If Bettye LaVette were white instead of black, and had lived in obscurity for decades instead of trying to make it right under our noses, with only a tiny bit of success, she’d be the new Susan Boyle.

Or let me put it this way…  If Susan Boyle’s album had come with a free copy of Ms. LaVette’s, Bettye would be on a sold-out concert tour at this very minute.

I know you’ve seen the hype.  It’s all been in print, where baby boomers lie, but since so many of them still buy CDs, or no music at all, they’ve not heard "Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook".  But if they did, they’d tell everybody they knew about it, it would be this year’s Norah Jones.  You know, the debut, that infiltrated the public consciousness slowly, but ended up selling in excess of ten million units.  Sure, nothing can move that amount of product anymore, but that doesn’t mean something can’t become ubiquitous, with so many places to hear music, to experience it, like YouTube.

On the surface, it’s a covers album.  But it’s not.  It’s more akin to those Joe Cocker takes, like "With A Little Help From My Friends", where you know the originals, but what’s coming out of the speakers is different.  This ain’t "American Idol".  These are not covers, they’re interpretations!  Incredibly intriguing.  As great as Ringo Starr’s "It Don’t Come Easy" is, Bettye’s take is equally good, well close, and hits you in a completely different way.

Hell, Ringo should cancel his All Starr Band tour and go out with Ms. LaVette.  As should all the other writers/performers of these classic tracks.  That’s something we want to see.  At least make it a PBS pledge break show.  Or how about July 4th, fuck the fireworks, put on the real explosion, music!

If you’re over forty, buy this album sight unseen.  Just log on to iTunes and lay your money down.  You’ll thank me.

If you weren’t alive when these songs made it to begin with, if you’re under twenty five, you’ll love this album too. Not experiencing the originals in real time, there’s no issue of sacrilege, these numbers sound brand new.

If you’re over twenty five…  If you’re wearing skinny jeans and living in Brooklyn, salivating over bands with weak singers and weak sounds, you’re gonna pooh-pooh this.  And ain’t that just the point…sometimes something’s so mainstream that it’s just right.  So simple, you slap yourself in the forehead and say "I could have had a V8!"

This is as important as Tina Turner’s ’84 comeback "Private Dancer".  But it’s 2010, twenty five years later, and we haven’t had an overlooked star deliver something so right in the interim.  Everybody’s focusing on image, social marketing, but almost unknowns went into the studio and created this gem, that I can’t help but tell you about.

It don’t come easy.  I can’t imagine today’s kids, needing fame, wanting to get paid, hanging on half a century to finally reach their time, but that’s what Ms. LaVette has done.  And we’re the beneficiaries.