Bettye Swann Biography
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 Swann with a solo hit in 1965, but her career was more fully launched two years later with a US R&B chart-topper, the beautiful "Make Me Yours". She then married her manager George Barton and settled in Los Angeles, California. Subsequent recordings established the singer's reputation as an imaginative interpreter of country soul. Her cover 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's producer Brad Shapiro, but her last hit was in 1975 with "All The Way In Or All The Way Out", which reached the lower regions of the Billboard R&B chart. Swann later worked with children with educational problems.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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