The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page C04

C4 www.phill3r.com THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Tuesday, September 25, 2012 Singer La Vette was broke, but not beaten 49 re If 'A 4 11 014236 1 's 4F4tkiP, it LikAlLam '6, 1 Vre N'l lI re A 1 I'Ve 111 0 :10 4 i a 1.7 24 1 :164.,, '4 10 4 -4'; 4f 1 4 Manager and mentor Jim Lewis with La Vette in 1972. La Vette credits her longevity in the business to Lewis, who taught her to focus on her craft. .1 I 11 I'll 1 la 4. i -4c'4 i 1 1 1 11 2 ito i -wit II 1 1 1 I 'NI II I '4. LAVETTE from Cl "I certainly felt that I was deserving, but I became resolute that it was never going to happen," says the singer, whose unexpurgated name-dropping book, written with David Ritz, goes on sale this week, as does a fine new album, Thankful N' Thoughtful (Anti- 12), that shows off her interpretive skills on songs written by Sly the Family Stone, Bob Dylan, and Gnarls Barkley.

"So I was quite shocked, when the world came to my door," adds La Vette, who will play the World Cafe Live in Philadelphia on Saturday. The singer, who lives with her husband in West Orange, N.J., spoke on the phone last week from Detroit, where she was rehearsing her band. The world took its time in paying La Vette a visit, and did not arrive in earnest until the release of an album, also called A Woman Like Me, in 2003. In the interim, La Vette lived a life filled with incident, to say the least. As opening sentences go, her memoir's is an attention grabber: "A vicious pimp was precariously holding on to my right foot as he dangled me from the top of a twenty-story apartment building at Amsterdam and Seventy-eighth street." Before the young singer escapes her Perils of Pauline predicament, La Vette, who was raised Betty Haskins in Muskegon, by parents who ran a corn-liquor and barbecue business, lets the reader know that A Woman Like Me will not be a pious book.

"My story is one in which Jesus will not be making an appearance," she writes. "My feeling then and now is that if God is fond of black people, he has shown his affection only recently. What the hell took him so long?" La Vette admits to making more than her share of career missteps, the biggest being asking record man Jerry Wexler to release her from a contract with the Atlantic label in the early 1960s. "I didn't become reflective until I was much older," she says on the phone. "But I realized that the next week.

I regretted that more than anything I've ever done." Although she recorded for Motown only briefly in the 1980s, La Vette nonetheless remained an insider on the Detroit music scene, even as she hustled to make a living singing in lounges and landing a Schaefer beer La Vette sang a very fine version of 'Love Reign O'er Me' at the gala and Barbra Streisand turned to ask me if I really wrote it." The success of that gig led to her duet with Jon Bon Jovi on Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" at the Lincoln Memorial as part of President Obama's inauguration weekend in 2009. The long years that La Vette spent scuffling have made her success all the more satisfying. The singer, still trim and fit, says, "I tell people I just came off eight years of a 'Who the hell is tour, and now we're on to the 50th anniversary tour." Her favorite line on Thankful N' Thoughtful is from Kim McLean's searing "The More I Search (The More I Die)." She sings, "In my vain humiliation I have run through shame's dark halls." In her struggles, La Vette says, "I was completely humiliated. But I still had to have the appearance of a star. I was showing off, though I was absolutely penniless.

Somebody was always picking up my tab. "I am so relieved, you wouldn't believe. I thought I was just going to die broke and unknown. Now the people will know who I am. Plus, I'm the only one who can fit into a size 6.

So I'm particularly happy." "There isn't anybody mentioned in the book that I've been able to call on, so I don't care what they think." La Vette credits her longevity to Jim Lewis, the mentor who taught her to focus on her craft and to whose memory she dedicates her book. The chapter in A Woman Like Me where Lewis insistently tells the hardheaded young singer to listen to horn players like Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young and singers like Billie Holiday and Anita O'Day is among the most rewarding in the book. "I'm so lucky I had somebody like Jim Lewis to teach me," she says. "Just because you are talented, you may never be a star. But if you want to be a singer, you better learn how to sing." Since the release of the album A Woman Like Me in 2003, LaVette's career has been steadily on the upswing.

Hers is the rare comeback by a long-lost soul-music treasure that has sustained itself into a continually productive second act. Her 2006 debut album for Anti-, I've Got My Own Hell to Raise, was produced by Joe Henry and led to her performance at the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors in Washington where, as is her wont, she sang the Who's "Love Reign O'er Me" in a reshaped version that discovered new reservoirs of meaning and emotion. Pete Townshend said: "My favorite moment was when Bettye Bettye Lailette at the historic Royal Peacock, on Atlanta's tamed Auburn Avenue, in 1965. From "A Woman Like Me" radio jingle in the 1970s. "One of my standard lines was always 'I know everybody in Detroit that's black and over she says.

"Or 'I know everybody at Motown, because I've seen them all drunk, or naked, or broke, or all Some of the boldface names are remembered tenderly, like Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, and Cab Calloway, whom La Vette got to know while traveling with a touring pro duction of the musical Bubbling Brown Sugar. Others, like Diana Ross, don't fare so well. La Vette calls the Supremes singer "a stuck up bitch with a small voice and big ambition." La Vette hasn't heard from anybody who might be offended yet. "You're talking about people who haven't spoken to me in 35 years. I don't care if they continue not to speak to me," she says cheerfully.

Contact Dan DeLuca at 215-854-5628 or delucaphillynews.com, or follow on Twitter delucadan. Read his blog, In the Mix," at www.philly.cominthemix. 11 plays win Barrymores, in a possible swan song 2012 Barrymore Winners 11111. A I Best play Body Awareness, Wilma Theater Best musical The Scottsboro Boys, Philadelphia Theatre Company Best new play Jacqueline Goldtinger, SlipShot, Flashpoint Theatre Company Best directorplay Anne Kauffman, Body Awareness, Wilma Theater Best directormusical Joe Calarco, Ordinal) Days, 11th Hour Theatre Company Best actorplay Richard Poe, The Outgoing Tide, Philadelphia Theatre Company Best actressplay Mary Martell, Body Awareness, Wilma Theater Best actormusical Rodney Hicks, The Scottsboro Boys, Philadelphia Theatre Company Best actressmusical Barbara D. Mills, Crowns, Delaware Theatre Company Best set design David Gordon, The Outgoing Tide, Philadelphia Theatre Company Best lighting design Thom Weaver, Knives in Hens, Theatre Exile Best costume design Olivera Gajic, Twelfth Night, Pig Iron Theatre Company Best sound design Christopher Colucci Daniel Perelstein, Knives in Hens, Theatre Exile Best original music, Rosie Langabeer, Twelfth Night, Pig Iron Theatre Company Best music direction, Rosie Langabeer, Twelfth Night, Pig Iron Theatre Company Best choreographymovement Brett Cassidy, Twelfth Night, Pig Iron Theatre Company Best supporting actorplay James ljames, Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches, Wilma Theater Best supporting actressplay Genevieve Perrier, Reasons to Be Pretty, Philadelphia Theatre Company Best supporting actormusical Forrest McClendon, The Scottsboro Boys, Philadelphia Theatre Company Best supporting actressmusical Manna Nichols, The King and Walnut Street Theatre Best ensembleplay Body Awareness, Wilma Theater Best ensemblemusical The Scottsboro Boys, Philadelphia Theatre Company Wilma's "Body Awareness" with Grace Gonglewski (left) and Mary Martel lo, who won best actress in a play.

Theatre Alliance of Greater the awards manager, has dissolved. ALEXANDER IZILIAEV BARRYMORES from Cl them, dissolved this year, and the future of the awards the organization's most visible function is unresolved. No Barrymores will be given for the current season. The Philadelphia Theatre Company, which performs at its Suzanne Roberts Theatre, won four of its seven awards for The Scottsboro Boys, including best musical. After Scottsboro's run on Broadway, the company became the first regional theater to produce the show by John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, with a book by David Thompson and did so with much of the team that originated it.

The edgy Scottsboro Boys tells the true story of nine African American boys arrested on a trumped-up rape charge in 1931 in Alabama. The entire cast won the Barrymore for ensemble acting in a musical, and Rodney Hicks and Forrest McClendon won for best musical actor and supporting actor, respectively. The Wilma, which also produces at its own theater, won four of its five awards for Body Awareness, including best production of a play. Annie Baker's comic drama, about a lesbian couple, the contentious teenager-in-residence, and their angst over a houseguest who photographs naked women, also won the cast the Barrymore for best ensemble in a play. Anne Kauffman won for her direction, and Mary Martel lo for best actress in a play.

In spring, the Theatre Alliance declared that its work to strengthen the theater community in a region that now boasts 50-plus professional stages was complete and that it did not wish to compete for contributions with the theaters it served. The alliance board ceased operations, except for a one-person staff and a consultant to tie up loose ends. But because Barrymore judging was in full swing, with 62 judges assessing about 150 plays and musicals, the board voted to complete the Barrymore process for last season. In the theater community, .71 4411v I conversations have begun about the possibilities of resurrecting the awards a major enterprise that needs many willing and capable judges to assess myriad productions, plus an administration to oversee the process, from appointing judges to tabulating assessments to arranging for the awards. Those awards had been medallions, but are replaced this year by certificates.

Normally, the Barrymores would have been presented at a scripted celebration next month, followed by a party. A group of artistic directors is arranging an Oct. 22 ceremony and reception called "Theatre Philadelphia: A Celebration" to present three additional awards, usually part of the Barrymore celebration: the $25,000 Brown Martin Philadelphia Award that recognizes a theater company for a play representing "the diverse individual, cultural, and spiritual differences among the $10,000 F. Otto Haas Award to an emerging theater artist; and a posthumous lifetime-achievement award to Jiri Zizka, who cofounded Wilma Theater. The event will be at the Kimmel Pig Iron's offbeat "Twelfth Night," featuring James Sugg (left) and Josh Machiz, also won four awards.

JASON FRANK ROTHENBERG Joe Calarco won for directing the chamber musical Ordinary Days, staged by lith Hour Theatre Company, and Manna Nichols was named best supporting actress in a musical, in Walnut Street Theatre's The King and I. Thom Weaver won for his lighting design and Christopher Colucci and Daniel Perelstein for their sound design of Theatre Exile's Knives in Hens. Ijames, named best supporting actor for Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches, Tony Kushner's celebrated two-play work. The Wilma is currently presenting the second part. Pig Iron Theatre Company's four-Barrymore Twelfth Night was an offbeat take on Shakespeare that featured actors on a skateboard ramp and highlighted the play's drunks, noblemen, and servants.

The production won awards for Olivera Gajic's costumes, Brett Cassidy's choreography, and Rosie Langabeer's original music and her directing of it. Center. In the Barrymores announced Tuesday, Richard Poe won for leading actor in a play and David Gordon for set design, both for The Outgoing Tide at Philadelphia Theatre Company. The drama by Philadelphia playwright Bruce Graham, about the effects of Alzheimer's disease on a man and his family, is about to be done by Delaware Theatre Company in Wilmington, which is taking its production Off-Broadway. That company produced Crowns last season, which won a Barrymore on Tuesday for Barbara D.

Mills as outstanding actress in a musical. The Barrymore for outstanding new play went to Jacqueline Goldfinger for SlipShot, about an accidental shooting and its racial fallout. It was produced by Flash-point Theatre Company. Genevieve Perrier won for best supporting actress in the Philadelphia Theatre Company's production of Reasons to Be Pretty. The Wilma's other Barrymore went to James Contact Howard Shapiro at 215-854-5727 or hshapirophillynews.com, or follow on Twitter philastage..