Bettye LaVette sings 'em as she hears 'em

She's 69 now, but it's been only in the last 10 years that Bettye LaVette has gained a measure of the acclaim and recognition she long deserved.

"I thought I was going to die broke and obscure," the soul singer extraordinaire says via phone from a Toronto hotel room. "Now I'm just going to die broke."

The Detroit-area native might not have reached an Aretha-like level of stardom or financial security - something that still gnaws at her - but she has made a name for herself with her searing interpretations of songs by other artists. From Fiona Apple's "Sleep to Dream" to the Who's "Love Reign O'er Me" to Ringo Starr's "It Don't Come Easy," the gospel-rooted diva has shown a remarkable ability to pour her own lifetime of experience - including four decades of disappointment and hardship before breaking through - into songs by other artists, and to make them thoroughly her own.

She does the same thing with her superb new album, Worthy, tackling numbers by Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, and such lesser-known but well-respected artists as Mickey Newbury, Randall Bramblett, and Mary Gauthier.

Take, for instance, the Beatles' "Wait." LaVette transforms the bright, up-tempo Lennon-McCartney tune into an aching, acoustic-textured ballad.

"That's the way I heard it. . . . I didn't hear it the way they heard it," LaVette says, explaining her from-the-gut approach.

Worthy reunites LaVette with Joe Henry, the noted songwriter and producer behind 2005's I've Got My Own Hell to Raise. (Though that album is widely hailed as her breakthrough, LaVette likes to point out that it was 2003's A Woman Like Me, which won the blues equivalent of a Grammy, that paved the way for the later album's success.)

This time, though, the singer is listed as co-producer with Henry.

"I can't actually be produced anymore," LaVette says. "Because I hear a song exactly the way I want to do it, except I can't explain to [the musicians] what to do. So I need an interpreter.

"No matter how much gibberish I use, Joe understands what I'm saying. I don't know how he does that."