"Don't You Ever Get Tired Of Hurting Me?" by Bettye Swann
In which Ms. Champion leaves Arcadia looking for fortune and finds her way to Dolphin's.
“Today I Started Loving You Again”:
Dolphin’s of Hollywood was not actually located in Hollywood, but rather on Central Avenue, in the heart of South Central Los Angeles. In the first half of the twentieth century, there was an unofficial ban on black-owned businesses in Tinseltown. The name of Dolphin’s store, then, was an act of good-natured spite, proprietor John Dolphin having once quipped: “If blacks can’t go to Hollywood, I’ll bring Hollywood to blacks.”
Dolphin’s operated twenty-four hours a day, and in addition to the record store, boasted a live radio broadcast and a recording studio. Dolphin was an adept producer and an even shrewder businessman: he bought airtime on the predominantly white station KRKD and broadcast live from the front window of his store, bringing much-needed attention to the black artists who were habitually overshadowed by their paler peers. One of the most notable beneficiaries of Dolphin’s altruism were The Penguins, whose epochal smash “Earth Angel” (#1 R&B, #8 Pop) was first heard on a live broadcast from Dolphin’s.
John Dolphin seems to have genuinely had his artists’ best interests at heart. He is widely recalled as having always encouraging his acts to retain their publishing, the key to true financial success in the music industry. But some of them were unconvinced: in early 1958, a disgruntled employee, Percy Ivy, suspecting Dolphin of withholding royalties owed him, marched into Dolphin’s office and shot him to death, in broad daylight, in front of several witnesses. Shortly thereafter, his widow Ruth took over the business.
Into this rugged milieu entered one Betty Jean Champion, an eighteen-year old daughter of agricultural workers. Born in Shreveport, Louisiana and raised in nearby Arcadia, Champion had come West to live with her sister.
“Probably the way I got into show business was that I was always singing something,” Swanna recalled to Las Vegas CityLife in 2005. “I wasn’t aware all the time that I was singing, but people brought it to my attention.”
“Make Me Yours”:
One of those people was local DJ Al Scott, who became her manager and introduced her to Ruth Dolphin. Champion has said that she always thought swans were “lovely”. And so when Ruth Dolphin signed Betty Champion to her own Money Records, she was re-christened Bettye Swann. Together with virtuoso guitarist and producer Arthur Wright, they began recording some of Swann’s original compositions. After several false starts, one of these, “Make Me Yours” (#1 R&B, #21 Pop) was a national smash. After a series of follow-ups charted first poorly and then not at all, Swann retreated Southward again, landing in Athens, Georgia. There, she acquired a new manager (and eventual husband) in the form of veteran promotor George Barton.
Motown Records was sniffing around, but Barton directed Bettye back to the West Coast, where she signed with Capitol Records in 1968. Paired with young producer Arthur Shuler, her first album, The Soul View Now! was a commercially and artistically successful amalgam of soul and country, two disparate styles which Swann merged seamlessly.
For the follow-up, Don’t You Ever Get Tired Of Hurting Me?, Shuler was once again the producer and country-soul once again the wheelhouse. Also returning was the band of stalwart backing musicians from The Soul View Now!. The world would later know them as the Wrecking Crew.
“Little Things Mean A Lot”:
The Hank Cochran-penned title track is the perfect mixture of laid-back California country and tender Southern soul, anchored by Carol Kaye’s strutting bass and the desolate ache that was Swann’s vocal trademark. “Today I Started Loving You Again” one of two Merle Haggard songs here, bobs and weaves beneath blaring horns.
“Little Things Mean A Lot” bears a spare, swaying arrangement which leaves ample space for Swann’s sultry, heartsick vocals. Speaking of sultry, her version of Tammy Wynette’s deathless “Stand By Your Man”, while no match for Candi Staton’s, is delivered convincingly by Swann in an uptempo, swinging arrangement.
The cheater’s indictment “You’re Up To Your Old Tricks Again” rides a rollicking piano-and-brass groove into the shimmering sunset. Tony Joe White’s “Willie and Laura Mae Jones” here appears in a funked-down, luminescent version, with Swann’s voice invoking her days spent working in the Bienville Parish fields.
Bettye pushes her voice to its breaking point on the throbbing “Traces”, one of the best songs on Don’t You Ever Get Tired Of Hurting Me?. A sped-up version of Otis Redding’s “Chained and Bound” and a slowed-down, stop-start take on Smokey Robinson’s “Ain’t That Peculiar” (with a very tasty James Burton guitar track) confirm Swann’s mastery of deep soul.
Released in 1969, Don’t You Ever Get Tired Of Hurting Me? was the last album Bettye Swann recorded for Capitol, not least of all because of its dismal chart performance: none of its released singles cracked the Top 100, and the album never made the charts. But one wonders if other forces were at play. Legend has it that Swann’s “Today I Started Loving You Again” began life as a downtempo duet with Buck Owens, but the Capitol brass had a conniption at the possible ramifications of this interracial duet and shelved the single. It’s quite possible that this audacious move scared them off of promoting the album altogether.
Whatever the reason, Bettye Swann left Capitol in 1970, signing first with FAME in 1971, where she released just one unsuccessful single, then Atlantic in 1972, where she had several sizable R&B hits, but no LP was released. Her final public appearance came in 1980, the same year that saw the passing of George Barton. She retired her stage name, and, now known simply as Betty Barton, became a Las Vegas schoolteacher and a Jehovah’s Witness. Stricken with a degenerative spinal disease, she passed away in October of 2022. She left behind a legacy of beautiful music, of which Don’t You Ever Get Tired Of Hurting Me? is an indisputable highlight, a timeless country-soul classic.
“Chained and Bound”: