Bettye LaVette says she’d rather be a “whore than a slut”.
Bettye LaVette says she’d rather be a ‘whore than a slut‘
The 77-year-old soul veteran, who has just bought out her new album ‘LaVette!’, admitted she was always a wild child and grew up craving sex – before her showbiz life temporarily collapsed and she ended up working as a prostitute in New York.
She told The Daily Telegraph: “I never wanted to be a kid. I think I only wanted to walk and talk so I could lose my virginity!
“They wouldn’t have let me be in the church choir or join the girl scouts!”
Bettye got pregnant at 14, was married and divorced at 15 and by 16 had brought out her first single, ‘My Man, he’s a Lovin’ Man’.
Born Betty Jo Haskins in Muskegon, Michigan, in 1946, she said about her tumultuous love life: “I adored my daughter’s father. He was lovely and everybody knew that if I stayed home with the baby he’d never leave me.
“But I had the baby and left him. My mother and sister told me to go touring and they’d look after the baby.”
Bettye ended up not touring and after a few months of living at home, she'd become hooked on drugs and crashed out of showbiz – and wound up working as a prostitute in Manhattan.
She said: “I’d rather be a whore than a slut. You don’t lose any part of your soul if you see a guy you like and go to bed with him.
“If that guy decided to give me a bit of money, I wouldn’t feel any different. “I’d rather go to bed with a hundred men and have a hundred dollars at the end of the night than go to bed with a hundred men and wake up with nothing.”
Bettye brought out her raunchy memoir ‘A Woman Like Me’ in 2012 and used it to reveal how she was born into a wild family.
She said in the book: “I was born into a heavy drinking family. Early on I became – and I remain – a serious drinker.
“I make no apologies for this.”
But she stressed her parents weren’t alcoholics, telling the Telegraph: “I never said that word. Words are important. Like Ray Charles used to say, ‘You’re only a junkie if you can’t afford your own drugs.’
“I never saw my mum falling down drunk. My parents worked hard.”