It Haven’t Been Easy (Discovery /Antone’s)
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entity, best known as the hardy
creation of nature that knits together the borders of Texas and Louisiana.
Though it can rise and swell with rain or run low in the high summer, it never
changes direction, ever-flowing into the mighty Gulf of Mexico. Miss Lavelle
White might be able to tell you a thing or about the Sabine, having been born
in Louisiana but raised in Texas, and if she can’t tell you, she can certainly
make you hear it. White is blessed with a voice from God — rich and soulful,
winding and snaking its way through funky, soulful territory. For her second
outing on the Antone’s label, It Haven’t Been Easy, that voice flows
like the river, warm, liquid blues pouring over a solid bottom of rocky
rhythms. You just can’t get enough of her classic sound, churning for four
decades, steeped in a Sixties Memphis soul tradition, but comfortably
contemporary. White’s songwriting imprint is on nine of the album’s 12 tracks,
and she wends her way from butt-shakers like “Wootie Boogie” to torchy
showstoppers like “Mississippi My Home” and “Don’t Let My Baby Ride” with stops
at familiar titles like her re-make of Eddie Floyd’s “I’ve Never Found a Man to
Love” and the late Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “Lonely Lonely Nights.” This is
dance music, honey, belly-rubbin’ blues of the finest kind from one of the
masters of the genre. You expect Miss Lavelle White to be good; what you don’t
expect is that she would be so great.
4.0 Stars — Margaret Moser
This article appears in February 7 • 1997 and February 7 • 1997 (Cover).