SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
SPRING/SUMMER, 2015
VOLUME ONE NUMBER THREE
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
SPRING/SUMMER, 2015
VOLUME ONE NUMBER THREE
DUKE ELLINGTON
April 25-May 1
ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO
May 2-May 8
ELLA FITZGERALD
May 9-15
DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER
May 16-May 22
MILES DAVIS
May 23-29
JILL SCOTT
May 30-June 5
REGINA CARTER
June 6-June 12
BETTY DAVIS
June 13-19
ERYKAH BADU
June 20-June 26
AL GREEN
June 27-July 3
CHUCK BERRY
July 4-July 10
SLY STONE
July 11-July 17
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/sep/05/miles-davis-bitches-brew-reissue
All,
Betty was waaaaaaayyyyyy "ahead of her time" (I HATE that corny phrase by the way!)...However she is clearly the real revolutionary pioneer/progenitor/inventor/hipster avatar of what Madonna and later Beyonce and their many pop music acolytes later did and tried to do BUT ON A MUCH HIGHER AND FAR FUNKIER MUSICAL AND CREATIVE LEVEL. I saw Betty perform live once in Boston in 1974 while I was in grad school and I almost passed out (with pleasure) from the experience. SHE WAS ABSOLUTELY MAGNIFICENT and not only incredibly beautiful, "sexy" (sensually sizzling is actually more like it), and truly alluring but even more importantly she was also a great, great singer and dedicated musician which is a major part of why Miles was so enthralled with her in the first place aside from her captivating looks. Her maiden name was Betty Mabry and if you have a great 1968 album of Miles entitled "Filles de Kilimanjaro" you will see Betty and her superimposed photographed image on the cover and the album contains a beautiful composition by Miles dedicated to her entitled "Madmoiselle Mabry" (!). In addition you can also see photos of her on the albums that he made in 1970 and 1971 called "Miles Live At the Fillmore East". Anyway Betty and Miles got married after a torrid courtship in 1969 and the period they were together in '69 and '70 marked the transition to a very creative period for Miles. It was Betty who was 23 years old when she and Miles got married (Miles was 43 at the time) who introduced Miles to the music of both Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone on a serious level (Betty was a close friend of both Jimi and Sly). As the article below points out Betty also recorded three legendary albums of her own in the mid 1970s which are back in print and are all now international cult classics. As Miles readily admits in his 1990 autobiography it was Betty who had the biggest and most profound impact on his new creative direction of the justly famous BITCHES BREW period (1969-1975) and helped lead Miles into the creative use and extension of funk and rock which Miles brilliantly synthesized with his mastery of Jazz forms, and which in turn influenced Betty's equally independent direction as a singer and musician who incorporated blues and Jazz forms/styles in her funk/r &b/blues identity in her own recordings. It's good to know that Betty has survived (she's 67 years old now!) and that she is finally getting the full credit and respect that she so richly deserves. In the meantime and between time check out the three recordings that she made from 1973-1976 (they're still available now in both vinyl and CD formats...
Kofi
Miles Davis: The muse who changed him, and the heady Brew that rewrote jazz
by Neil Spencer
The Guardian (UK)
Forty years ago, Miles Davis rewrote the jazz rulebook with his album
Bitches Brew – but he never would have made it without the inspiration
of the amazing Betty Mabry, as she now reveals in a rare interview
Betty and Miles Davis ringside at the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier title
fight in New York, 1971. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Corbis
As the incendiary year of 1968 dawned, Miles Dewey Davis found himself in a most unusual situation: he was no longer hip. The trumpeter had reigned as the crown prince of jazz for nearly two decades, his music mutating subtly through hard bop to the mesmeric lyricism of 1959's Kind of Blue. Where he led, others followed. To go with his music was Miles's persona as the acme of cool, aloof in immaculate mohair suits, an outsider unreachable behind an unsmiling glare, with the Zen riddle of "So What" for his signature tune.
Yet at 41 years of age, the crown prince of jazz had unaccountably slipped behind the beat of the times. He and his quintet still held court at New York's Village Gate and were still making albums of poise and invention such as Miles Smiles (1966) and Sorcerer (1967), but for a new generation weaned on Motown and Black Power, Davis and his music were suddenly passé. The young African-Americans being conscripted to fight for Uncle Sam in Vietnam went to war humming James Brown, not "So What".
Even arch jazzers in search of new frontiers were beholden to the "free" experimentalism of Ornette Coleman rather than to Miles. Still, as Miles would put it in his 1990 autobiography: "I wasn't prepared to be a memory yet." Over the next two years, he would pull off a breathtaking act of reinvention, disbanding his lauded quintet in favour of electrically charged line-ups using two drummers, two bass players and two, even three, keyboards. It was a process of exploration that culminated in 1970's Bitches Brew – an album that spawned a new genre, fusion – which has has now been lavishly reissued for its 40th anniversary. En route, the elegant suits were swapped for a garish wardrobe of suede, leather, jerkins and scarves, the respectful world of jazz clubs for noisy rock venues.
Miles's embrace of electricity split the jazz world between excitement and contempt but he remained unrepentant. "I had seen the way to the future and I was going for it like I had always done," he reflected later. "I had to change course to continue to love what I was playing."
The catalyst for Miles's change, the woman responsible for his glimpse of the future, was his new lover Betty Mabry, a 22-year-old model whom he had met late in 1967 and whom he would make his second wife a year later. Their marriage would last only a year, yet the influence of Betty Davis (she retained her married name) on Miles would be profound.
When they met, Mabry was a successful model, her stunning looks matched by a fiery spirit and a cutting-edge sensibility. She already hosted her own New York club, the Cellar, and planned to become a singer, an ambition she would realise a few years later on a trio of sassy albums. It was Betty who turned Miles's ears towards rock and funk, to James Brown and Sly Stone and especially to the cosmic forays of Jimi Hendrix, whom she knew and whose music, bafflingly, had evaded Miles's radar.
"His world was progressive jazz, plus he was a lover of classical music, so there were lots of things he hadn't picked up on," Betty told me in a very rare interview. Only recently, after the reissue of her long-deleted albums, has she re-emerged from the seclusion she entered at the close of the 1970s. She now lives in Pittsburgh, and sounded demure when we spoke, no longer the wild child.
Her influence on her ex-husband has never been forgotten, however. Speaking in 2003 about Miles's conversion to an electric groove, guitarist Carlos Santana recalled Betty as "indomitable – she couldn't be tamed. Musically, philosophically and physically, she was extreme and attractive".
The courtship was not without problems. At their first meeting, Miles patted a stool and asked Betty to "sit on my hand" – she demurred – and as he drove her home in his Lamborghini told her he "liked little girls". "I ain't no girl," she spat back.
Betty's impact on Miles is etched into Filles de Kilimanjaro, the album he released in the autumn of 1968, which featured his new wife on its sleeve and contained two tunes inspired by her, "Mademoiselle Mabry" and "Frelon Brun". Both are modelled on Hendrix riffs, respectively "The Wind Cries Mary" and "If 6 Was 9".
By then, Betty had introduced Miles to Jimi in person. The young rock god and jazz elder hit it off, the mutual fascination leading to talk about playing together. Betty's influence on Miles extended to his clothes and his drug habits: "I never took drugs. I was really into my body and I wouldn't do anything to damage myself. When I was with Miles, he was clean – he even stopped smoking. I had something to do with it, but it was his willpower," she says now. "I loved Miles's suits, but he grew fond of clothes from a place I used to shop at, Hernandos, which had Mexican designs and which would custom-make items for him."
It was also Betty who named Bitches Brew: "Miles wanted to call it Witches Brew, but I suggested Bitches Brew and he said, 'I like that.' Contrary to what some people said, there was nothing derogatory about it."
Relations between husband and wife soon soured, however. In his autobiography, Miles complained she was "too young and wild" and suspected her of having an affair with the raffish Hendrix, something she flatly denies. "I was so angry with Miles when he wrote that. It was disrespectful to Jimi and to me.
"Miles and I broke up because of his violent temper," she continues. "Other than that, it was a good experience for me because I developed creatively – Miles produced an album of mine that never came out."
Even after the pair had split at the end of 1969, they continued to see each other. "When two people are tied together you just have to find a way through it," she adds phlegmatically.
Away from Miles, Betty had her own career to build. Her eponymous first album featured a stellar line-up put together by Sly Stone drummer Greg Errico and including the Pointer Sisters on backing vocals. Its tough funk grooves were fronted by vocals that rasped, rocked and screamed with something between delight and threat.
The subsequent They Say I'm Different and Nasty Gal likewise presented her as a proud, predatory woman beholden to no man with cuts including "If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up", "He Was a Big Freak" and "Nasty Gal", the last declaring: "You dragged my name in the mud… but I used to leave you hanging in bed by your fingernails." There has been a widespread assumption that Betty's songs referred to her ex-husband (or to Hendrix) but she claims she was merely "exercising my creativity".
Despite critical acclaim, none of her albums achieved much commercial success (a fourth was never released), their cause not helped by radio's aversion to their sexual explicitness (pretty mild by today's standards), but her talent was never in doubt. "She was the first Madonna, but Madonna was like Donny Osmond by comparison," reckoned Carlos Santana.
By contrast, Miles's move into fusion won him a new generation of fans. Following 1969's transitional In a Silent Way, the electric storm of Bitches Brew in 1970 became the biggest-selling jazz album in history, shifting 500,000 copies instead of the 60,000 usually commanded by his releases.
The influence of Hendrix is all over Brew. Like Electric Ladyland, it's primarily a studio creation, complete with splices and special effects, while "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" echoes Jimi's "Voodoo Chile". In 1970, the two men even appeared on the same bill at the Isle of Wight festival before an audience of 600,000. Miles arrived on stage in a red leather jacket and blue rhinestone trousers.
Many of Miles's accomplices would go on to write their own careers in "fusion", among them Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea and Larry Young. For drummer Jack De Johnette, the process that created Bitches Brew, while thrilling, had human as much as artistic origins: "It was a midlife crisis played out through experimental jazz."
Bitches Brew (Legacy Edition) is out now on Sony Jazz
Yet at 41 years of age, the crown prince of jazz had unaccountably slipped behind the beat of the times. He and his quintet still held court at New York's Village Gate and were still making albums of poise and invention such as Miles Smiles (1966) and Sorcerer (1967), but for a new generation weaned on Motown and Black Power, Davis and his music were suddenly passé. The young African-Americans being conscripted to fight for Uncle Sam in Vietnam went to war humming James Brown, not "So What".
Even arch jazzers in search of new frontiers were beholden to the "free" experimentalism of Ornette Coleman rather than to Miles. Still, as Miles would put it in his 1990 autobiography: "I wasn't prepared to be a memory yet." Over the next two years, he would pull off a breathtaking act of reinvention, disbanding his lauded quintet in favour of electrically charged line-ups using two drummers, two bass players and two, even three, keyboards. It was a process of exploration that culminated in 1970's Bitches Brew – an album that spawned a new genre, fusion – which has has now been lavishly reissued for its 40th anniversary. En route, the elegant suits were swapped for a garish wardrobe of suede, leather, jerkins and scarves, the respectful world of jazz clubs for noisy rock venues.
Miles's embrace of electricity split the jazz world between excitement and contempt but he remained unrepentant. "I had seen the way to the future and I was going for it like I had always done," he reflected later. "I had to change course to continue to love what I was playing."
The catalyst for Miles's change, the woman responsible for his glimpse of the future, was his new lover Betty Mabry, a 22-year-old model whom he had met late in 1967 and whom he would make his second wife a year later. Their marriage would last only a year, yet the influence of Betty Davis (she retained her married name) on Miles would be profound.
When they met, Mabry was a successful model, her stunning looks matched by a fiery spirit and a cutting-edge sensibility. She already hosted her own New York club, the Cellar, and planned to become a singer, an ambition she would realise a few years later on a trio of sassy albums. It was Betty who turned Miles's ears towards rock and funk, to James Brown and Sly Stone and especially to the cosmic forays of Jimi Hendrix, whom she knew and whose music, bafflingly, had evaded Miles's radar.
"His world was progressive jazz, plus he was a lover of classical music, so there were lots of things he hadn't picked up on," Betty told me in a very rare interview. Only recently, after the reissue of her long-deleted albums, has she re-emerged from the seclusion she entered at the close of the 1970s. She now lives in Pittsburgh, and sounded demure when we spoke, no longer the wild child.
Her influence on her ex-husband has never been forgotten, however. Speaking in 2003 about Miles's conversion to an electric groove, guitarist Carlos Santana recalled Betty as "indomitable – she couldn't be tamed. Musically, philosophically and physically, she was extreme and attractive".
The courtship was not without problems. At their first meeting, Miles patted a stool and asked Betty to "sit on my hand" – she demurred – and as he drove her home in his Lamborghini told her he "liked little girls". "I ain't no girl," she spat back.
Betty's impact on Miles is etched into Filles de Kilimanjaro, the album he released in the autumn of 1968, which featured his new wife on its sleeve and contained two tunes inspired by her, "Mademoiselle Mabry" and "Frelon Brun". Both are modelled on Hendrix riffs, respectively "The Wind Cries Mary" and "If 6 Was 9".
By then, Betty had introduced Miles to Jimi in person. The young rock god and jazz elder hit it off, the mutual fascination leading to talk about playing together. Betty's influence on Miles extended to his clothes and his drug habits: "I never took drugs. I was really into my body and I wouldn't do anything to damage myself. When I was with Miles, he was clean – he even stopped smoking. I had something to do with it, but it was his willpower," she says now. "I loved Miles's suits, but he grew fond of clothes from a place I used to shop at, Hernandos, which had Mexican designs and which would custom-make items for him."
It was also Betty who named Bitches Brew: "Miles wanted to call it Witches Brew, but I suggested Bitches Brew and he said, 'I like that.' Contrary to what some people said, there was nothing derogatory about it."
Relations between husband and wife soon soured, however. In his autobiography, Miles complained she was "too young and wild" and suspected her of having an affair with the raffish Hendrix, something she flatly denies. "I was so angry with Miles when he wrote that. It was disrespectful to Jimi and to me.
"Miles and I broke up because of his violent temper," she continues. "Other than that, it was a good experience for me because I developed creatively – Miles produced an album of mine that never came out."
Even after the pair had split at the end of 1969, they continued to see each other. "When two people are tied together you just have to find a way through it," she adds phlegmatically.
Away from Miles, Betty had her own career to build. Her eponymous first album featured a stellar line-up put together by Sly Stone drummer Greg Errico and including the Pointer Sisters on backing vocals. Its tough funk grooves were fronted by vocals that rasped, rocked and screamed with something between delight and threat.
The subsequent They Say I'm Different and Nasty Gal likewise presented her as a proud, predatory woman beholden to no man with cuts including "If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up", "He Was a Big Freak" and "Nasty Gal", the last declaring: "You dragged my name in the mud… but I used to leave you hanging in bed by your fingernails." There has been a widespread assumption that Betty's songs referred to her ex-husband (or to Hendrix) but she claims she was merely "exercising my creativity".
Despite critical acclaim, none of her albums achieved much commercial success (a fourth was never released), their cause not helped by radio's aversion to their sexual explicitness (pretty mild by today's standards), but her talent was never in doubt. "She was the first Madonna, but Madonna was like Donny Osmond by comparison," reckoned Carlos Santana.
By contrast, Miles's move into fusion won him a new generation of fans. Following 1969's transitional In a Silent Way, the electric storm of Bitches Brew in 1970 became the biggest-selling jazz album in history, shifting 500,000 copies instead of the 60,000 usually commanded by his releases.
The influence of Hendrix is all over Brew. Like Electric Ladyland, it's primarily a studio creation, complete with splices and special effects, while "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" echoes Jimi's "Voodoo Chile". In 1970, the two men even appeared on the same bill at the Isle of Wight festival before an audience of 600,000. Miles arrived on stage in a red leather jacket and blue rhinestone trousers.
Many of Miles's accomplices would go on to write their own careers in "fusion", among them Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea and Larry Young. For drummer Jack De Johnette, the process that created Bitches Brew, while thrilling, had human as much as artistic origins: "It was a midlife crisis played out through experimental jazz."
Bitches Brew (Legacy Edition) is out now on Sony Jazz
Betty Davis Interview on The Sound of Young America Podcast
Posted Sun, 2/22/2009 by Jesse Thorn
| 
37 comments
37 comments
Betty Davis is a legend of soul and funk music. The one-time wife of
Miles Davis introduced the jazzman to Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and the
broad world of electric music, leading him to create "Bitches Brew."
She recorded three albums of her own in the 1970s, full of raw, sexy,
outrageous funk. The first two, "Betty Davis" and "They Say I'm
Different" have been re-released by the Seattle label Light in the Attic Records.
Davis left the music industry in the late 1970s, and has been
completely absent from the public eye since -- at one point, a fan had
to track her down in the suburbs of Pittsburgh to get her $40,000 in
songwriting royalties.
Artist Biography by John Bush
A wildly flamboyant funk diva with few equals even three decades after her debut, Betty Davis combined the gritty emotional realism of Tina Turner, the futurist fashion sense of David Bowie, and the trendsetting flair of Miles Davis, her husband for a year. It's easy to imagine the snickers when a 23-year-old model married a famous musician twice her age, but Davis was no gold digger; she turned Miles on to Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone (providing the spark that led to his musical reinvention on In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew), then proved her own talents with a trio of sizzling mid-'70s solo LPs.
Born Betty Mabry in North Carolina, Davis grew up in Pittsburgh and had decamped to New York by the early '60s, where she gained entrance into hipster musical circles courtesy of the clubs she frequented -- and one she worked at, the Cellar. She first recorded around that time, and also put out a 1964 single for Don Costa's DCP imprint. Her first major writing credit, "Uptown" by the Chambers Brothers, came in 1967, before she'd turned 20. One year later, she met Miles Davis in New York, and they were married by the end of summer 1968. Though their marriage didn't survive the end of the decade, Betty Davis was tremendously influential to Miles, introducing him to psychedelic rock and even influencing his wardrobe. Miles' 1968 LP Filles de Kilimanjaro featured her on the cover, and he wrote the final track ("Mademoiselle Mabry") for her.
Miles divorced her in 1969, explaining later in his autobiography that she was "too young and wild" for him. (He also suspected her of an affair with Jimi Hendrix, an allegation she denies.) By the beginning of the '70s, Betty Davis began work on a set of songs and tapped a host of great musicians to bring them to fruition: Greg Errico and Larry Graham from Sly Stone's band, Michael Carabello from Santana, the Pointer Sisters, and members of the Tower of Power horn section. Her self-titled debut album finally appeared in 1973, and though it made no commercial impact at all, it was an innovative collection with plenty of blistering songs. Even more so than a soul shouter like Tina Turner, Davis was a singer for the feminist era, a take-no-prisoners sexual predator who screamed, yelled, grunted, purred, and cooed her way through extroverted material like "Anti Love Song," "Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him," and "He Was a Big Freak." Religious groups protested many of her concert appearances (several were canceled), and radio outlets understandably refused to play her extreme work.
Davis hardly let up with her second and third albums, 1974's They Say I'm Different and 1975's Nasty Gal, but they too made little impact. Though she would have made an excellent disco diva, Betty Davis largely disappeared from the music scene afterward. An aborted 1979 session has been released on multiple occasions, once as Crashin' from Passion and also as Hangin' Out in Hollywood. Early in the 21st century, Light in the Attic Records reissued Davis' three released studio albums, and also issued for the first time her 1976 unreleased recording, Crashin' from Passion, as Is It Love or Desire?
betty
davis
b.
Betty O. Mabry, 26th July 1945, Durham, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Betty
Davis was, at one time, married to the late Miles
Davis.
Her
first twelve years of her life she spent on her grandmother's farm in Durham,
North Carolina where she was born.
Some
of her time was spent in nearby Greensboro, however, when she was twelve,
the family moved to industrial Pittsburgh, where her father held a job as
foreman in one of the city's numerous steel mills.
When
she turned sixteen, Betty relocated to New York to study apparel design
at the city's Fashion Institute of Technology.
During
the day, she would work as a shop assistant or secretary so that she could
study during the evenings.
In her
teens she wrote a song called 'The Cake Of Love', however, it wasn't until
1966 that she went down to the old Electric Circus club where the Chambers
Brothers were headlining and presented them with a song, that she had penned,
entitled 'Uptown In Harlem'.
The
duo included it in their first album for Columbia and Betty's name (Mabry,
at the time) appeared on a record for the first time.
Betty
then started getting into modelling and became successful in this field,
heading fashion shows and being featured in the magazines Seventeen, Ebony
and Glamour.
Betty
soon left this environment and, in 1968, she met and married Miles
Davis at the age of 23.
Miles
Davis divorced her in 1969, saying she was 'too young and wild' for
him and was, apparently, suspecting her of having an affair with Jimi Hendrix.
Betty
travelled to New York and London and returned to modelling.
She
was one of the first Black models to arrive in London, however, her real
passion was music.
By 1971,
Betty's own musical career had been revitalised.
She
arrived back in New York with the intention of taking some of the songs
she had written in London to the group Santana.
Her
musical connections enabled her to get some of the best musicians on the
West Coast for her first album.
These
included Larry Graham playing bass and
Gregg Errico (Sly Stone's drummer).
Betty
used the Pointer Sisters for some of
the background voices.
At that
time, they were singing with Dave Mason and Hugh
Masekela.
Some
of the songs from that album were originally destined for the
Commodores who had then just signed with Motown.
The
song 'Game Is My Middle Name' the group used on their demo disc that convinced
Motown to sign them and they recorded the song 'Walking Up The Road' on
that same session.
Betty
flew down to Georgia to get to know the group because they were all at the
Tuskeegie College.
One
track from the debut album was entitled 'If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked
Up'.
The
song had one or two 'suggestive' lines in it and it was considered so bad
that the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People)
called Betty and suggested that she was a disgrace to her race!
The
song was banned in Detroit and considered in such bad taste in Kansas City
that the local radio station there was picketed when they inadvertently
played the track on the air!
A second
album followed for the Just Sunshine imprint which was a Iittle less contentious
and sold well.
In 1975,
Betty joined Island Records and released a 45, followed by the album 'Nasty
Gal'.
Betty
Davis largely disappeared from the music scene following these releases,
however an aborted 1979 session has been released on several occasions,
once released under the title of 'Crashin' From Passion' and also under
the title, 'Hangin' Out In Hollywood'.
Betty
lived in Homestead, Pennsylvania (where her publishing house is located).
Albums:
Betty
Davis (MPC Records 1973)
They
Say I'm Different (MPC Records 1974)
Nasty
Gal (MPC Records 1975)
Hangin'
out in Hollywood (Charly Records 1995)
Crashin'
from Passion (Razor & Tie Records 1996)
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Betty-Davis/110193019060912
https://www.nodepression.com/the-beautiful-dichotomy-of-betty-davis-a-rare-conversation-with-the-elusive-mistress-of-funk/
https://lightintheattic.net/artists/6-betty-davis
Article
The Beautiful Dichotomy of Betty Davis: A Rare Conversation with the Elusive Mistress of Funk
"She doesn't really do interviews, but I'll add you to the list." That was where my initial request fell for an interview with the reclusive mistress of funk and former ex-wife of Miles Davis. The Seattle based indie label Light In The Attic, had just released Is It Love or Desire, Betty Davis' fourth album, recorded in 1976 but never released, until now. I knew it was a long shot, but, dear reader, it's always worth a try. Besides that, the album was an interesting enough subject itself. Recorded in 1976 and shelved by Island records, the LP was that of legend: never bootlegged, never circulated. The master tapes sat somewhere amidst the dust, perhaps forsaken, perhaps forgotten, except to the intransigent crate diggers and diehard funkateers who searched for them in vain. Then, almost miraculously and without warning, it arrived. As if from some sort of archeological excavation, the album was found, perfectly preserved after over thirty-three years. And there she was, the knock-out, drop dead-sexy rock ‘n' soul revolutionary, who's name was immortalized in not one but two Miles Davis titles and is perhaps more responsible for changing the face of music in the late 60s and early 70s than any other woman in the world, starring back at us with those big, brown doe-eyes one more time. The cover of Is It Love or Desire, which is in fact the original cover intended for the album, stands in stark contrast to the soul-power-afro-naught triptych on the cover of the her first record. Gone are the metallic silver go-go boots (rumored to be a gift from one-time boyfriend Eric Clapton) now replaced by lace up leather heels and black thigh-high stockings, the unparalleled afro is hidden beneath a flower adorned, broad rimmed, straw hat. The hot pants are now a simple embroidered, lace dress. This is an evolved, refined and re-defined Betty Davis. She exudes a sensuality surpassed only by her confidence and she sports an uncompromising attitude, unmatched by any of her contemporary counterparts. With only a handful of interviews in the past 30 years, the mystery around Betty Davis is as intimidating as it is enticing. So when, after a few follow up calls, I got the message that the interview was a go, the nerves set in. It didn't help matters when our first phone call was canceled only 20 minutes before it was scheduled. But before I knew it, there I was having a conversation with the woman responsible for introducing Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix. Insightful, shrewd, humble, yet self assured; affectionate, yet aloof, Betty was not your mother’s role model, but she should have been. Condemned by the NAACP and misunderstood by her record labels, many in the 70s seemed to miss the fact that, at her core, Betty was a blues singer-songwriter in the tradition of the sybaritic Victoria Spivey (another artist the history books have much neglected) or Bessie Smith. "I see myself as a songwriter," she muses. "I don't think I am a great singer." We'll have to disagree on that point! "I think I'm more of a projector than a singer. I think I can sing what I write... Aretha Franklin can sing. Like on her early albums, that song she sang 'Running Out of Fools'.... Sure you haven't got the wrong number/You sure it's me you wanna talk to tonight?/Everyone in town's got your number/Everybody's got you pegged right" She relays the lyric with nuance and contemplation, only enhancing the fact that she's a writer first. J. Hayes: You've said before that the blues is where it started for you. We both came up in North Carolina listening to blues; Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, all that and from a young age. My 3 year old loves the blues now. He connects with it, seemingly on a very visceral level. He doesn't know what they're talking about obviously, but he feels it.
What was it about the blues that captured your attention at such a young age?
Betty Davis: The rhythm and the simplicity. Someone like Lightnin' Hopkins...it was just a guitar and voice. John Lee Hooker, his early records had just a bass and drums... JH: ...and often just a handful of words. BD: Mm-hmm. JH: Do you still listen to a lot of blues? BD: I listen to a lot of Lightnin' Hopkins. He's my favorite! JH: Does music play a big part in your life these days? BD: Well, most since I've gotten older...I listen to music. The business has changed significantly. I listen to some contemporary things. JH: Is there anyone in particular that piques your interest?
BD: No... Well there's that song that Jay-Z and Alicia Keys sing. New York. [“Empire State of Mind”]
JH: Do you see your influence on any contemporary artists?
BD: [Long pause] Some songs I do, others I don't... I don't think they've got up to me yet.
JH: How true. Why do you think it's taken folks so long?
BD: I think probably because they just didn't get it. I think
that for the time and the way music progresses, a lot of my things are
blues oriented and they don't really have any blues singers now.
JH: I think hip-hop in some respects is the closest thing to
blues but even that is coming out of a different experience and speaking
a different language. Do you think that perhaps, it's something to do
with the fact that your records are also pretty musically adventurous?
It seems like you were even pushing what was being done in funk music at
the time. We talk about the blues thing but on Is It Love or Desire
I hear so many different things... There's that quiet tune "When
Romance Says Goodbye." I don't think people knew you could sing like
that.
BD: Mm.
JH: That's one of the crimes of that record not coming out in the
70s. I think it would have opened people up to more of what Betty Davis
was about. As such a diverse and progressive artist, what are you
feelings about where the industry is now?
BD: I think music has changed so considerably. You have pop
music, which was predominantly white music, but now it's
African-American music, really.
JH: Or some dilution of it.
BD: Yeah, it really is. And then you have rock music...but you don't have any groups in it anymore.
JH: So, you seem to have a pretty even sense of the industry.
Where did your disillusionment with the music business really come from
and why do you think you decided to ultimately step away from the
entertainment industry as a whole?
BD: In your life, when you’re an artist, or a musician or a
singer, or a dancer or whatever, you have a time period normally. I
think that was my time period really, when I did all those albums.
JH: Do you mean creatively or commercially?
BD: I mean creatively.
JH: Yeah, but you're still singing and writing and being creative for yourself from what I've heard.
BD: Well, I still write but I don't know at anytime what I am
going to do with the material. I don't know whether I'll go back into
the studio to record another album or whether I'll give my music to
someone else to record. See, when I got into the business, I started off
as a writer.
JH: Before that you opened a club in New York City when you were just in your 20s, right?
BD: Yeah, when I was younger, in my teens, like 18, 19...
JH: Wow, now walk me through that ‘cause 18, 19 in New York now, you could not open a club.
BD: [Laughs] No.
JH: So, how did that come about and what was happening at your club?
BD: Well, I found an investor, and I knew a lot of girls... I
used to go to the beach all the time, so I knew a lot of people. And,
uh, so we didn't have to go through a lot of licenses and stuff. It was a
private club. You had to be a member to come. Lou Alcindor [Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar] used to come to my club all the time. I had girls there
that worked and danced.
JH: You were the DJ there, right?
BD: Yeah.
JH: There's an image: Betty Davis at 20 years old on the turntables! That must have been a sight to see!
BD: Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
JH: What was the time frame when the club was open?
BD: I don't deal with time periods. I'm very bad with that.
JH: But this was prior to your records?
BD: Well, I had done a record called Get Ready for Betty. Don Costa produced it. He was a friend of my attorney at the time. That’s how I got to know him.
JH: It was a little bit more straight ahead than the records that came after it?
BD: Yeah, it was very straight compared to my other songs. "You
Live, You Love and You Learn." I recorded that, but this was after The
Cellar. (That was the name of my club.)
JH: Did meeting and writing for the Chambers Brothers come out of your connections at The Cellar?
BD: No, they were playing at a club in New York called the
Electric Circus. I went to hear them and they were terrific, so I said,
“I've got a song for these guys.” I spoke to a couple of the brothers
and told them I had a song for them. Dave Rubinson, who used to produce
the Pointer Sisters, was producing the Chambers Brothers. I did the song
[“Uptown to Harlem”] for them at the Electric Circus and they told Dave
about me.
JH: That must have been a pretty big break as a writer for you?
BD: Yeah, that was good for me to do that.
JH: Did writing for the Commodores come out of that?
BD: No, the Commodores was later on. I couldn't work out a deal
with Motown. They wouldn't give me my money. They wanted all of my
publishing. So, my attorney couldn't work anything out with them...
That's why they didn't do any of my songs [on record]. I wrote up a
whole album for them practically.
JH: But some of those songs made it on to your own records eventually, right?
BD: Yeah, practically all those songs on my first album.
JH: Oh, see that's funkier than anything the Commodores ever did, you know that?!
BD: Um-hmm.
[You can hear her smile…]
BD: If I had continued to work with them, they would have been really funky.
JH: Their loss. It's interesting to see how artists change and
grow, and one of the things that's fascinating about your music is there
is this snapshot. I mean, we've got these four records, in what? A
four-year span, essentially. Whereas you have bands like the Commodores
that started out mildly funky and then Lionel Richie moved into whatever
he was doing in the 80s and now he's got this adult contemporary
status. So, it's interesting to see an artist change over time. We got a
taste of all these different sounds on your records but in a very short
time frame. That being said, even in those few records there is a great
deal of evolution. Are there things, musically, that you feel you
haven't explored or would still like to explore?
BD: [Quite for a moment, then laughs…] There are a few
things... There's a song I wrote called “A Little Bit Hot Tonight.”
That's one of the songs I'd like to record. I wrote it with a Japanese
musician named Chimoto Suru. This was a while ago.
JH: So are you still writing with other artists, not just on your own?
BD: Yeah.
JH: Because this last record, Is It Love or Desire was recorded in 1976, one thing we never saw was a Betty Davis disco record.
BD: No, I don't record disco. [Laughs]
JH: No, I didn't think so... It makes me think of Jimi Hendrix.
There is so much speculation about what Jimi would have recorded next.
BD: He would have stayed in the same vein he was in.
JH: But in the late 70s I can only imagine the record company would have been pushing for him to put a disco beat behind something.
BD: I doubt if he would have done it.
JH: Maybe disco wouldn't have happened if he stuck around.
BD: No, It would have happened, cause you have the Bee Gees you know. They put it out there.
JH: So, if we were lucky enough to hear a new Betty Davis record, would it sound essentially like the albums we already know?
BD: Yeah it would have my same feel. When you're an artist, you
can record and record and record but your feeling doesn't change. When
you're a true artist your feeling doesn't change.
JH: I think that's true, even with Miles Davis. The sound of his
trumpet changed but the sound of his song didn't. He was a blues player
too, really.
BD: Miles was very progressive though.
JH: But it seems at the core there was still that blues thing that runs through your music, the simplicity. Do you think?
BD: I don't know.
JH: Well, how would you compare what it is that's progressive in your music verses his?
BD: Well, he was much more intricate that I am. My music is much more simple.
JH: But Betty, the thing is, people can't do what you do... It
really is inimitable in the true sense of the word. Sure there is a
simplicity, but that simplicity is sometimes the hardest thing to
capture.
BD: Mm-hmm.
[Sounds skeptical.]
JH: We were talking about John Lee Hooker earlier. Who can do
John Lee Hooker but John Lee Hooker. It's one chord and maybe three
words. You know what I'm saying?
[We both erupt in laughter.]
BD: That's true, that's true.
JH: You talked earlier about the idea of "your time," which I can
see, but it's interesting to see how positive the response is to your
music now.
BD: I know, I am very surprised by that. That surprises me!
JH: Why does that surprise you?
BD: It just does because I didn't think it would last this long. I
mean, I thought I'd be heard but I didn't think I would last this long.
JH: Longevity or success is a funny thing to define. Do you feel successful?
BD: For what I did, I think I'm successful.
JH: I guess success is ultimately if you can look back and be pleased with what you've accomplished.
BD: With your work, yeah... Yeah.
JH: Since you left the industry what do you fill your days with?
BD: I watch the soaps, I watch the food network...
[She loves Ina Garten.]
JH: Do you cook as well?
BD: I can cook, but I don't cook great soul food or anything. I can cook pasta and stuff like that. I learned that from Miles.
JH: Is there anything that you feel you still need to do artistically?
BD: No, I'd like to continue doing my music.
JH: Let's talk a little about this newly released record Is It Love or Desire.
It's really amazing to me it's the culmination of the work that
preceded it. And in terms of the musicians, you've got Clarence
"Gatemouth" Brown on there.
BD: Yeah, yeah!
JH: How did that come about?
BD: We were recording and I wanted to use a violin player and they told me about him.
JH: And who better. Were you familiar with him?
http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/A-FUNK-QUEEN-STEPS-OUT-OF-THE-SHADOWS-Betty-2593729.php
BD: No, but they told me he was really good, so I asked the engineer to invite him down to the studio to hear the song.He knew Miles, so I put him on the phone with Miles. They were talking and stuff. So, he did it. I t was really nice of him to do it. JH: One of the things that's so great about the record is that it challenges the audience. Just when the listener thought they knew what the "Betty Davis Sound" was, all of a sudden there are all these new layers. There's a bit of a Funkadelic influence on there as well with the layered vocals on "Whorey Angel." BD: Mm-hmm. JH: Your cousin is playing bass and doing backing vocals on this record and the few preceding it, and the band is comprised of several other relatives. Did they play a significant role in the sound or was it merely them manifesting a sound that was already there in your head? BD: Well, I did all the arrangements and stuff, but of course their influence was there. JH: Was your whole family musical? BD: Yes, my mother's sister's kids. My cousins...we listened to a lot of music when I was growing up. My grandmother's house, my mother's house… JH: You had a typical "Gospel on Sundays" house too. Did any of that play a role in your music later on? BD: No, we listened to a radio station that did all Gospel music on Sundays and, um, I've written a couple of Gospel songs but I've never recorded them. JH: Now there's an intriguing record! One thing that I just wanted to mention because of the stigma that gets attached to the 70s and funk music and musicians, etc., is that you were never really involved in drinking and drugs and such. BD: No. JH: Unfortunately, it's not the norm but one thing I hope people take away from your story, is that it's not a necessary part of the experience. You really are a role model from the business side of things to the respect you had for your way of life. How did you avoid it all? BD: Well, I was really into my body, being healthy. All my friends did drugs and stuff but I was too into my body. JH: And because of it we still have you around today. BD: Mm-hmm. When I ask Betty about the future she gives a contemplative pause. "I don't really know," she drawls. "When you write you don't think about what people want to hear or anything like that, you just write. If the songs are liked or how they're perceived, you have nothing to do with that." With the release of Is It Love or Desire, at long last, I am confident it's only a matter of time before people will be scrambling for the next thing from the bold, yet subtle, sweet, yet ever so funky, beautiful dichotomy that is Betty Davis. "Well, we'll see," she says. "Goodnight." Goodnight Betty, where ever you are. I'll be sleeping with my fingers crossed. Live Well & Listen Closely, J. Hayes read more articles by music writer J. Hayes at: http://www.examiner.com/x-4161-New-American-Music-Examiner and become a fan on facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/J-Hayes-music-writer/161850300225 images courtesy of Tiny Human and Light In The Attic special thanks to Ms. Betty Davis, Ever Kipp at Tiny Human, Matt Sullivan at Light In The Attic, Kyla Fairchild at No Depression, and my editor Kellee Webb.
http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/A-FUNK-QUEEN-STEPS-OUT-OF-THE-SHADOWS-Betty-2593729.php
A FUNK QUEEN STEPS OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Betty Mabry Davis set the standard with her sassy '70s sound. Finally, she's getting her due
Bay Area music producer Greg Errico
knows something about artist buzz. He used to drum for a band called
Sly and the Family Stone. But he can't believe the hum he's hearing now
about an artist he produced decades ago: the mysterious funk queen and
rocker Betty Mabry Davis.
[MP3s: "He Was a Big Freak" | "Anti Love Song"]
"She
never had big commercial success. We did this 35 years ago. And she's
been a recluse for large parts of that," he says. But at a recent National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences function, he adds, veteran musicians were buzzing about her as if she were a brand-new sensation.
"I've
got a half-dozen interview requests," he says. "We've got the Sly and
the Family Stone reissues that just came out. But there's about a notch
more interest in Betty."
This month, the Afroed beauty, circa '73, graces the cover of hipster music journal Wax Poetics magazine,
and today, indie label Light in the Attic Records re-releases lovingly
packaged versions of her first two albums, "Betty Davis" and "They Say
I'm Different," both cut in San Francisco in the early '70s.
The
woman once known mainly for being the former Mrs. Miles Davis is
belatedly being acknowledged as one of the most influential artists of
the funk era. Carlos Santana, Joi, Talib Kweli and Ice Cube have declared their fandom. Her sway over Macy Gray, Erykah Badu and Amy Winehouse is clear.
On
the cover of her 1973 debut, she tilts coquettishly and flashes a
million-dollar smile. Her thigh-high silver space boots seem to go on
forever. But when her music begins -- written and arranged by her during
a time when few black women were given such artistic license -- she
shreds any idea that she is just another pretty face.
In the
course of a single verse, she teases, pouts, snarls, taunts and rages.
"It's like she's here in the room with you right now and she's basically
caressing you and slapping you," says Chris Estey
of Light in the Attic. "She is really confronting you with her
womanhood, with her desires, with her complications, with ideas."
"All
you lady haters don't be cruel to me," she sings on the opener, "If I'm
in Luck I Might Get Picked Up." "Oh, don't you crush my velvet, don't
you ruffle my feathers neither! Said I'm crazy, I'm wild. I said I'm
nasty."
Born Betty Mabry in Durham, N.C., Davis was the first
child of an Army serviceman and a homemaker. In a rare phone interview
from her home outside Pittsburgh -- she hasn't done face-to-face
interviews in decades -- she says that she was shaped indelibly by her
grandmother's and mother's record collections, which featured bluesmen
like Muddy Waters, B.B. King and John Lee Hooker.
"No jazz," she says. She invented her own songs, humming out parts to
different instruments as if she were already composing and arranging.
"It was just a gift," she says.
In 1961, at age 16, she left the
small Pittsburgh borough of Homestead to seek her fortune in New York
City. She lived with an aunt, enrolled at the Fashion
Institute of Technology as one of the few students of color, and
journeyed into Greenwich Village to explore the jazz, folk and
poetry-drenched scene. She waited tables at Café Figaro, a Beat
Generation epicenter.
At now legendary clubs like the Electric
Circus, Davis moved from scene-watcher to scene-maker with her friends
the Cosmic Ladies, a magnetic clique of transplanted small-town African
American women possessed of boundless energy and endless style. She
hosted a private club called the Cellar that helped shape a new racially
integrated bohemia. She became a Wilhemina model and continued to
pursue singing and songwriting. She cut singles for Don Costa, Lou Courtney and Hugh Masekela, and wrote a proto-funk hit for the Chambers Brothers called "Uptown."
In
1967, she met Miles Davis at the Village Gate. She recalls, "I had to
make a phone call. His trainer at the time, a guy named Bobby, tapped me
on my shoulder while I was on the phone and said, 'I'd like to speak to
you when you get off the phone.' So when I got off the phone he said,
'Mr. Davis would like to know if you'd have a drink with him upstairs. I
said, 'Sure, why not.' "
A tempestuous romance between the
23-year-old singer and the 42-year-old trumpeter quickly led to a
marriage proposal. (Her face graced his 1968 album, "Filles de
Kilimanjaro.") Their marriage catalyzed Miles Davis' most notable
musical transformation -- from the cerebral modality of "In a Silent
Way" to the fiery fusion of "Bitches Brew," the beginning of his famous
electric phase.
She says, modestly, "I know that the music that I played in the house influenced him a lot. I was listening to Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone and Otis Redding."
When he began dressing like a freaky peacock, rumors spread that she
had thrown out all of his tailored suits. "No, I didn't do that. I loved
him in suits," she chuckles. "He would go with me when I would shop for
my clothes, and he would pick him some things, and that's how his look
changed."
As he began the bold experiments that would transform
black music, Miles Davis put full trust in her ears. Then he took the
helm to record her in what may be one of the greatest lost albums.
Her sensibility, she says, was "rock-oriented" and "progressive." Backed by an all-star lineup of Wayne Shorter, Billy Cox, John McLaughlin, Mike Shrieve and Tony Williams and produced by Teo Macero,
she recorded a long version of Cream's "Politician" and at least one
other side of songs. Was her record the missing link between "In a
Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew"? We may never know. Columbia Records, at what is widely believed to have been at Miles Davis' request, shelved the tapes.
"He
was afraid that I would leave him if I became famous. He had that kind
of fear about me," Davis says. Their marriage ended after just one year.
"It fell apart because of his temper. He would get physical sometimes
and I didn't want to be caught in an abusive relationship. That just
wasn't my style," she says.
Betty Davis' name was soon romantically tied to Eric Clapton, but she continued to write and explored publishing deals with the help of T-Rex's Marc Bolan. She gave a clutch of funky songs to the Commodores, which helped them seal a deal with Motown.
Yet
she remained fiercely independent. She walked away from a contract with
Motown (and took her songs back from the Commodores) when the company
demanded she give up her publishing rights. Although she had been linked
to male stars, she wanted to be recognized for her own talents and to
retain control of her music. "I didn't want it to be commercialized,
really," she says. "I wanted to have a certain kind of purity."
Perhaps
inevitably, her iconoclastic ways led her to San Francisco in the early
'70s. "It was much slower than New York, but it was freer also," she
says. "The vibrations of the city affected me." She experienced a
creative breakthrough, if never quite a commercial one.
Soon after she moved here, a record deal "just happened," she says, when she met a talent scout for Woodstock promoter Michael Lang's Just Sunshine Records at "this vegetarian Thanksgiving
dinner." Lang gave her a contract and the creative control she desired.
She now enjoyed the kind of power reserved for a very small group of
women, like Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Aretha Franklin.
Through then-boyfriend Santana percussionist Michael Carabello,
Davis met Errico, who had just left the Family Stone and was working at
Columbia Records' Folsom Street studio, and enlisted him as producer.
He assembled what he calls "a who's-who list of great musicians in the
Bay Area at that time," including fellow Family Stone refugee Larry Graham, the Pointer Sisters, the Tower of Power horns, Neil Schon, Doug Rodrigues and Merl Saunders.
The
result was an undeniable classic. "She looked like Beyoncé, she sang
like Macy Gray on steroids, and she crafted her own brand of liberated
black womanhood that people are still trying to understand and get to
today," says KPFA DJ and funk scholar Rickey Vincent. "Her album was so noisy. It's gnarly raw grooves with thunderous rock chords and her chainsaw voice on top of it."
She
swung hard at gender conventions. She didn't do silly love songs but
did an "Anti-Love Song." (She denies, with a laugh, that the song was
about Miles Davis.) "Stepping in Her I. Miller Shoes" celebrates Devon Wilson,
the former Cosmic Lady and Jimi Hendrix paramour who died in a
mysterious fall from New York's Chelsea Hotel. Sympathy for strong but
troubled women remained a constant theme in her music.
Although
Angela Davis and Pam Grier were changing perceptions of women of color
in the popular culture, Davis' 1973 debut made little splash. Vincent
says, "She was too black for rock and too hard for soul."
"She
was early, man. No one could deal with it," says Errico. "Now, it would
have been easy. But no one knew how to market that then." A decade
later, Prince and Madonna would conquer the pop charts with Davis-esque
sexuality.
For her next album, 1974's "They Say I'm Different,"
she assumed complete control. She assembled her own band, wrote the
music, produced the album and crafted her image. Her sound became
bluesier, edgier and even less compromising. Hip-hop fans now consider
the rippling riffs of "Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him" breakbeat gold. Looking
like an intergalactic funkstress on the album cover, her only peers on
funk's cutting edge were fellow Afronauts Parliament and Funkadelic.
She
could do both rootsy and raunchy. On the title track, she transformed a
roll call of blues men and women and her own blood relatives into a
self-mythologizing genealogy. On "He Was a Big Freak," she sang about a
man who enjoyed being whipped with a turquoise chain.
It was too
much for some. "Don't Call Her No Tramp," a fierce defense of
independent-minded women, caused the NAACP to call for a radio boycott.
When she celebrated women whom she called "elegant hustlers," others
thought she was advocating prostitution.
Davis herself had been
slandered and dismissed as a groupie by men in the industry, including
her ex-husband. But she dealt with the situation with mother wit: "I
said that I was colored and they were stopping my advancement!" The song
has since taken on a new layer of meaning in the wake of the Don Imus
controversy.
She honed her live act in a residency at the famed
Boarding House on Bush Street and built a cultish following among the
pop musician elite. But some male critics didn't get her. "I had a lot
of anti-publicity," she says. And she had yet to reach commercial
success. "It was just musicians carrying these (records) around under
their arms, these little underground cult followings," Errico says.
Island
Records head Chris Blackwell bought out Davis' contract and she put
together 1975's "Nasty Gal," even including a Miles Davis composition
"You and I." But the album still failed to break her. After recording
two more albums that never saw official release (her last late-'70s
effort has shown up in bootlegged form), she disappeared to a quiet life
in Pennsylvania. "I just," she says, pausing slightly, "lost interest."
Former musical colleagues don't know much about what happened
next. "She disappeared for years and years," says Errico, who has spoken
to her only a few times in the past two years. "First time I talked to
her, she had really seemed like she had come out of some deep, serious
seclusion. Very soft-spoken. She wasn't the same person."
When
asked about what she has done since her retreat from the public eye,
Davis becomes diffident. She hints that she took comfort from being
close to her parents (who have since passed away) and her younger
brother.
She adds that she is talking to the media reluctantly.
"The guy who runs Light in the Attic, he asked me if I would do
interviews, and to help him sell the album I told him I would," she
says. But after this interview, she says, the rest will be canceled.
Is
she pleased by the resurgent interest in her career? "You want your
music to sell. You want your work to be heard, regardless of how long
ago you did it," she answers. "So, um, it's good."
A trace of
impatience creeping into her voice, she says, politely, "Have a good
day." And the enigmatic woman who always wanted to do it her own way
hangs up the phone.
Betty Davis: A 'Nasty Gal' Ahead Of Her Time
October 26, 2009
by Meredith Ochs
October 26, 2009
by Meredith Ochs
Listen Now
4:17
Funk and R&B singer Betty Davis was influenced by close friends like Jimi Hendrix and her ex-husband, jazz legend Miles Davis.
In 1975, visionary music mogul Chris Blackwell signed her to his Island
Records label, which released her groundbreaking album Nasty Gal; it's just been reissued on CD.
Davis' sexy growl conjures images of her the way she looked onstage in the '70s — thigh-high silver boots, hot pants, massive afro. Davis was Sly Stone, Mick Jagger and The Jimi Hendrix Experience all rolled into one woman. Sly Stone bassist Larry Graham once said that, although Davis didn't play anything, her mind, body and spirit were her instruments. In this album's title track, you can hear that her singing doesn't just represent a voice; it's a supernatural force she's using to break social conventions, push funk to the extreme and propel herself as an artist.
By the time Nasty Gal was recorded, Davis and her band were a tight unit, their act finely honed over many months on the road. She wasn't just a woman fronting a group of musicians; she was part of the band, but she was also the leader in every way. The music, the clothes, the choreography — Davis controlled the whole package, uncompromising in her vision. Aggressive and outrageous, she challenged the notions of what women could do and say on and off the stage.
Davis could use her vocal power for ballads just as easily as belting, and on Nasty Gal, she proved that she wasn't a one-dimensional screamer. The song "You and I" marked her public reconciliation with her ex-husband, Miles Davis; the two co-wrote the song about their relationship. Punctuated by his distinct trumpet playing, it's even more poignant.
Nasty Gal was poised to be Betty Davis' commercial breakthrough, but it didn't work out that way. She left the business shortly after its release and moved to Pennsylvania, where she still resides. Some say that her image upstaged her music, but I disagree. Listening to the propulsive funk and powerful ensemble playing, all driven by this astonishing woman, it's apparent that her image was just as important to the albums as a guitar or a keyboard or her voice. Her image was the very concept from which her music stemmed. In 1975, Betty seemed to represent the era, but she probably pushed boundaries too far for mainstream music. And artists at the forefront of their art are seldom appreciated until the rest of the world catches up.
Betty Davis
Courtesy of the artist
Davis' sexy growl conjures images of her the way she looked onstage in the '70s — thigh-high silver boots, hot pants, massive afro. Davis was Sly Stone, Mick Jagger and The Jimi Hendrix Experience all rolled into one woman. Sly Stone bassist Larry Graham once said that, although Davis didn't play anything, her mind, body and spirit were her instruments. In this album's title track, you can hear that her singing doesn't just represent a voice; it's a supernatural force she's using to break social conventions, push funk to the extreme and propel herself as an artist.
By the time Nasty Gal was recorded, Davis and her band were a tight unit, their act finely honed over many months on the road. She wasn't just a woman fronting a group of musicians; she was part of the band, but she was also the leader in every way. The music, the clothes, the choreography — Davis controlled the whole package, uncompromising in her vision. Aggressive and outrageous, she challenged the notions of what women could do and say on and off the stage.
Davis could use her vocal power for ballads just as easily as belting, and on Nasty Gal, she proved that she wasn't a one-dimensional screamer. The song "You and I" marked her public reconciliation with her ex-husband, Miles Davis; the two co-wrote the song about their relationship. Punctuated by his distinct trumpet playing, it's even more poignant.
Nasty Gal was poised to be Betty Davis' commercial breakthrough, but it didn't work out that way. She left the business shortly after its release and moved to Pennsylvania, where she still resides. Some say that her image upstaged her music, but I disagree. Listening to the propulsive funk and powerful ensemble playing, all driven by this astonishing woman, it's apparent that her image was just as important to the albums as a guitar or a keyboard or her voice. Her image was the very concept from which her music stemmed. In 1975, Betty seemed to represent the era, but she probably pushed boundaries too far for mainstream music. And artists at the forefront of their art are seldom appreciated until the rest of the world catches up.
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Betty Davis: Funk Goddess
There would be no Prince, Madonna, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis (in the 1970’s), or Lil Kim, if it weren’t for Betty Davis and her explosive, courageous, erotic, gender bending, bluesy, and funky music. Betty’s voice purrs, growls, and scratches through her deliciously written lyrics. A blues woman to the bone, Betty took her southern roots, and mixed them with raw funk, soul, and psychedelic rock. A woman well ahead of her time, she pushed boundaries with her avant-garde fashion sense, amazing afro, and provocative lyrics.
She was born in 1945 in Durham, North Carolina with the maiden name Mabry. A true southern gal, Betty grew up on her grandmother’s farm, where she woke up every morning to slop the hogs, with the blues, ham hocks, and black-eye-peas all in her veins. Her grandmother had a vast collection of blues records so at an early age Betty become influenced by the heavy blues sounds of Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, BB King, Lightning Hopkins, and Big Mama Thorton. Betty wrote her first song when she was twelve, aptly titled “I’m Gonna Bake That Cake of Love.”
In her teenage years her father got a job as a foreman on a steel mill in an industrial town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her family moved and she got her first dose of city life. While a teenager in Pittsburgh she was an introvert, writing songs and sketching clothing designs. Betty moved to New York City when she was sixteen to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She became emerged in the fashion world as a budding designer and a successful model, gracing the covers of Seventeen, Ebony, and Glamour. The gorgeous young woman enjoyed the easy money she earned from modeling but song-writing was always her true passion.
In 1966 when Betty was 21 she went to the East Village night club, Electric Circus, where the Chamber Brothers were performing and presented them with a song she wrote, “Uptown in Harlem.” An anthem for the black Mecca of the world, the song chants “I’m going uptown to Harlem/I’m gonna let my hair down in Harlem/If a taxi won’t take me I’ll catch a train/I’ll go underground I’ll get there just the same.” A simple yet political song that speaks of joys and troubles that still affect us to this day. The Chamber Brothers included “Uptown in Harlem” in their 1967 album, Time Has Come.
Davis also wrote songs for the Commodores who needed her keen lyricism. The songs she wrote helped them get signed to Motown, and she was already making her mark as a phenomenal lyricist for some of the premier funk, soul, and rock acts of the ’60s.
22 year old Betty met brilliant trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis who was almost twice her age. Miles could not resist the undeniable coolness that Betty exuded, so he had to know her. The steamy pair married in 1969 only after a year of knowing each other. By this time Betty had already graced the cover of Miles’s 1968 album, Filles de Killimanjaro. “Mademoiselle Mabry” served as Miles’s muse as well as a very influential musician in his life. During the pivotal two years they were together, Betty introduced Miles to the sounds of her good friend Jimi Hendrix, who middle aged Miles was not hip to. Inspired by the sounds of the younger generation Miles decided to push his music to uncharted territory, and thus spawned “fusion.” Miles completely reinvented himself and released the ground breaking album Bitches Brew in 1970, which Betty also helped name.
Betty was supposedly too wild for Miles and their relationship strained. They divorced in 1969 with allegations that Betty and Jimii Hendrix had an affair. Amongst the turmoil and allegations Betty and Miles Davis served as one of the most influential musical couples of the twentieth century. The year following her divorce with Miles, Jimi Hendrix died, and Betty lost one of the most influential musicians in her life.
Though Betty never thought of herself as a performer, that is what she became after the release of her self titled album released in 1973. 28 year old Davis collaborated with Greg Errico, Sly Stone’s drummer to produce the album. Errico assembled the best funk and soul musicians on the West Cost. The cast included Sly Stone’s bassist Larry Graham, guitarist Neal Schon of Santana, the Pointer Sisters on background vocals, and members of Graham Central Station and Tower of Power on drums and horns. The songs on the album were based on funk grooves, bluesy guitar riffs, gritty percussion and Betty’s raunchy lyrics and vocal sass. Songs off the album include “If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up,” “Anti-Love Song” and “Your Man My Man.” Betty was undeniably bold, possessing sexual agency through her lyrics that revealed her sexual desires, the cruel side to love and the experience of extra marital affairs.
She went on to produce, write and arrange her second and third albums They Say I’m Different and Nasty Gal in 1974 and 1975 respectively. These albums continue her provocative word play and raunchy lyrics. With scandalous songs like “He was A Big Freak” where she describes how she use to “beat him with a turquoise chain.” Davis paved the way for performers who wanted to express their sexuality in their music in a creative and daring way, and the foremother of the brazen female mc. Davis never achieved commercial success, was highly criticized for her lyrical content and was banned from radio stations. She stopped releasing music after 1975 and has been living out of the public eye in Pennsylvania. Despite her musical genius and overall impact on funk music Betty Davis still passes the radar of many music fans. Well before music videos Betty created a persona for herself so that her image and music seamlessly coincided creating an unforgettable vision and sound of the 70’s.
Betty Davis Betty Mabry Bitches Brew Jimi Hendrix Miles Davis
Nasty gal: Betty Davis
The singer, whose sexually potent 70s funk blueprint virtually created its own genre, talks about her personal soul revolution
- Text by Jessica Hundley
Taken from the July 2007 issue of Dazed:
A truly emancipated woman is a rare find, but to discover a lady as free as Betty Davis amid the debauched misogyny of the early 70s music scene is like stumbling across an unknown species. While most of her contemporaries were standing by their men or feeling like natural women, Davis was moving full force towards her own destiny, making music that was nothing anyone could have suspected yet everything she wanted it to be.
To hear recordings from her heyday (1973’s self-titled debut, 1974’s "They Say I’m Different" and 1975’s "Nasty Gal"), is to experience female sexuality stripped back to its raw, throbbing core – a miasma of shuddering cries and feline growls set over the funkiest of progressive grinds. Davis’s speciality was deep bass, heavy beats and predatory vocals, a way of speaking/singing that slipped fluidly between sensual sadism and orgasmic glee. Basically, it was music made for fucking, made by someone who loved to fuck.
With Davis’s first two albums re-released by Seattle–based Light in the Attic Records, the white-hot spotlight has been turned back on… in more ways than one. For anyone who loves music, particularly balls-out no-holds-barred funk, these records are a true treat. Davis, along with musical collaborators like Sly Stone, drummer Larry Graham, and guitarist Neal Schon (later of Journey), virtually created her own genre – a sound that would go far beyond the intergalactic grooves of Parliament/Funkadelic or the liquid soul of Marvin Gaye.
BETTY DAVIS
A truly emancipated woman is a rare find, but to discover a lady as free as Betty Davis amid the debauched misogyny of the early 70s music scene is like stumbling across an unknown species. While most of her contemporaries were standing by their men or feeling like natural women, Davis was moving full force towards her own destiny, making music that was nothing anyone could have suspected yet everything she wanted it to be.
To hear recordings from her heyday (1973’s self-titled debut, 1974’s "They Say I’m Different" and 1975’s "Nasty Gal"), is to experience female sexuality stripped back to its raw, throbbing core – a miasma of shuddering cries and feline growls set over the funkiest of progressive grinds. Davis’s speciality was deep bass, heavy beats and predatory vocals, a way of speaking/singing that slipped fluidly between sensual sadism and orgasmic glee. Basically, it was music made for fucking, made by someone who loved to fuck.
With Davis’s first two albums re-released by Seattle–based Light in the Attic Records, the white-hot spotlight has been turned back on… in more ways than one. For anyone who loves music, particularly balls-out no-holds-barred funk, these records are a true treat. Davis, along with musical collaborators like Sly Stone, drummer Larry Graham, and guitarist Neal Schon (later of Journey), virtually created her own genre – a sound that would go far beyond the intergalactic grooves of Parliament/Funkadelic or the liquid soul of Marvin Gaye.
“Like so many brilliant women in music
whose song of praise goes unsung, Betty was, and is, an artist who
deserves to be exalted,” says Joi, the Atlanta-based singer who collaborates with Outkast.
“She’s been the ultimate muse for so many men, so many genres of
music... jazz, rock, soul, funk, R&B, punk. I’m so glad I’ve been
influenced by her. Neither my life nor my music has been the same
since.”
“I was brought up with the blues, and the blues is a very pure art form,” says Davis, thoughtfully. “Being brought up on the blues and integrating that with people I was into in the 1970s, that’s how I came into myself.” Davis now reflects on those recordings with a certain distant wisdom.
After years of relative obscurity, she’s facing her former self with something like contentment. Despite the heat she took, the ups and long down of her career, it’s fairly obvious that if Betty Davis had the chance, she wouldn’t have done a thing differently. “I look back on those records, not so much as if they were a reflection of myself, but more of a representation of a time period. It feels good to be getting recognition, but in the end, the only advice I have is be true to your artform. And by that, I mean do what’s in your heart more so than what’s in your head.”
http://lightintheattic.net/artists/6-betty-davis
Betty Davis
BIO
One can hardly imagine the genre-busting, culture-crossing musical magic of Outkast, Prince, Erykah Badu, Rick James, The Roots, or even the early Red Hot Chili Peppers without the influence of R&B pioneer Betty Davis. Her style of raw and revelatory punk-funk defies any notions that women can’t be visionaries in the worlds of rock and pop. In recent years, rappers from Ice Cube to Talib Kweli to Ludacris have rhymed over her intensely strong but sensual music.
There is one testimonial about Betty Davis that is universal: she was a woman ahead of her time. In our contemporary moment, this may not be as self-evident as it was thirty years ago – we live in an age that’s been profoundly changed by flamboyant flaunting of female sexuality: from Parlet to Madonna, Lil Kim to Kelis. Yet, back in 1973 when Betty Davis first showed up in her silver go-go boots, dazzling smile and towering Afro, who could you possibly have compared her to? Marva Whitney had the voice but not the independence. Labelle wouldn’t get sexy with their “Lady Marmalade” for another year while Millie Jackson wasn’t “Feelin’ Bitchy” until 1977. Even Tina Turner, the most obvious predecessor to Betty’s fierce style wasn’t completely out of Ike’s shadow until later in the decade.
Ms. Davis’s unique story, still sadly mostly unknown, is unlike any other in popular music. Betty wrote the song “Uptown” for the Chambers Brothers before marrying Miles Davis in the late ‘60s, influencing him with psychedelic rock, and introducing him to Jimi Hendrix — personally inspiring the classic album ’Bitches Brew.’
But her songwriting ability was way ahead of its time as well. Betty not only wrote every song she ever recorded and produced every album after her first, but the young woman penned the tunes that got The Commodores signed to Motown. The Detroit label soon came calling, pitching a Motown songwriting deal, which Betty turned down. Motown wanted to own everything. Heading to the UK, Marc Bolan of T. Rex urged the creative dynamo to start writing for herself. A common thread throughout Betty’s career would be her unbending Do-It-Yourself ethic, which made her quickly turn down anyone who didn’t fit with the vision. She would eventually say no to Eric Clapton as her album producer, seeing him as too banal.
In 1973, Davis would finally kick off her cosmic career with an amazingly progressive hard funk and sweet soul self-titled debut. Davis showcased her fiercely unique talent and features such gems as “If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up” and “Game Is My Middle Name.” The album Betty Davis was recorded with Sly & The Family Stone’s rhythm section, sharply produced by Sly Stone drummer Greg Errico, and featured backing vocals from Sylvester and the Pointer Sisters.
Her 1974 sophomore album They Say I’m Different features a worthy-of-framing futuristic cover challenging David Bowie’s science fiction funk with real rocking soul-fire, kicked off with the savagely sexual “Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him” (later sampled by Ice Cube). Her follow up is full of classic cuts like “Don’t Call Her No Tramp” and the hilarious, hard, deep funk of “He Was A Big Freak.”
Betty Davis was riding high in the 70s. A new record label, a series of high profile relationships, and intensely sexualized live performances made her a rising star. It seemed like everything was aligned to take the music world by storm. So Betty and band got back into the studio where she would act as writer, producer, and performer, creating her definitive release – Nasty Gal.
For the first time, her critically adored first two albums are being lovingly re-mastered from the original master tapes by Light In The Attic Records to sound as ferocious and revolutionary as they did when they first sprung on an unsuspecting world in the early ’70s. These reissues mark the first time that Betty will receive proper royalties for her music on CD.
In addition to the restoration of the incredible original cover art, the compelling and heartbreaking liner notes written by author and respected soul music scholar Oliver Wang (O-Dub/Soul Sides) include her second interview in many decades, making these essential reissues for any soul, progressive punk, or funk-rock collection.
Betty Davis’ 1974 sophomore album They Say I’m Different features a worthy-of-framing futuristic cover challenging David Bowie’s science fiction funk with real rocking soul-fire, kicked off with the savagely sexual “Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him” (later sampled by Ice Cube). Her follow up is full of classic cuts like “Don’t Call Her No Tramp” and the hilarious, hard, deep funk of “He Was A Big Freak.”
Read More & Listen >
In 1973, Betty Davis would finally kick off her cosmic career with an amazingly progressive hard funk and sweet soul self-titled debut. Davis showcased her fiercely unique talent and features such gems as “If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up” and “Game Is My Middle Name.” The album Betty Davis was recorded with Sly & The Family Stone’s rhythm section, sharply produced by Sly Stone drummer Greg Errico, and featured backing vocals from Sylvester and the Pointer Sisters.
Read More & Listen >
Nasty Gal
Betty Davis
LITA 046
Betty Davis was riding high in the 70s. A new record label, a series of high profile relationships, and intensely sexualized live performances made her a rising star. It seemed like everything was aligned to take the music world by storm. So Betty and band got back into the studio where she would act as writer, producer, and performer, creating what she thought would be her definitive release…
Read More & Listen >
Is This Love Or Desire
LITA 047
Is It Love Or Desire is a little-known gem in the Davis catalogue. Mastered from the original tapes, and untouched for over 30 years, this release features detailed liner notes by Oliver Wang (Soul Sides, Betty Davis and They Say I’m Different re-issue contributor), the originally intended artwork housed in a lavishly packaged digipak, rare photos, archival material, and recent interviews with Davis and her skin-tight band Funk House.
“I was brought up with the blues, and the blues is a very pure art form,” says Davis, thoughtfully. “Being brought up on the blues and integrating that with people I was into in the 1970s, that’s how I came into myself.” Davis now reflects on those recordings with a certain distant wisdom.
After years of relative obscurity, she’s facing her former self with something like contentment. Despite the heat she took, the ups and long down of her career, it’s fairly obvious that if Betty Davis had the chance, she wouldn’t have done a thing differently. “I look back on those records, not so much as if they were a reflection of myself, but more of a representation of a time period. It feels good to be getting recognition, but in the end, the only advice I have is be true to your artform. And by that, I mean do what’s in your heart more so than what’s in your head.”
http://lightintheattic.net/artists/6-betty-davis
Betty Davis
BIO
One can hardly imagine the genre-busting, culture-crossing musical magic of Outkast, Prince, Erykah Badu, Rick James, The Roots, or even the early Red Hot Chili Peppers without the influence of R&B pioneer Betty Davis. Her style of raw and revelatory punk-funk defies any notions that women can’t be visionaries in the worlds of rock and pop. In recent years, rappers from Ice Cube to Talib Kweli to Ludacris have rhymed over her intensely strong but sensual music.
There is one testimonial about Betty Davis that is universal: she was a woman ahead of her time. In our contemporary moment, this may not be as self-evident as it was thirty years ago – we live in an age that’s been profoundly changed by flamboyant flaunting of female sexuality: from Parlet to Madonna, Lil Kim to Kelis. Yet, back in 1973 when Betty Davis first showed up in her silver go-go boots, dazzling smile and towering Afro, who could you possibly have compared her to? Marva Whitney had the voice but not the independence. Labelle wouldn’t get sexy with their “Lady Marmalade” for another year while Millie Jackson wasn’t “Feelin’ Bitchy” until 1977. Even Tina Turner, the most obvious predecessor to Betty’s fierce style wasn’t completely out of Ike’s shadow until later in the decade.
Ms. Davis’s unique story, still sadly mostly unknown, is unlike any other in popular music. Betty wrote the song “Uptown” for the Chambers Brothers before marrying Miles Davis in the late ‘60s, influencing him with psychedelic rock, and introducing him to Jimi Hendrix — personally inspiring the classic album ’Bitches Brew.’
But her songwriting ability was way ahead of its time as well. Betty not only wrote every song she ever recorded and produced every album after her first, but the young woman penned the tunes that got The Commodores signed to Motown. The Detroit label soon came calling, pitching a Motown songwriting deal, which Betty turned down. Motown wanted to own everything. Heading to the UK, Marc Bolan of T. Rex urged the creative dynamo to start writing for herself. A common thread throughout Betty’s career would be her unbending Do-It-Yourself ethic, which made her quickly turn down anyone who didn’t fit with the vision. She would eventually say no to Eric Clapton as her album producer, seeing him as too banal.
In 1973, Davis would finally kick off her cosmic career with an amazingly progressive hard funk and sweet soul self-titled debut. Davis showcased her fiercely unique talent and features such gems as “If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up” and “Game Is My Middle Name.” The album Betty Davis was recorded with Sly & The Family Stone’s rhythm section, sharply produced by Sly Stone drummer Greg Errico, and featured backing vocals from Sylvester and the Pointer Sisters.
Her 1974 sophomore album They Say I’m Different features a worthy-of-framing futuristic cover challenging David Bowie’s science fiction funk with real rocking soul-fire, kicked off with the savagely sexual “Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him” (later sampled by Ice Cube). Her follow up is full of classic cuts like “Don’t Call Her No Tramp” and the hilarious, hard, deep funk of “He Was A Big Freak.”
Betty Davis was riding high in the 70s. A new record label, a series of high profile relationships, and intensely sexualized live performances made her a rising star. It seemed like everything was aligned to take the music world by storm. So Betty and band got back into the studio where she would act as writer, producer, and performer, creating her definitive release – Nasty Gal.
For the first time, her critically adored first two albums are being lovingly re-mastered from the original master tapes by Light In The Attic Records to sound as ferocious and revolutionary as they did when they first sprung on an unsuspecting world in the early ’70s. These reissues mark the first time that Betty will receive proper royalties for her music on CD.
In addition to the restoration of the incredible original cover art, the compelling and heartbreaking liner notes written by author and respected soul music scholar Oliver Wang (O-Dub/Soul Sides) include her second interview in many decades, making these essential reissues for any soul, progressive punk, or funk-rock collection.
Betty Davis’ 1974 sophomore album They Say I’m Different features a worthy-of-framing futuristic cover challenging David Bowie’s science fiction funk with real rocking soul-fire, kicked off with the savagely sexual “Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him” (later sampled by Ice Cube). Her follow up is full of classic cuts like “Don’t Call Her No Tramp” and the hilarious, hard, deep funk of “He Was A Big Freak.”
Read More & Listen >
In 1973, Betty Davis would finally kick off her cosmic career with an amazingly progressive hard funk and sweet soul self-titled debut. Davis showcased her fiercely unique talent and features such gems as “If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up” and “Game Is My Middle Name.” The album Betty Davis was recorded with Sly & The Family Stone’s rhythm section, sharply produced by Sly Stone drummer Greg Errico, and featured backing vocals from Sylvester and the Pointer Sisters.
Read More & Listen >
Nasty Gal
Betty Davis
LITA 046
Betty Davis was riding high in the 70s. A new record label, a series of high profile relationships, and intensely sexualized live performances made her a rising star. It seemed like everything was aligned to take the music world by storm. So Betty and band got back into the studio where she would act as writer, producer, and performer, creating what she thought would be her definitive release…
Read More & Listen >
Is This Love Or Desire
LITA 047
Is It Love Or Desire is a little-known gem in the Davis catalogue. Mastered from the original tapes, and untouched for over 30 years, this release features detailed liner notes by Oliver Wang (Soul Sides, Betty Davis and They Say I’m Different re-issue contributor), the originally intended artwork housed in a lavishly packaged digipak, rare photos, archival material, and recent interviews with Davis and her skin-tight band Funk House.
Funk Queen schools you! (1975)
Betty Davis, queen of FunkRock, hips you to who's happening in Funk, circa '75. This version of the video show you everyone she's talking about plus many more. For those of you who are into being hip to the trip, here's the list in the order they appear:
The Funk Brothers (Motown); Booker T & the MGs; James Brown; Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker (The JBs, P-Funk); The Meters; Sly & the Family Stone; Stevie Wonder; Tina Turner; Al Green; Ann Peebles; Miles Davis; Billy Preston; Carlos Santana; Curtis Mayfield; Barry White; Larry Graham; Isaac Hayes; The O'Jays; Betty Davis; Jimi Hendrix Experience; Rare Earth; Herbie Hancock & Headhunters; Aretha Franklin (w/ Ahmet Ertegun); Rufus w/ Chaka Khan; Parliament/Funkadelic; Ohio Players; Marvin Gaye; War; Earth Wind & Fire; Bootsy Collins; and -the Man- Sly Stone now.
See also:
BETTY DAVIS- "F.U.N.K." (2.0) (1975)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNcohP
BETTY DAVIS-"SHUT OFF THE LIGHT" (1975)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GWikm
BETTY DAVIS- "NASTY GAL" (1975)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDvvQq
BETTY DAVIS- "HE WAS A BIG FREAK" (1974)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQgWYe
BETTY DAVIS -"They Say I'm Different" (1974)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWTt1b
Buy Betty Davis CDs at:
http://www.lightintheattic.net/releas
Betty Davis - 'Nasty Gal' - Full LP 1975
01. Nasty Gal 0:0002. Talkin' Trash 4:42
03. Dedicated To The Press 9:30
04. You And I 13:18
05. Feeling 16:05
06. F.U.N.K. 18:55
07. Gettin' Kicked Off, Havin' Fun 23:20
08. Shut Off The Light 26:34
09. This Is It! 30:32
10. The Lone Ranger 34:04
Betty Davis (1973)
Betty Davis - "If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up"
Betty Davis - 'They Say I'm Different' - Full Album 1974
01. Shoo-B-Doop And Cop Him
02. He Was A Big Freak
03. Your Mama Wants Ya Back
04. Don't Call Her No Tramp
05. Git In There
06. They Say I'm Different
07. 70's Blues
08. Special People
Betty Davis--"Game Is My Middle Name"--1974
Betty Davis - "Anti Love Song”—1973
Artist: Betty Davis
Album: Betty Davis [1973]
Song: 03 Anti Love Song
"Steppin in her I Miller shoes" - Betty Davis
Betty Davis Tribute, Git In There, Schomburg Center, NYC 3-7-11:
"Git In There" performed at "They Say She's Different: A Betty Davis Retrospective," presented by the Black Rock Coalition at The Schomburg Center, NYC, 3-7-11.
The band featured:
Tamar-kali - co-musical director, vocals
Victor Axelrod - co-musical director, keys
Joi - vocals
N'Dambi - vocals
Nucomme - vocals
Alkebulan - vocals
Kimberly Nichole - vocals
Kat Dyson - guitar, vocals
Jerome Jordan - guitar, vocals
Jonathan Maron - bass
Miles Arntzen - drums
BETTY DAVIS - best of - 70's RARE FUNK
Track listing: 1- Anti Love Song; 2- If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up; 3- Walking up the road; 4- Your Man My Man; 5- He Was A Big Freak; 6- Your Mama Wants Ya Back; 7- Don't Call Her No Tramp; 8- They Say I'm Different; 9- Feelins; 10- F.U.N.K.; 11- Gettin' kicked off, Havin' fun; 12- Talkin Trash.
"Git In There" performed at "They Say She's Different: A Betty Davis Retrospective," presented by the Black Rock Coalition at The Schomburg Center, NYC, 3-7-11.
The band featured:
Tamar-kali - co-musical director, vocals
Victor Axelrod - co-musical director, keys
Joi - vocals
N'Dambi - vocals
Nucomme - vocals
Alkebulan - vocals
Kimberly Nichole - vocals
Kat Dyson - guitar, vocals
Jerome Jordan - guitar, vocals
Jonathan Maron - bass
Miles Arntzen - drums
BETTY DAVIS - best of - 70's RARE FUNK
Track listing: 1- Anti Love Song; 2- If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up; 3- Walking up the road; 4- Your Man My Man; 5- He Was A Big Freak; 6- Your Mama Wants Ya Back; 7- Don't Call Her No Tramp; 8- They Say I'm Different; 9- Feelins; 10- F.U.N.K.; 11- Gettin' kicked off, Havin' fun; 12- Talkin Trash.
Betty Davis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Betty Davis (born Betty Mabry, July 26, 1945)[1] is an American funk singer.
Contents
1 Background
2 Marriage to Miles Davis
3 Music career
4 Discography
4.1 Singles
4.2 Studio albums
4.3 Unofficial releases
5 References
6 Literature
7 External links
Background
Born in 1945, Betty Mabry grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and just outside of Pittsburgh. On her grandmother’s farm in Reidsville, North Carolina, she listened to B.B. King, Jimmy Reed, and Elmore James and other blues musicians. One of the first songs she wrote, at the age of twelve, was called "I’m Going to Bake That Cake of Love."[citation needed]
Aged 16, she left Pittsburgh for New York City, enrolling at the Fashion Institute of Technology while living with her aunt. She soaked up the Greenwich Village culture and folk music of the early 1960s. She associated herself with frequenters of the Cellar, a hip uptown club where young and stylish people congregated. It was a multiracial, artsy crowd of models, design students, actors, and singers. At the Cellar she played records and chatted people up. She also worked as a model, appearing in photo spreads in Seventeen, Ebony and Glamour.[2]
In her time in New York, she met several musicians including Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. The seeds of her musical career were planted through her friendship with soul singer Lou Courtney, who produced her first single, “The Cellar” with simple, catchy lyrics like, “Where you going fellas, so fly? / I’m going to the Cellar, my oh my / What you going to do there / We’re going to boogaloo there.”
The single was a local jam for the Cellar. Yet her first professional gig was not until she wrote "Uptown (to Harlem)" for the Chambers Brothers. Their 1967 album was a major success, but Betty Mabry was focusing on her modeling career. She was successful as a model but felt bored by the work. According to Oliver Wang’s They Say I’m Different liner notes, she said, “I didn’t like modeling because you didn’t need brains to do it. It’s only going to last as long as you look good.”[citation needed]
Marriage to Miles Davis
She met Miles Davis in 1967 and married him in September 1968. In just one year of marriage she influenced him greatly by introducing him to the fashions and the new popular music trends of the era. In his autobiography, Miles credited Betty with helping to plant the seeds of his future musical explorations by introducing the trumpeter to psychedelic rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix and funk innovator Sly Stone. The Miles Davis album Filles de Kilimanjaro includes a song named after her and her photo on the front cover.
Miles believed that Hendrix and Betty had an affair which supposedly hastened the end of their marriage, but Betty denies this. Hendrix and Miles stayed close after the divorce, planning to record until Hendrix's death. The influence of Hendrix and especially Sly Stone on Miles Davis was obvious on the album Bitches Brew, which ushered in the era of jazz fusion. The origin of the album's title is unknown, but some believe Miles was subtly paying tribute to Betty and her girlfriends. In fact, it is said that he originally wanted to call the album Witches Brew—it was Betty who convinced him to change it.[3]
Music career
Betty's first major credit was writing Uptown for the Chambers Brothers, 1967.
After the end of her marriage with Davis, Betty moved to London, probably around 1971, to pursue her modeling career. She wrote music while in the UK and returned to the US around 1972 with the intention of recording songs with Santana. Instead, she recorded her own songs with a group of West Coast funk musicians. Her first record, Betty Davis, was released in 1973. She had two minor hits on the Billboard R&B chart - "If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up", which reached no. 66 in 1973, and "Shut Off The Lights", which reached no. 97 in 1975.[4] Davis released two more studio albums, They Say I'm Different (1974) and her major label debut on Island Records Nasty Gal (1975). None of the three albums was a commercial success.
Davis remained a cult figure as a singer, due in part to her open sexual attitude, which was controversial for the time. Some of her shows were boycotted and her songs were not played on the radio due to pressure by religious groups and the NAACP.[5]
Both Betty Davis and They Say I'm Different were re-released by Seattle's Light in the Attic Records on May 1, 2007. In September 2009, Light in the Attic Records reissued Nasty Gal and her unreleased fourth studio album recorded in 1976, re-titled as Is It Love or Desire? (the original title was Crashin' From Passion). Both reissues contained extensive liner notes and shed some light on the mystery of why her fourth album, considered possibly to be her best work by many members of her band (Herbie Hancock, Chuck Rainey, Alphonse Mouzon),[citation needed] was shelved by the record label and remained unreleased for 33 years. After a final recording session in 1979, Davis eventually stopped making music and returned to Pennsylvania.
Material from the 1979 recording session was eventually used for two bootleg albums, Hangin' Out In Hollywood (1995) and Crashin' From Passion (1996). A greatest hits album, Anti Love: The Best of Betty Davis, was released in 2000.
Discography
Singles
Year Single Label Notes
196? "The Cellar"/"???" Independent Release 1st Studio Single; Produced by Lou Courtney
1964 "Get Ready for Betty" / "I'm Gonna Get My Baby Back" DCP 2nd Studio Single
1968 "It's My Life" / "Live, Love, Learn" Columbia 3rd Studio Single
1973 "If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up" / "Steppin in Her I. Miller Shoes" Just Sunshine
1973 "Ooh Yea" / "In the Meantime" Just Sunshine
1974 "Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him" / "He Was a Big Freak" Just Sunshine
1974 "Git in There" /"They Say I'm Different" Just Sunshine
1975 "Shut Off the Lights" / "He Was a Big Freak" Island
Studio albums
Year Album Label Notes
1973 Betty Davis Just Sunshine
Light in the Attic (2009 re-release) 1st studio album; produced by Greg Errico
1974 They Say I'm Different Just Sunshine
Light in the Attic (2009 re-release) 2nd studio album; produced by Betty Davis
1975 Nasty Gal Island
Light in the Attic (2009 re-release) 3rd studio album; produced by Betty Davis
2009 Is It Love or Desire? Light In The Attic 4th album; recorded in 1976 and released in 2009
Unofficial releases
Hangin' Out In Hollywood (1995) (Charly) / Crashin' From Passion (Razor & Tie) (1996)
Compilation of material recorded in 1979 and released in 1995 and 1996 without the artist's consent
Anti Love: The Best of Betty Davis (2000) (UFoxy)
Compilation
This Is It! Anthology (2005) (Vampisoul)
Compilation
References
Betty Davis at AllMusic
"Betty Davis". Soulwalking.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-06-10.
"Madonna before Madonna: The woman who introduced Miles to Hendrix finally speaks". Thedailymaverick.co.za. Retrieved 2012-06-10.
Whitburn, Joel (1996). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-1995. Record Research. p. 104.
Mahon, Maureen (15 June 2011). "They Say She’s Different: Race, Gender, Genre, and the Liberated Black Femininity of Betty Davis". Journal of Popular Music Studies (Oxford: Blackwell) 23 (2): 146–165. doi:10.1111/j.1533-1598.2011.01277.x.
Literature
Liner notes to Light in the Attic's 2007 re-issue of Betty Davis' self-titled 1973 debut album.
External links
The Sound of Young America: Betty Davis Interview – June 21, 2007: Betty Davis gives her first radio interview in 30 years.
J. Hayes, "The Beautiful Dichotomy of Betty Davis: A Rare Conversation with the Elusive Mistress of Funk", interview, February 2010
Neil Spencer, "Miles Davis: The muse who changed him, and the heady Brew that rewrote jazz", The Guardian, 5 September 2010 - includes 2010 interview with Betty Davis.
Betty Davis: Betty Davis – Album review
Betty Davis at AllMusic
