After one more Atlantic release, 1963's "You'll Never Change," LaVette moved back to
Lupine for her third record, "Witchcraft in the Air." After a stint as a featured vocalist with
the Don Gardner & Dee Dee Ford Revue, she recorded the long-unreleased "One Thin Dime" for
Scepter before resurfacing on
Calla with the 1965 lost classic "Let Me Down Easy," her only other record to crack the R&B Top 20. Two more
Calla efforts -- the fine "Only Your Love Can Save Me" and "I'm Just a Fool for You" -- preceded a shift to
Big Wheel, where after just one single, "I'm Holding On," LaVette again moved along, this time to the Karen imprint for "Hey Love."
Following stays at Silver Fox ("He Made a Woman Out of Me," "Do Your Duty"), SSS International ("Take Another Piece of My Heart"), and her own TCA imprint ("Never My Love"), LaVette returned to Atlantic, signing to their
Atco division for 1972's
Neil Young cover "Heart of Gold." An LP, Child of the Seventies, was also recorded at Muscle Shoals Studios, but
Atco opted against its release after the failure of the single "Your Turn to Cry" (the album was reissued, complete with bonus tracks, in limited copies by Rhino in 2006). After joining the touring company of the Broadway musical Bubbling Brown Sugar, LaVette briefly signed to
West End for a disco effort, 1978's "Doin' the Best I Can."
She did not record again until 1982, landing at
Motown and rechristening herself "Bettye." However, despite a heavy promotional push, neither the LP Tell Me a Lie nor the single "Right in the Middle (Of Falling in Love)" proved her long-awaited chart breakthrough, and outside of a handful of recordings for
Motor City during the '90s, she focused primarily on live appearances in the years to follow. The 2000s found her in the recording studio more frequently with new albums A Woman Like Me being released by the
Blues Express label in 2003 followed by I've Got My Own Hell to Raise in 2005 on the
Anti label. In 2006, Take Another Little Piece of My Heart, a collection of Silver Fox singles as well as other material, all of which had been recorded in Memphis between 1969 and 1970, came out on
Varèse Sarabande. The Scene of the Crime appeared on
Anti in 2007. LaVette next tackled classic songs by
the Beatles,
the Rolling Stones,
Pink Floyd, and
the Who, among others, on 2010's Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook, which she co-produced with
Rob Mathes and Michael Stevens.
LaVette celebrated her 50th year as a performer in 2012 by releasing Thankful 'n' Thoughtful, covering songs by
the Black Keys, Sly Stone,
Tom Waits,
Neil Young, and
Bob Dylan, among others, and also issued her autobiography, A Woman Like Me. LaVette reunited with producer
Joe Henry, who had been behind the controls for The Scene of the Crime, for 2015's Worthy, her first album for the British
Cherry Red label. LaVette next signed with
Verve Records, which released 2018's Things Have Changed. The album found LaVette interpreting 12 songs by
Bob Dylan; Steve Jordan produced the sessions, and
Keith Richards played guitar on the track "Political World." ~ Jason Ankeny