"A change is gonna come," Bettye LaVette famously sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in January.

Of course, she was referring to Barack Obama, soon to be inaugurated as president. She also could have been referring to her own career. After 48 years as an obscure R&B singer, the underappreciated LaVette finally stepped into the national spotlight for two stunning televised performances: the Who's "Love, Reign O'er Me" at the Kennedy Center Honors and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" at the Obama pre-inaugural concert.

However on Thursday night at the sold-out Dakota Jazz Club, LaVette, 63, didn't want to celebrate her overdue ascent to national attention (she hardly mentioned it), but rather she wanted to honor the fifth anniversary of her playing at the Dakota, one of the few clubs on a summer itinerary filled with outdoor festivals and arts-center appearances.

Playing her first one-night stand at the Dakota, LaVette was in great form, sort of demonstrating the best of her semi-annual Minneapolis appearances. She remains the most deeply emotional and physically emotive R&B singer on the planet. When she sings, she gets in touch with the deep recesses of her psyche and soul.

Imagine Otis Redding's pleading style of Southern R&B rendered with Tina Turner's leathery lungs, delivered with more emotion than Janis Joplin could summon.

With LaVette wearing a backless black halter top, the aching tension in her muscles was as evident as the agonizing grimaces on her face. No one experiences and purges pain in song like this tiny dynamo from Detroit.

While offering "Choices," a cry-in-my-beer soliloquy about bad decisions in life made famous by the great country singer George Jones, LaVette was choking up with pain. After her guitarist played a weeping pedal steel-like coda, LaVette had to take a deep, deep breath. So did the audience.

That was one of three transcendent moments in the 80-minute opening set. The others were "Talking Old Soldiers," with Bernie Taupin lyrics and an Elton John tune, slowed to a funereal pace, and the closing, a cappella rendition of Sinead O'Connor's "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got," a note of strength after an evening of pain.

That LaVette didn't sing "A Change Is Gonna Come" or "Love, Reign O'er Me" didn't really matter. She didn't want to signal a change; she wanted to give an indelible valedictory performance at her favorite Dakota.

Jon Bream • 612-673-1719