Bettye LaVette Performs Tonight at Smothers Theatre

The two-time Grammy nominee and Rhythm & Blues Pioneer Award winner Bettye LaVette comes to Pepperdine University's Smothers Theatre tonight, March 4 at 8 p.m.

Tickets, priced starting at $22 for the public and $10 for full-time Pepperdine students, are available now by calling (310) 506-4522 or online at http://arts.pepperdine.edu/. More information: http://bettyelavette.com/

Bettye LaVette is no mere singer. She is an interpreter of the highest order. Whether the song originated as country, rock, pop, or blues, when she gets through with it, it is pure R&B. She gets inside a song and shapes and twists it to glean every ounce of emotional resonance from its lyrics. As music writer Rob Bowman put it, Bettye has a "near mystical ability to get inside a song's lyric, melodic line and harmonic implications," and "in the process invariably making anything she covers her own."

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Bettye did not get her start in the church, but was weaned on the country western and R&B records of the time that were playing on the jukebox in her parents' living room. After being "discovered" by the legendary Motor City music raconteur Johnnie Mae Matthews at the age of 16, Bettye released her first single, "My Man - He's a Loving Man" on Atlantic Records in the fall of 1962. The record hit #7 on the R&B charts and landed her a first national tour with Ben E. King, Clyde McPhatter, and other Atlantic stars of the time.

A multi-faceted artist, Bettye has collaborated with myriad musicians and producers over her career, including working alongside Charles "Honi" Coles and Cab Calloway from 1979 to 1982 in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Bubbling Brown Sugar, in the role of Sweet Georgia Brown.

In 2002, thanks to Shanachie Records' president Randall Grass, Bettye was introduced to Grammy Award-winning producer Dennis Walker. Dennis got her signed to the fledgling label, Blues Express, and they made her comeback album, A Woman Like Me. For her sensational work, Bettye won the coveted W.C. Handy Award in 2004 for Comeback Blues Album of the Year, as well as the Living Blues critic pick as Best Female Blues Artist of 2004.

In addition to two Grammy nominations in her career, Bettye was given the prestigious Pioneer Award by The Rhythm & Blues Foundation in 2006, as well as the Blues Music Award for Best Contemporary Female Blues Singer.

Bettye has appeared on a multitude of stages and television show across the country. She performed a critically acclaimed version of "Love Reign O'er Me" at The Kennedy Center Honors in a tribute to The Who, as well as performed "A Change Is Gonna Come" with Jon Bon Jovi for President Barack Obama on HBO's telecast of the kick-off Inaugural Celebratory concert, We Are One.

She has appeared on National Public Radio's World Cafe, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, and performed a Tiny Desk Concert. She has appeared in a Mississippi Public Broadcasting series, Blues Divas, and is in a film of the same name, both produced by award-winning filmmaker, Robert Mugge. She has also appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with David Letterman, The Conan O'Brien Show, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Lopez Tonight, Austin City Limits, The Prairie Home Companion, The Artist's Den, Good Morning America, The Today Show and The Tavis Smiley Show.

In 2012 she released both a new album, Thankful N' Thoughtful, and her autobiography, A Woman Like Me, written with David Ritz. Her most recent album, Worthy, will release on January 27, 2015.

Bettye started recording during the birth of soul music in the 1960s and continues to create vital interpretations today - a gift to songwriters and music lovers alike.

The Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts at Pepperdine University provides high-quality activities for over 50,000 people from 664 zip codes annually through performances, rehearsals, museum exhibitions, and master classes. Located on Pepperdine's breathtaking Malibu campus overlooking the Pacific, the center serves as a hub for the arts, uniquely linking professional guest artists with Pepperdine students as well as patrons from surrounding Southern California communities. Facilities include the 450-seat Smothers Theatre, the 118-seat Raitt Recital Hall, the "black box" Helen E. Lindhurst Theatre, and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art.

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