Bettye LaVette is an old-school soul singer who had something of a comeback a few years ago with "The Scene of the Crime," a CD cut with the Drive-By Truckers, of all people. But it's a nice pairing, with the band giving LaVette room to shine on a variety of cover songs.
For some reason I chose that album to listen to while cleaning a cluttered half of my garage. Not sure why, but I'm glad I did. It's a great album, with excellent songs top to bottom.
But one song stands tall and that's "Talking Old Soldiers," a gritty re-telling of an old Elton John/Bernie Taupin song. LaVette gives, as AllMusic says, "the most incredible reading of Elton John's "Talking Old Soldiers," a sultry, sad ballad that is completely reinvented here. John doesn't own it anymore, even if he and Bernie Taupin did write it. The emptiness of her surroundings surrounds the protagonist, and there is nothing but vastness and the curse of memory and the frailty of age to express the ultimate truth of life's only promise: the graveyard."
Well said.