[5] Picked up by Atlantic Records, LaVette's disc became a major R&B hit over the fall and winter of 1963–64 – eventually reaching the R&B Top Ten – resulting in LaVette touring with such Atlantic Records R&B hitmakers as Clyde McPhatter, Ben E. King, Barbara Lynn, and rising star Otis Redding.

Titled Child of the Seventies, it was produced by Brad Shapiro and featured the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, now known as The Swampers, but Atco chose not to issue the album.

She briefly gave up recording for a six-year run in the Broadway smash Bubbling Brown Sugar,[1] appearing alongside Honi Coles and Cab Calloway.

[8] In 1999, he finally discovered the masters and then licensed the album from Atlantic and released it in 2000 as Souvenirs on his Art and Soul label.

(Other notable songwriters on the album were Aimee Mann, Sinéad O'Connor, Lucinda Williams, Joan Armatrading, and Dolly Parton.

In 2006, capitalizing on the success of I've Got My Own Hell To Raise and the reviews of her live shows, Child of the Seventies was reissued by Rhino Handmade with some previously unreleased tracks.

Varèse Sarabande then issued Take Another Little Piece of My Heart, a CD containing all of the songs that she cut for Silver Fox and SSS International in 1969 and 1970.

Her 2007 album, The Scene of the Crime, was mostly recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with alt rockers Drive-By Truckers.

The Scene of the Crime was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Contemporary Blues Album" and landed on numerous "Best of 2007" lists.

LaVette talked about her experiences at Muscle Shoals Sound and FAME in an interview conducted by Edd Hurt in September 2007.

In December 2008 at the Kennedy Center Honors, LaVette sang her version of 1973's "Love, Reign o'er Me" in tribute to Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who, who were among the year's honorees.

[12] On January 18, 2009, at the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial she performed a duet of Sam Cooke's 1964 song "A Change Is Gonna Come" with Jon Bon Jovi.

In 2009 Sundazed released on CD the album Do Your Duty, which consisted of her eleven solo tracks cut for Silver Fox and SSS International.

She has appeared in a Mississippi Public Broadcasting series, Blues Divas, and is in a film of the same name, both produced by Robert Mugge.

LaVette contributed a cover of "Most of the Time" for the album Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International.

Lavette performed a rendition of the song "Ain't No Way", which she mentioned was written by Carolyn Franklin, her younger sister, with whom Bettye was friends.

The film featured an interview between director Bernard MacMahon and LaVette in which they discussed her "heartfelt recollections of being pushed away from early blues as 'Uncle Tomish' in the '60s.