that if I knew that I could

(01:24:11):
not sing and live the way that I live. I
live really comfortably. But it's not because I made so
much money. It's because I have to keep making money,
and I just wanted to change from I have to
keep making money. As I said to you early on,
I'm looking for this Rach Charl's life. I can't think

(01:24:33):
of anybody else right off top of my head before
they work six months a year at these huge concerts.
The last concert ra Charald's did before he died. Now,
this is ironic I did, which is in the one
hundred most renown on disco records, doing the best that

(01:24:55):
I can the producer of that was eighteen years old
at the time, and create it Run DMC and went
on to all of that. I left him because I
didn't want him involved in that. I told him he
could have any money that the record garnered and I'm

(01:25:19):
cool and I love him, and I left. In this
fifth career, I was working at the Carlisle Hotel, which
I would love to work and just died there on stage.
He came to see me, now after all of these
years and him being such a success in the beginning

(01:25:40):
of rap, and brought me a check. He said, Now,
you know, I don't owe this to you, he said,
but because I signed a paper same, you don't owe
me anything. But he came and brought me a check.
That's how my whole career has been. It's been fans

(01:26:01):
or people who sincerely adored me, that just they I
could sing good, they sincerely adored me. And Corey Robbins
there the name of his record label. I don't know
if you know anything about Run the UFC. You know
what the first record label was.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
Okay, to what degree have you experienced racism and to
what degree do you believe it affected your career.

Speaker 2 (01:26:36):
Well, I haven't experienced anymore than when I was saying
when we were on the uh, I'm not putting this
on and look cute for you. I'm looking putting this
on so my lips won't be dry.

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
I experienced it only in the general sense, like when
we couldn't stay at hotels and we couldn't go to
some of the restaurants. But entertainers have had a much
easier time in the business as hardcore segregation went. So

(01:27:18):
I didn't suffer from because I was in show business.
You asked me another part to that question, doing what
is it? Oh? Okay, I'll give you a perfect example.
I recorded or recording which was written for me called

(01:27:44):
He Made a Woman out of Me, which is the
recording that I did for Kenny Rogers's brother Leland Rodgers,
when he signed me to his label Silver Fox, which
belonged to show Bey singled.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
And she.

Speaker 2 (01:28:02):
Started looking for writers to write for me and found
some writers who wrote this He Made a Woman out
of Me. Re recorded it along with everybody just on
the record as somebody who is who has become rich.
See those kind of things annoying. But what's her name?

(01:28:26):
Billy Joe Joe mcallis, sir jumped off back out, Okay,
what's her name? She recorded it? Hers was in the
top five. We didn't I changed. She changed one word.
It was suggestive anyway, that's how the lyric went. But

(01:28:50):
I didn't. I didn't say anything that made it any
more suggested than she did. And mine could not get
any white airplay. I was trying to get some white
airplay before for condition. My condition is in so we

(01:29:12):
said before we recorded it, let's do no not for condition.
A heart of Gold. Neil Younglook's from Canada, said we
can get some play in Canada because Canadians play everything
that every artist from Canada makes. They don't care if

(01:29:33):
their orange green I played, I played, I did hard.
Gold got a lot of Canadian airplay, but not enough,
and it just never caught on in America. But and
through the whole sixty five years, Robert, I've collected each
one of these things I'm telling you about. I collected

(01:29:55):
about ten thousand and fans, I mean, hope to die
fans so I've collected these ten thousand fans at a time,
ten thousands at a.

Speaker 1 (01:30:11):
Time, you know they can support you. Well, it's been
fascinating and the great experience talking to you, Betty. I
want to thank you so much for taking this time
with my audience.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
Maybe I want to thank you so much for taking
this time to talk to me. It's all time, but
I wanted to ask you this. When do you sleep?
And do you have like a team of people that
worked with you?

Speaker 1 (01:30:38):
Two things. I'll answer the second question. First, I do
it all myself. Okay, songwriters they will often say the
song came to them in five minutes and they wrote it.
And then there are other people who might labor over

(01:30:58):
a song Leonard Cohen for over a year. And I
write only on inspiration, and when I'm inspired, I lay
it all out. It's like being in a trance. And
you know, I don't do it the way other people.
Most people will tell you two things that they like

(01:31:21):
to have written. They say that writing is achure and
they say that writing is about rewriting. I could not
disagree more. You know, I lay it out. You know,
I'll look for obvious mistakes, but I've learned. I've been
doing a long time. If I change anything, I screw
it up, so I would not think about it relative

(01:31:44):
to a traditional writer. I would think it more about
it compared to a musician.

Speaker 2 (01:31:48):
Do you that the label you consider yourself a writer?

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
Yes, first and foremost.

Speaker 2 (01:31:56):
More than in the end of view or.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
Love to get people's stories. This is something I've done,
irrelevant of having a podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:32:07):
Have you ever read your column? I looked at it.
I don't mean before you post it. I mean after
you posted.

Speaker 1 (01:32:16):
I read, okay, I know, okay. Two things I reread.
I check everything twice before I send it. Second, like
an artist, I rarely read what I have written, and
it's not I guess this is this wild. I can't

(01:32:38):
believe we're talking about this. These things are written in
a zone such that when you reread them. I reread them,
it reminds me of the zone. But I'm not in
that particular zone anymore. As opposed to saying somebody can write.
I went to the bookstore, I had a drink, et cetera,

(01:33:00):
et cetera. But if I'm writing about something that truly
affects me, I that's a time castle I felt that
way exactly. Then sometimes when I reread it, it's like shocking,
It's like, is that really?

Speaker 2 (01:33:18):
But I ask you that because it seems I can't
imagine when you sleep or when or how you could
do all this without you. I have often heard something
before I went to sleep at one o'clock in the morning.
Then I'll get up and I'll maybe not turn on

(01:33:38):
my back that well, sometimes i'll turn it over to
be but where I turn it on, it's like almost
by the hour everything that happened, you know about it,
but you also know what everybody was doing in their
leisure time. When I say that, I mean what shows
happening whatever, So it's not only everything that happened to

(01:34:02):
the world and everybody that day. And then at seven
o'clock Julie met went on and said, I've got something
about that. Then after that show, then this it sounds
as if you never ever sleep.

Speaker 1 (01:34:20):
Okay, actually I do sleep, but I'm not that different
from you.

Speaker 2 (01:34:25):
How many hours do you sleep?

Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
Well, you know I sleep a good eight hours. But
because you have to be creative, you have to get
a good sleep. But I'm not that different. I don't
have any children.

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
But it means like your damn head with bursts. I mean, well,
I don't this is what happens.

Speaker 1 (01:34:44):
I'm doing this twenty four to seven.

Speaker 2 (01:34:48):
That's what it seems like, as why I say, when
do you sleep? Okay, listen, you just made the declaration
I'm doing this twenty four seven. What was my question?
Let me we what was my.

Speaker 1 (01:35:03):
That's a that's a term of speech other than when
I am sleeping. I am doing this all when I awake.
I really I love to know what's going on. I
love the pulse I'm reading for the moment I get up.

Speaker 2 (01:35:19):
That is, I'm apparent. The only thing that isn't apparent
to me is when do you sleep? But you seem
as though you have got your favor on the pulse
of the entire world, being music, war or gristal gorilla

(01:35:41):
wrestling whatever. I just said. Well, I'm extremely nosy myself.
I always want to know everything that everybody is doing
and I but I just don't understand how you're able
to do it and to do it so eloquently. It
doesn't sound like when when you can tell that Donald
Trump is watching everything, but he snatches things. His opinion

(01:36:04):
is off there like and blah blah, blah lad about
that yours isn't. You always have an actual thing to
say about whatever it whatever it is that happened. And
I just absolutely find you so got me completely amazing.
I talk about you want my husband than you know

(01:36:26):
that I talk about you, But honestly, I am just
amazed at the things you know and how well thought
out the myriad things you do are. And you would
think that with it being so much of everybody else's business,
every once knows why you would kind of step up

(01:36:48):
which off, but you never do. You're right on it,
like I was right there. Yep, I was over there too,
and I was back there and I was up here.
And you're an amaze easy individual, you really are. I'm
so grateful to you for your interest and your your

(01:37:08):
in factness that you speak about music. I can see
where oft times you try to, especially when it gets
to somebody you like and you understand what happened to them.
I can see where you kind of push what you
felt off and try to get to the matter of it.
You can't always, but I love what you decide to
do in lieu of being able to be I don't

(01:37:32):
care about a matter of factly, but I absolutely love
what you do and I'm so grateful that you wrote
what you wrote about me. See there again that everybody
adores you so much. If they just happen to look
at you, they'll see what you see it about me
when you wrote about the Interpretations album, so that was

(01:37:56):
one of the biggest boosts that the Interpretation album, and
that was I know you think about it when you
think in terms of stars anyways, so you're just thinking
something else that you somebody else wrote, but that was
maybe what you write. Don't help rolling stones. You write

(01:38:17):
about me, that is a tremendous hope to me possibly
having a sixth.

Speaker 1 (01:38:29):
Well, there's a Yiddish term called kevelling, and that I
can't respond.

Speaker 2 (01:38:34):
Say it cavelling, cavell.

Speaker 1 (01:38:37):
Kvk okay, and the dictionary of what they're given here
they say to feel happy and proud. But you know
they use an example here My mom was kvelling, bursting
with pride. I can't respond. Okay, let me be very clear,
I can't respond to what you say. But this is

(01:39:00):
what I'm trying to do now. The fact that you
get the fact that you get it is.

Speaker 2 (01:39:06):
For you really, are anybody doing it you really really are.
They tied me because I was doing like I was
talking to students at the University of Texas. It was
kind of a gig. Well, no, it was a gig
they paid me, but talking to the class, believe it
or not, a Bob Dylan class. And I'm like, see,

(01:39:26):
that's ultimuch for me. But they told me, they said,
try not to sound like they shouldn't get in show business.
I said, I can't do that, because they shouldn't. It's
not like you think it is. And I can only
tell you.

Speaker 1 (01:39:44):
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You and me both know
in order to be successful, you have to have no
other choice.

Speaker 2 (01:39:51):
You have to do it well that I try to
tell them. For the like being, it's either like being
and the husband who beats you, or being strung out
on drugs or being a born again Christian. I mean it,
it is for everybody in my life. It is Betty

(01:40:12):
Lovette that is the main thing in everybody's life close
around me. And then so if I'm going to be
true and faithful and friends to them as well, I
have to devote my life to the broad too. And
that is it. You should hear me cussing hears sometimes

(01:40:33):
I'm like lifting ways like this, bitch, I'm not just
gonna die. I mean, but either you have to do
it or you have to don't. And you you handle
it in such a way I know what it takes.
So that's why I wonder when you sleep, because I
can tell from what you say that you had to

(01:40:54):
be watching it to know it.

Speaker 1 (01:40:58):
Well. You others a soul by ac DC called It's
a long way to the top. If you want to
rock and roll, and you're talking to me now, it
took a long time and a lot of struggle to
get here. I'm not going to delineate everything else you do.
Before I went to college, I was a starving freestyle skier,

(01:41:20):
and I went to law school. I practiced law for
about ten minutes. Then I work for a movie producer.
Then I work for an English management company that brings
us to.

Speaker 2 (01:41:33):
The English management company.

Speaker 1 (01:41:35):
They manage Iron Maiden. Oh okay, And then since nineteen
eighty six, this is what I've been doing.

Speaker 2 (01:41:44):
You talking. When you read your writings, it sounds like
something that is a liticit. Did youlyticate everything? It doesn't
sound like a regular person talking.

Speaker 1 (01:41:57):
I definitely we're talking about office. The most important thing
to me is to walk the knife edge, split the hair.

Speaker 2 (01:42:06):
What you sound like in a journey?

Speaker 1 (01:42:09):
No, but it's I was this person, you know, you know,
it's you get older, you're this person now. Well, but
you get older and you realize you're your parents. My
father was this person. Okay, my father would say, what's
the real story here? Like you see somebody driving an
expensive car who doesn't have a job, Well, the real

(01:42:32):
story is either it's not their car, they can't afford it,
or they inherited money. But they're people. This is just
like you talking about your friends saying, go tell Jerry
Wexler that you know they don't know what's going on,
but they believe they think they do. That's how the
average person is.

Speaker 2 (01:42:52):
But you look at things. You look at things like
a liter literator, You look at them literally. When I
read you, you don't talk while I can see the
fan is there. That is what we as entertainers look for.
But when you start to look at it literally, which

(01:43:14):
is I think something you said made me respond to you,
you were looking at it literally, and that commands a
different response from me. I know when when I'm being
congratulated and when I'm being loved and whatever, well, when
I'm being looked at literally, I know that as well.
And you look at things literally. I'm glad that you do.

(01:43:36):
I'm glad that you tell people about it more literally
than just what they ate.

Speaker 1 (01:43:42):
There's that song by Leonard Cohen. Everybody knows, everybody knows
the truth. But one Okay, my psychiatrists sometimes sometime, right,
you can change one little thing and it changes the
entire pictures. And I don't want to give any names here,

(01:44:06):
but a household name musician. I went to a performance
and this person likes to get things perfect. And I
asked the manager what this person thought of the show,
and the manager said, well, the he thought that in
ear monitors were screwed up. You heard a little too

(01:44:29):
much of the horn section. This is all real story.
I just don't want to mention the name I'm saying.
I was at the show and I said, you know
what you're talking about. I couldn't hear that, Okay, but
I don't think the average person worked. And he said,

(01:44:50):
those little tiny things are the difference between success and failure.
The artist I'm talking about is as big as they get. Okay,
And now I'm gonna get on my high horse. The
average person doesn't want to work that hard and get

(01:45:11):
it right. You're telling me you've only had five careers
because you keep trying to do it. Most people don't
have five careers. They give up, They give up. And
you know as well as I do, there are a
lot of talented people who have never had success because

(01:45:32):
talent is at most fifty percent the desire and all that.
That's a lot, but people don't want to hear that. Listen,
you're a musician.

Speaker 2 (01:45:44):
You know that.

Speaker 1 (01:45:45):
When you hang out in the dressing room or after
the show with musicians, it's a completely different kind of
conversation than when you have, you know, with the next
door neighbor. Right right, It's like these people they're in
a separate club, separate community. They're not judging on money,

(01:46:07):
and they know the system is against them, but they're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:46:10):
What they have to.

Speaker 1 (01:46:11):
But unless you're in that world, people don't understand that.

Speaker 2 (01:46:16):
Oh absolutely absolutely. I really just don't think that people
understand how this goes. And I think that we are
only two percent of us. It seems like all of
us now, but still it said about only two percent
of us who walk upon the stage and do this
for a living, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:46:38):
And well what bothers me now is because the barrier
to entry is non existent. Anybody can make a record.

Speaker 2 (01:46:44):
Of their bubble.

Speaker 1 (01:46:46):
You, but it means that they believe that they're entitled
to success. I mean, some of this is very simple.
You make it your to like it. Okay, fine, you
played it for your friends. They said they like it too.
Did they play it for anybody else? Did they turn

(01:47:10):
anybody else?

Speaker 2 (01:47:10):
But they told me to stop telling the children. I said,
now that if the church and your family and all
your friends are the ones that's like you. When I
asked him, I said, can you sing? I said, now,
I don't want to know the opinion of those people.
Has anyone ever given you any money to sing? I said, now,

(01:47:31):
you've got that is one foot if someone has said here,
I like the way you're saying, here's some money to
do it. Other than that, I don't count any of
those opinions. And that was that was one of the
things they were telling me to stop telling the kids
that I was talking to. I said, I don't know them, though,
I have to tell them that because it's the truth.

Speaker 1 (01:47:53):
Well, well, I've had this experience many a time, where
you speak to clashes and wannabes. I don't want to
give them false hope. No, unless this is the only
thing you're willing to do, and you're willing to starve,
not on a house, not on a car.

Speaker 2 (01:48:14):
This is not for you. But when you until it
happens to you. Robert, you couldn't have told me. You
couldn't have made me not do this by telling me
the things that were gonna happen to me. Before I
was thirty, I would have said, hey, i'm ow. If

(01:48:35):
you had told if anybody had told me, if they
could actual show me, like a video, now this is
what's gonna happen, it showed it to me, it would
have been different. But I feel an incumbent upon me,
you know it, to say, I can't say to you
keep trying and try hard. And then I always tell them,

(01:48:57):
especially if it's young females. I'm talking to you, like
and I'm doing these group shows, like I've got one
coming up at Carnegie Hall, and all these young women
they were in my dressing room. They're looking straight in
my mouth. I said, the best thing I can tell
you is that if you walk into a small place
with an acoustic piano and they sang, say sang a

(01:49:19):
real song. I don't care how big your record is,
I will kick your ass. It was done to me,
big maype Ell did it to me. I was running
Small's paradise. My waistline was tiny and my booty was big,
and I can holler out, I could say got lots

(01:49:41):
and the people which is screened. Maybe El breathed in
there in papal shoes from the hospital she had just
escaped from, walked up on the stage, wrapped in a
blanket with a some Burrow type hat on, and said God,
and and the band knew what kid was in. That

(01:50:02):
still perflects me. I didn't know how the band knew
what kid was in. And they didn't talk to me
anymore for the whole evening, nobody and I was looking
so cute. So that's another thing that I always tell
them to beware of me in the middle of the night,

(01:50:23):
in the milial set in a small place.

Speaker 1 (01:50:28):
Well, we're on the same page here.

Speaker 2 (01:50:31):
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:50:31):
I'm gonna tell another story. What I'm heard again said,
you know that's Atlantic Records. A hit record is a
record that you're lying in bed, you hear on the radio,
you have to get up, get dressed, and go to
an all night record store to buy You know that
is a hit record, right, I don't understand. Well, you

(01:50:52):
know it's like you know it when you hear it.

Speaker 2 (01:50:55):
I heard damn your Eyes on my way to a gig.
I had my road and just stopped. I went in
and audit. I rehearsed it all night in my hotel room,
and I sung it the next morning. That's a hit record, yeah,
for sure. No, and it's it's it's well here there

(01:51:16):
goes back to that thing with womit again and and uh,
Jerry Wexler, Now Jerry West was on my side. But
I'm sure that when Jerry Wexler tolhamed what I said,
is it that bitch's crazy, let's let her go.

Speaker 1 (01:51:37):
Well that's a whole nother thing.

Speaker 2 (01:51:40):
Read his name. That's what made me think of it.
But no, a hit record. At Motown they used to say,
if you don't like it in the first six bars,
even before somebody starts singing, it's not a hit record.
They looked at it as records at Motown didn't make
any different. Willie who was singing if it was a

(01:52:02):
hit record, and they made records over there. They didn't
record artists, they made records. I know how many of
these people sound in the shower, you know what. I'm
sure that if you and I'm Kevin would have to
separate us. But well, yes, it separates me from you

(01:52:25):
on the little beautif thing. What I said, finally a
man that I can argue with.

Speaker 1 (01:52:32):
Who agrees with me, as I say, I don't like
to argue for the sake of arguing, but the little points.
Argue all day, and it makes people makes people crazy.
They say, get over it.

Speaker 2 (01:52:46):
So this is important. You four? When is your birthday?

Speaker 1 (01:52:54):
April?

Speaker 2 (01:52:56):
And Aries and Aries?

Speaker 1 (01:53:00):
No, no, Taurus.

Speaker 2 (01:53:02):
Well they've all liked me, and we've never looked me,
but we were usually arguing about the same thing. But you,
I really just I get a chance to bounce you
off of me more than you do me off you,
because I get a chance to read your column and
you know off see how I feel about it. Whatever.

(01:53:25):
But I think if you and I talked all day,
we were straightened out the entire problems with a whole
goddamn world. They would just listen to us.

Speaker 1 (01:53:36):
That goes to the next one that goes to the
Jack Nicholson point. People can't you know that Jack Nicholson
in that movie A Few good Men. People can't handle
the truth?

Speaker 2 (01:53:45):
No, oh oh honey, oh oh, they really really can't.
I mean I know that there were some truths that
I could not handle, but I was begging for and
I crawled up into that little hole and found out
the truth and it said PLoP. But people can they

(01:54:06):
can't stand and slap. It's gonna come with that truth.
But I don't know. You've seen to be that same
kind of idiot, like curious, crazy than I am. And
you just say, well, why is that you said you
aren't married?

Speaker 1 (01:54:24):
That's exactly who I am.

Speaker 2 (01:54:26):
You are married. You aren't married.

Speaker 1 (01:54:31):
I was married once. I am now with the same
girlfriend for twenty years. We lived together.

Speaker 2 (01:54:38):
Oh, you should definitely keep her if you were fortunate
enough to find her and she's willing to stay for you,
with you for that long. Always considered that because you
really are an exceptionally unusual individual.

Speaker 1 (01:54:54):
And she also play this for her.

Speaker 2 (01:54:58):
But she has to be that kind of individual too,
can so accept that person? Like Kevin, I'm very much
like you Kevin. A man has to live with a
woman who he doesn't feel constantly disrespected by. Every word
I say doesn't make him, doesn't offend him. You know,

(01:55:19):
he has to get over all of that because this
is how I am. And he's accepted the fact that
I'm willing to lay down with him every night, who
all day for him, do all the one hundred when
I'm here. If I say something, I'm not saying it
to disrespect you. I'm saying it because that's what happened.

(01:55:40):
And I'm not a housewife.

Speaker 1 (01:55:44):
We're on the same page, I know.

Speaker 2 (01:55:46):
And that's how come nobody likes us. Wait a minute,
but everybody wants to know what we've got to say.

Speaker 1 (01:55:53):
Well, you know, there's a lot in therapy. God, I
can't believe going on about this. This is really the
only thing I can do what other people can do.
I can't do what other people do really well, is
be a member of the group, get along and make
it work.

Speaker 2 (01:56:13):
Didn't I tell you to put me out at a choir?

Speaker 1 (01:56:16):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:56:17):
So?

Speaker 1 (01:56:18):
I mean, God bless them. I've worked in these organizations
and you know, I don't have the personality where I'm
gonna move up in the organization. They don't want somebody
like me. They want somebody who kisses ass and you know,
can have fun and you can help owe each other.
But you know, I'm lucky enough to know that people

(01:56:39):
are hungry for the truth.

Speaker 2 (01:56:40):
They absolutely are. But not having ever seen anything, I
think it comes maybe natural to us, so it doesn't
frighten us. It just comes so natural. But if you've
never heard it, if you've never heard it before, and
it's standing there before you, it I have to sometimes

(01:57:01):
look at the things I believe and the things I say,
and I try and understand how it floored people. And
I've never had to go back to anyone and apologize
apologize so because I said exactly what I meant if
I come back to you is to make you understand

(01:57:21):
why I said it. But it's not to apologize.

Speaker 1 (01:57:25):
Well, I will say I was in a really bad
spot and I got hooked up with this psychiatrist and
he he would never tell me what to do, and
he barely speaks. It's like psychoanalysis. But through this process

(01:57:45):
I've learned, you know, I've learned a lot of things
how to get along, to make it work. And without that,
it probably wouldn't happen because I was a prisoner of
my upbringing. That that's not you know, the lessons I
didn't learn. But it's still a struggle. But like you,

(01:58:07):
I'm continuing to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:58:09):
Well, I get exasperated at this point because I've done
the psychiatrist thing and it's just almost everything that anyone
would advise I've done. And it's being in show business
over seventy years. Is I mean, there just isn't anything

(01:58:32):
that's happened to me. Everything that happened to you in
school had already happened to me as a MIDI levet.
I just how old are you?

Speaker 1 (01:58:40):
Well, the thing is bout seven. I'm seventy two.

Speaker 2 (01:58:45):
Well, we age actually in groups of five, so you're eight.

Speaker 1 (01:58:51):
Let's flip the story over, okay, And I'm not blowing smoke. Yes,
you were not happy that you don't have this financial status, okay,
but what you've achieved almost no one has achieved. In addition,

(01:59:13):
I say this about myself.

Speaker 2 (01:59:16):
You can like me or not like me.

Speaker 1 (01:59:18):
But if you like me, I'm the only place you
can get what I do exactly exactly like you. If
you like Betty Levette, no one can say, oh, they
had a hit record and had the same producer the
right way. They say, that's a unique thing. You may
not like it, but if you like it, it's the
only place you can get it. And it's worked for you.

Speaker 2 (01:59:42):
Robert, that is why two of us in this whole business.
It's too much. I honestly, really you are. It's this
child who wrote all the songs in this last album,
Randall Bramblett. He has this tune. I'm just trying to

(02:00:05):
see someone exactly like me. Maybe one day I'll run
into myself.

Speaker 1 (02:00:15):
Well, we're all looking to be known and understood.

Speaker 2 (02:00:19):
Absolutely. I would rather have understanding than anything else. If
you want, if you hate me and you are understanding,
at least sure why Oh I agree with that. Yeah,
I really know that. That that's it, Kevin. When I
met him, I said, I will when I am not

(02:00:41):
being Betty Lovett, I will certainly gladly be Missus Kyley.
That's the way I was raised. I keep this house clean.
I could have a housekeeper, but I don't want another
bro walking all over my house and looking my underwear
and dirty clothes and stuff. So I cleaned this house.
It may take me a longer time n cleaning. I

(02:01:02):
do everything here myself, I say, I will be drunk,
I will have to have marijuana every day. I will
never miss a show, I will never be late, and
none of the self. I mean. I will never look
in your wallet or ask you where you've been, or
ask you why you weren't here. I laid everything that

(02:01:25):
I am out and that's how I am, I said,
and that is the reason I have all my husbands,
all my boyfriends, and all of my producers cool. Honestly,
I could take you, you know they my mother used
to say a thing in New Orleans, Well, in Louisiana,
you know, the houses used to be way up off

(02:01:46):
the ground because of the water, right, And when you
like something in the summertime of whatever, if you like
you take it and go up under the house with
it and got a hide there. Will I could take
you and run up under the house with you.

Speaker 1 (02:02:04):
I can't. We gotta stop now because I can't respond
to that and run up in the house with you. Okay,
you've been listening to me with Betty Levette, the one
and only Betty. I want to thank you so much
for taking the time with my audience. Kill me next time.
This is Bob left set