R&B vocalist Bettye LaVette was a teenager living with her parents in Detroit when the burgeoning Motown sound was beginning to burge.

Born Betty Haskins in Muskegon, Michigan, she was only 16 when she warbled at a teenage dance and caught the ear of a local singer who was on the hunt for talent for an older female producer, whom Berry Gordy Jr. once credited with teaching him some of the tricks of the recording game.

“I was 16-years-old in Detroit and getting involved in recording was a typical thing to do. Everybody else was doing it. Everybody was making records, people were putting things to together. In ‘62, segregation was very big, so everybody knew everybody.”

As early as 1959 came some great Detroit records that hit the top ten, “You’re so Fine” by the Falcons and “Money” by Barrett Strong, the first Motown label record to place well on the charts. But when LaVette entered the music game in ‘62, Motown was hardly the might Hitsville U.S.A. it became. The Supremes were freshly minted from the Primettes and the Temptations were one record away from their career as the Primes. Detroit records like “Hello Stranger” by Barbara Lewis were racing up the charts.

“I knew everybody who got there start at the time. We were all in the exact same place at the very same time. Everybody was older. Except Stevie Wonder, who was younger than me.”

LaVette hit the national charts with her first release, “My Man He‘s A Lovin’ Man” done in an early Ike & Tina Turner style in a youthful voice she describes as sounding like Minnie Mouse. “I never sounded like a woman, when I sounded like Minnie Mouse…straight to sounding like to James Brown.” In fact, LaVette couldn’t name any female singers she listened to in the day. “Little Willie John, Jimmy Reed, Bobby Bland and Jackie Wilson. I didn’t have any women I particularly liked, at 16.”

The hits kept on rolling on until the 1980s when she got signed by Motown, her way-back hometown label which found her working in all places, Nashville.

With influences like these, LaVette refers to her 48 years of recording as influencing what she’ll be doing at the upcoming Long Beach Blues Festival. “It’s from a 75 to 90 minute show. I’m covering the entire 48 years with things you’d expect to hear from a woman like me,” which will include the songs that got her attention at the beginning to those found in her brand new CD.