Bettye LaVette plays The Ark Sunday.

photo by Carol Friedman

You know the old show-biz cliche: “When (so-and-so) sings a song, it’s his (or hers) forever!”

Well, Bettye LaVette definitely subscribes to the underlying philosophy behind that old saw. She doesn’t see any point in covering a song unless there is something about it that she can relate to, so that she can bring something of herself to it — to give it a new, more personal interpretation.

LaVette, the smoldering-soul singer who spent almost all of her life in Detroit before moving to New Jersey six years ago, definitely applied that ethic on her new album, “Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook.” On the disc, she completely deconstructs 13 songs written (or popularized) by British artists in the ‘60s and ‘70s, strips them down, and burrows inside of them, in many cases finding new meanings in well-known songs.

Among the songs on the new disc are: The Beatles’ “The Word,” Derek & the Dominos’ “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad,” Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” the Rolling Stones’ “Salt of the Earth,” the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin,” George Harrison’s “Isn’t It a Pity,” Led Zeppelin’s “All My Love”; and “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” which was a hit for the Animals in the mid-’60s. Listen to Bettye LaVette "All My Love" (MP3).

LaVette, who comes to The Ark on Sunday, explains the standard she used when deciding if a song would “make the cut” for the album: “I can’t sing just anything. Choosing a song to record, and then perform onstage, is like choosing someone to go to bed with — it’s a very personal thing. It has to be something that I feel a connection to, because these words are going to be coming out of my mouth.”

The seeds for the project were planted when LaVette delivered a gritty interpretation of the Who’s “Love Reign O’er Me” at the Kennedy Center Honors in December of ’08, when Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey were two of the honorees.

Bettye LaVette performing “Love Reign O’er Me” live this spring:

The ceremony was later televised on network TV, so that performance exposed LaVette to millions of music fans who may or may not have heard her fractured-soul 2005 “comeback” album, “I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise,” or her roadhouse-Southern-soul follow-up, “Scene of the Crime” (‘07). (Both of which came after 30-some years of working the Detroit-area club circuit without a record contract.)

That live performance is also included on the new disc.

“So, since that was so successful, my husband suggested I do an album of rock songs, and include some British songs, and he talked to my record company about it, and they said, ‘Well, why not do just British rock songs?’,” relays LaVette by phone from her current home in West Orange, New Jersey.

“The Word” is one of the strongest cuts on the disc. LaVette and her band turn it into a funky soul workout; LaVette shouts, in her grainy-sultry voice, “Say it! Say the word! Love!,” as she’s prodded on by punchy horns. “I liked the lyrics,” said LaVette, “but the Beatles' original just had too much of a Top 40 feel, and sounded too youthful, for an older black female R&B singer like me,” says LaVette, now in her mid-60s. “I just knew I wanted it to be funkier.”

Funkier yet is “Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad,” with its syncopated, start-and-stop groove and fat bass line. “The original, to my ear, had that bar-band rock n' roll sound, and I just knew I wanted to put it in a groove.”

LaVette’s touring band is still led by Al Hill, the former longtime Ann Arbor R&B pianist, singer and bandleader who moved to Nashville a few years ago. He serves as LaVette’s keyboard player and musical director, and the other members of her band all live in the Detroit area — guitarist Brett Lucas, bassist Chuck Bartels and drummer Darryl Pierce.

Many of the songs on “Interpretations” feature simmering, slow-burn treatments and languid tempos. “I guess I’m a pretty down-slow, b flat minor type,” says LaVette with one her trademark husky laughs.

One example is Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” — originally written as a lament for, and reminiscence of, Syd Barrett, who’d been dismissed from the band several years earlier after his mental breakdown. LaVette took the song and re-cast it as a personal remembrance of her old friends from the Motown scene of the ‘60s, when she had a hit record as a teenager — before her career got derailed by bad luck, poor management and record company neglect.

“I was thinking about the people who had championed me back in the ‘60s, who are gone now but who looked out for me, and took me on the road with them, like Marvin Gaye and the guys in the Temptations,” says LaVette. “I was thinking about how I wished they were here, to see things finally happening for me.” (Otis Williams is the only original member of the Tempts who is still alive.)

LaVette also reimagines Harrison’s elegiac, wistful “Isn’t It a Pity” as something more universal, to apply to today’s troubled times and the divisiveness in America. “There is definitely a sad quality to that melody. And, with the condition the world is in, and with all of the hateful and disgusting things that some people in this country have been saying about President Obama… I wanted to address that, and talk about what a pity that is.”

Although LaVette is now a Jersey-ite, she still often comes back “home” — both to visit family and to work. Her daughter is a teacher in the Detroit public schools, her grandson is a student at Wayne State, and she was just in Detroit in early June for her granddaughter’s graduation from Cass Tech.

“Plus,” she adds, sassily, “my band is there, honey, so I have to come back there if I want to rehearse!”

Kevin Ransom, a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com, previously interviewed Bettye LaVette for the Ann Arbor News in 2005 and 2009. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.