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Album Review
by SaschaS
19-8-2004
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| Bettye Swann: part-career retrospective |
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Bettye Swann: 'Bettye Swann'
(Honest Jons)
Bettye Swann - another veteran soulster’s ace collection
Fans of the excellent Honest Jons’ retrospective ‘Candi Staton’ - Link to our Interview for an informative read from the renowned singer - ought to be equally enthralled by Bettye Swann collection of her Capitol recordings. The 22-track overview - many are country songs given a R’n’B makeover, such as Hank Cochran's 'Don't Touch Me' or an upbeat version of Merle Haggard's classic country ballad 'Today I Started Loving You Again' - includes the amazing ‘Stand By Your Man’, country-n-blues take on ‘Ain’t That Peculiar’ and the sublime ‘Angel Of The Morning’, plus previously unavailable material.
The Louisiana-born songstress made her career in Los Angeles but has left the business several decades ago. More on the overlooked lady, from the album’s liner notes of a search that resulted in variety of rumours - working as a waitress in a restaurant in Georgia, following Jehovah’s Witness lifestyle, changed her name - but certainly had not done an interview in 30 years.
< Then one evening I spoke to Candi Staton who had been close to Bettye back in the early seventies. She told me that last she'd heard Bettye and her husband George Barton had moved to Vegas. I'd not heard good things about George and so assumed they had divorced, but Candi said she heard that George had died. There were two Betty Bartons in the Vegas White Pages, but no Bettye. I rang the first number, by now feeling like some kind of stalker, and a woman picked up. "I'm sorry if I'm intruding," I said, "but are you Bettye Swann?"
When she said yes I nearly put the phone straight back down in shock, overcome by a vague sense of guilt that maybe the reason nobody had been able to find Bettye was that she didn't want to be found. She couldn't have been nicer though, but after a few minutes' chat and passing on some of her old friends' numbers she said she had to be getting on, that she'd call me back in a day or two so I could talk to her properly. The call never came.
So the mystery of Bettye Swann remains and all we're left with is the music. The one thing I did learn about her life now is that she works with children with educational problems, and seems to be very happy doing so. She sounded very contented, and obviously enjoyed working at something which helped other people. In a way then she's doing exactly the same thing as she was nearly forty years ago, because for me the special quality of Bettye Swann's voice is its inherent optimism. Even when she's singing the saddest of songs, there's a streak of hope that runs through the notes.
Betty Jean Champion was born in Shreveport on 24 October 1944, and spent her first nineteen years growing up in rural Louisiana. Then she moved to California to pursue her dream of making it as both a singer and writer. On her twentieth birthday she signed a deal with Money Records and her breakthrough came with 'Make Me Yours' in 1967, still her biggest selling record. Shortly after Bettye married her manager George Barton and they left LA for Georgia, where George had set up as a promoter on the black circuit down south.
Within a year, Bettye was back in LA. After the Money deal expired she signed with Capitol Records > and recorded gems that crowd this CD. One of them is the truly groundbreaking recording of ‘Today I Started Loving You Again’, a pairing with a country big-shot Buck Owens but such duets - although it was a year after the assassination of Martin Luther Kings and two years after harley pride had become the first black man to appear on the Grand Ole Opry - were deemed still too risqué to unleash upon the racially divided USA public. [Alas, it is not this, slowed-down version on the album but the upbeat one.]
< During the weeks I spent trying to track Bettye down the one thing that became increasingly clear is that everyone who'd known her only had good things to say about her. The more people I spoke to the more obvious it became that the vibrancy and optimism that you hear in her voice were simply an expression of her personality. When we told Candi Staton that we were reissuing Bettye's Capitol sides she immediately asked if we knew where she was as they'd been good friends in the seventies - they met at one of Bettye's shows - but had lost touch when Bettye left the music business.
"She was a beautiful lady. She was really, really friendly. Soft spoken, very generous. Just a down home girl, someone you'd be glad to know. We used to talk to each about our kids, husbands, travelling, and stuff like that."
Sometimes Candi would travel with Bettye as a friend even if she wasn't part of the show. Life on the road in the south for black singers could still be hard. One time whilst driving through Mississippi they stopped for gas, and whilst Bettye's husband filled the tank, Bettye and Candi asked the attendant if they could use the bathroom.
‘Our bathroom ain't for niggers’, came the reply. Hearing this George said ‘If we're not good enough to use your bathroom, we don't want your gas.’ They paid the few dollars for the petrol they'd already pumped and got out of there as quickly as possible. A story like that makes you think again about Bettye's duet with Buck Owens. It brings home exactly how radical it was for black and white musicians to be working together back then.
I've always felt that the records made in the South in the mid-to-late sixties must have helped ease the racial tensions that had so nearly torn parts of America to pieces just a few years before. Wayne Shuler was a good old white boy from Louisiana and Bettye was a black girl from the same State, but the records they made together are neither black or white; they're just soul records, great soul records.”
Bettye Swann never did call me back, so I called her again. She was on her way out but we chatted for a few minutes and she explained, "The best thing about show business I loved was actually singing, making music and interacting with people, but it wasn't always 100% fun and there were some rough times, really rough times, so I just stopped.">
SaschaS
19-8-2004
Bettye Swann’s compilation ‘Battye Swann’ is available now on Honest Jons/EMI
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