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.
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. 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. 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 until I started to sing, and the first time that I went on stage was the first time I'd ever seen the stage.
Let's go back, So what did your parents do for a living.
Well, everybody's parents worked for General Motors, and so Chrisler's I'm a General Motors baby.
Which company? Did your father work for?
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 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.
Tell me about your parents leaving Louisiana come into Muskegan.
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 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.
Do you remember what songs from the jukebox.
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 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 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. 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. 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 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.
How did your parents meet?
How did they meet?
Yeah?
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 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 is pretty pretty, and my daddy certainly saw so.
Okay, tell me about the corn liquor business.
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 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 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 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 environment I actually grew up here.
Okay, are you a good cook? Can you cook barbecue and fried fish?
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 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.
Okay, it sounds like your father had a big personality that everybody gathered at your house. Was that the case?
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
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 for the first one and then it melts.
Okay, growing up, I didn't know anybody who had a jukebox in their house. That seemed pretty exotic to me.
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.
Okay, So what was responsible for your family moving from a squie into Detroit.
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.
Okay, you're singing it three years old, you're a star, your role of your stomach? What happens when you turned four?
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 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 I was bad, as they say children are bad. I just wanted to do with grown people and that was the way I acted.
Okay, And what was school like?
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. 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 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 or the person now that Mother and Nesta would have wanted me to be.
Okay, so tell me where you start singing after you moved to a Pontiac in Detroit.
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, 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 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 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.
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?
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. 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 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 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 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.
Okay, just going back, were you singing in school? Were you singing at church? Were you singing in the living room? Before this?
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. 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.
You go to the ballroom. How do you ultimately decide to take the stage.
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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.
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.
When the record came out?
No? Wait, wait, weren't you on stage before the record came out?
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, 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
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, 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.
And then okay.
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.
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?
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 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 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, 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.
Okay, the record is ultimately distributed by Atlantic Records. Did you have any contact with anybody Atlantic Records?
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 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 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.
Okay, your record is successful and you go on the road. Tell me about that.
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 with her, so she had to act nice.
But I was grown.
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 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 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 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.
The the Royal Jokers, not the Royal Jokers, the Five Royals band who was the leader of the fire Rolls.
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 Oh Paul, and he said, that's my brother.
I was like, Okay, how many days? How long does this tour last? This big doer, and how far from Detroit do you go?
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 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 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, and like uh frog man Henry had done. Barbara Lynn and I turned around and came home. The rest of them went north.
Okay, what kind of venues were you playing on this tour?
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 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.
Okay, you're traveling, what kind of bus? What kind of rooms are you staying in?
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. 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. And she was so nervous so whole while we were there.
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?
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. But no, that's no, there are no children in show business.
So you come off the road. Clyde McPhatter continues, But you're now back in Detroit. What happens then?
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 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,
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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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.
So what happened next, uh something.
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, 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 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 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
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 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 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 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
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. 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.
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?
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 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 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, 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 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.
Well, but you have a band and you play live dates.
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 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.
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.
I had always thought that I would die broke and unknown, and now I know I'm just gonna die broke.
Okay, when you go on the road with your band, that's not profitable.
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, 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 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. 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 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
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.
You talk about your fifth career. During that time, the business has changed dramatically.
Uh.
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, 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, how did that come to be?
But you know Kevin right, well, you know Kevin better.
Than you do me, right, that's your For those who don't know.
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 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 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 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 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, 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.
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, 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
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. 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.
Wait, you're mouthing the words from I know, but but but you can say for my audience, what example I'm.
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? And he was looking at her, perplexed with tears in his eyes. And I call it my three Stooges slap.
It was just a.
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. He produced an album on me. The interpretations out that one caused something else to happen. But I've not.
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 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?
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 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 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 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 something else to happen.
Okay, just do a little fill in for a second. How did you end up on Broadway?
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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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, 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 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 and they just had to teach me to dance, and that to two weeks, and that's how I wound up in the show.
You're right, but you stayed with the show a long time, right.
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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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.
He was it.
And he just told me so many stories and I love them.
Okay, when you were in the road show, since you brought up finances, did you make good money working in the show?
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 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 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.
But.
Pissed because I haven't got as much money as.
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 these people you're friends?
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, 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.
Okay, you have this Broadway run in a show that is touring that doesn't lead to another Broadway role.
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 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 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. 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 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.
Okay, let's go back to the Kennedy Center Honors.
Let me call Kevin. Kevin. I did not rearrange it.
You said that you couldn't sing it that way. Do you need Kevin?
No, he's here.
Well, I was just talking to you. But in any event, how did you come up with the way you wanted to sing it?
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 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. 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, 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.
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.
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 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 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 was the way I sung.
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 a baby. That's it.
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 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 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 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 good mother. They said, we got this. You go sing, and they raised her.
How many children do you have?
What?
Okay?
And be he's it?
And how many times you've been married?
Only only the times that were necessary? Three times since it is my third husband.
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?
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, 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 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 phone and call them right now.
How did you meet Kevin?
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 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 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 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 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, 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.
And which was a ring were audio only.
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 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.
That show business.
Tell me about it, baby, Okay.
You talk about this parapatetic career ups and downs?
What how did tarapathetic mean?
Well, let's leave that for another thing. That's sort of like a hollowns whatever. How did you survive.
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, 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.
They have.
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 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
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. 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 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 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, 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.
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, enough things have happened to me. Just you I met the people that know you. So many things have happened to me.
I know that.
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.
Did you ever have to get a street job?
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. 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 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, 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. And they gave me a job doing that, and then
I got tired of it. It was boring.
Wit did you get paid to do that?
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 which is three pieces, and all the teachers. It's came to see me.
Okay, you talk about your word daughter retiring, You're gonna be eighty. You theoretically could retire.
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, habits I picked up for being in this swilthy business.
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?
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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
Okay, to what degree have you experienced racism and to what degree do you believe it affected your career.
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.
Okay.
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 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 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.
And she.
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? 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
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 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 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 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.
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.
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?
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 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
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 to a traditional writer. I would think it more about it compared to a musician.
Do you that the label you consider yourself a writer?
Yes, first and foremost.
More than in the end of view or.
Love to get people's stories. This is something I've done, irrelevant of having a podcast.
Have you ever read your column? I looked at it. I don't mean before you post it. I mean after you posted.
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 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,
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?
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 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 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.
Okay, actually I do sleep, but I'm not that different from you.
How many hours do you sleep?
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.
But it means like your damn head with bursts. I mean, well, I don't this is what happens.
I'm doing this twenty four to seven.
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.
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.
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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 about me, that is a tremendous hope to me possibly having a sixth.
Well, there's a Yiddish term called kevelling, and that I can't respond.
Say it cavelling, cavell.
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 what I'm trying to do now. The fact that you get the fact that you get it is.
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, 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.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You and me both know in order to be successful, you have to have no other choice.
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 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 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 be watching it to know it.
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, 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.
The English management company.
They manage Iron Maiden. Oh okay, And then since nineteen eighty six, this is what I've been doing.
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.
I definitely we're talking about office. The most important thing to me is to walk the knife edge, split the hair.
What you sound like in a journey?
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 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.
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 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. I'm glad that you tell people about it more literally than just what they ate.
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, 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 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, 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 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 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.
You know that.
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, and they know the system is against them, but they're doing.
What they have to.
But unless you're in that world, people don't understand that.
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.
And well what bothers me now is because the barrier to entry is non existent. Anybody can make a record.
Of their bubble.
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 anybody else?
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, 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.
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.
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 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, 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 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 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 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, in the milial set in a small place.
Well, we're on the same page here.
I know.
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 know it's like you know it when you hear it.
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 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.
Well that's a whole nother thing.
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 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 on the little beautif thing. What I said, finally a man that I can argue with.
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.
So this is important. You four? When is your birthday?
April?
And Aries and Aries?
No, no, Taurus.
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. 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.
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?
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 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?
That's exactly who I am.
You are married. You aren't married.
I was married once. I am now with the same girlfriend for twenty years. We lived together.
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.
And she also play this for her.
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, 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. And I'm not a housewife.
We're on the same page, I know.
And that's how come nobody likes us. Wait a minute, but everybody wants to know what we've got to say.
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.
Didn't I tell you to put me out at a choir?
Right?
So?
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 are hungry for the truth.
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 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 why I said it. But it's not to apologize.
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 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, I'm continuing to do it.
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 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?
Well, the thing is bout seven. I'm seventy two.
Well, we age actually in groups of five, so you're eight.
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, I say this about myself.
You can like me or not like me.
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.
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 see someone exactly like me. Maybe one day I'll run into myself.
Well, we're all looking to be known and understood.
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 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 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 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 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.
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