Bettye Swann
b. Betty Jean Champion 24 October 1944, Shreveport, Louisiana, USA. This superior singer first recorded during the early '60s as a member of the Fawns. A Carolyn Franklin song, Don't Wait Too Long, provided Bettye with a solo hit in 1965, but her career was more fully launched two years later with an US R&B chart-topper, the beautiful Make Me Yours. Subsequent recordings established the singer's reputation as an imaginative interpreter of country/soul. Her versions of Merle Haggard's Today I Started Loving You Again (1972) and Tammy Wynette's Til I Get It Right (1973) are superb. Swann continued this direction under the aegis of Millie Jackson producer Brad Shapiro, but her last hit to date was in 1975 with All The Way In Or All The Way Out, which reached the lower regions of the Billboard R&B chart.