Bettye LaVette

Today on NPR's talk show Fresh Air Terry Gross was interviewing a singer named Bettye LaVette. LaVette is a Soul singer who has a long, irregular career and now at age 61 she's currently having a big comeback. I missed the beginning of the interview and tuned in as they were playing a really amazing Ballad, slow, raspy, great phrasing. That's the most important thing, of course, but then Bettye LaVette started telling her life story. She says she started singing at 18 months. This is the first leg of the five Sun-VenusRx conjunctions within an 8 year cycle so I made a note to try to check out her chart for this configuration later on. I've been dying to get hold of a clean chart that shows if this cycle works in someone's life, an artist would be a great example, especially a female singer. Next, LaVette said that she got her first record deal at Age 16. That's two Sun-Venus Rx cycles. I'm getting pretty excited.

Then Terry Gross asked about some strange circumstances with Managers, they were either killed or disappeared. Bettye LaVette said something like, "For every 5 years there's an interesting story." 5 year cycles = Nodal squares?

LaVette recorded her first album in 1962 and had a big hit off of it. Her career has been kind of erratic. She's got Sun, Venus and Mercury in a 10 degree stellium in Aquarius which doesn't mind sporadic experiences as much as some other signs. She recorded an album for Atlantic Records in 1972 that she thought was great but Atlantic shelved it and even claimed it was lost. For 6 years she toured on Broadway in the musical Bubbling Brown Sugar. In 1999 a French producer heard a tape of the lost album she had recorded for Atlantic and went looking for the original recording and found it and reissued it. The album was a hit and now, at age 61 LaVette is a comeback kid whose had multiple hit albums within the last 5 years or so.

I'm not sure of LaVette's true birthdate. I've found the dates Jan. 26 and Jan. 29 and am using Jan. 29 because it came up more often.

Bettye LaVette
b. Jan. 29, 1946, Muskegon, Michigan

Sun 10 Aquarius; Moon Sagittarius or Capricorn; NN 30 Gemini

Venus wasn't Retrograde when LaVette was born but it was conjunct her Sun. This conjunction is very strongly placed in a Kite in her chart. There's an opposition between Sun-Venus and Pluto in Leo and includes an outer planet Air Grand Trine between Pluto 11 Leo trine Uranus 14 Gemini trine Neptune 9 Libra. Almost all the major recording deals she talked about came when the Nodal Axis was conjunct her opposition in this Grand Trine.

1962 - Transiting Saturn c. t. SN is conjunct natal Sun-Venus with NN conjunct n. Pluto and with Neptune squaring from Scorpio.

1972 - Transiting NN conjunct natal Sun-Venus with t. SN c. natal Pluto. This would have been close to her first Progressed Moon Return. I don't have her Moon placement though. Her Moon may be conjunct her South Node.

1999 - t. NN c. n. Pluto opposite natal Sun-Venus (with long transits of Uranus and Neptune passing over). This was also would have been close to her 2d progressed Moon Return. At some point during the mid-90's her progressed Mercury went Retrograde. Sometimes when Mercury goes Retrograde by transit it is said to bring up one's past. Maybe this happens with Progressions as well.

At any rate, this shows this Sun-Venus connection but not as a Venus Rx cycle as I had hoped. She has a strong Kite Pattern which was heavily affected by Nodal transits along with the planets. The comment about how a strange thing happens every 5 years could also be attributed to the Nodes as transiting squares and oppositions. I don't have the circumstances in order to figure that out.