Betty Davis Was a Big Freak
Written for the late lamented Music Aficionado in 2016, and republished on the day of Ms. Davisâ death, 2/9/22.
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To this day, the name Betty Davis â Betty with a ây,â that is â remains best known to connoisseurs of Miles Davis minutiae and â70s funk obsessives. While itâs true that Betty played an important off-stage role in the career of the jazz trumpeter, to whom she was married for just a year, and she undoubtedly made some of the best hardcore funk records of her era, she deserves to be recognized beyond the relatively narrow provinces of the jazzbo and the crate-digger.
Uncompromising, intelligent, brazen, aggressive, and not incidentally gorgeous, sexually provocative, and a fashion plate always ahead of the curve, Betty was a prophetic figure. Spawned by the explosion of music, fashion, and alternative culture of the late â60s, and by concurrent leaps in black consciousness and feminism, she was a take-no-prisoners singer and writer who presented herself as something new, rich, and strange with her self-titled debut album in 1973.
There were some badass contemporaries working the soul and funk trenchesâ gutter-tongued diva Millie Jackson and one-time James Brown paramour Yvonne Fair leap to mind immediately â but they seemed to be adapting tropes previously worked by male singers in the genres. Betty still sounds like something new: a tough, smart, demanding woman who reveled in pleasure and insisted on satisfaction, unafraid to claim what she wanted.
Despite the fact that she was associated with some high-profile male musician friends and lovers â beyond Davis, the roll call included Hugh Masekela, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, Mike Carabello, Eric Clapton, and Robert Palmer â she was no groupie or bed-hopping climber. Possessed of her own self-defining vision, she was producing her own records and leading a tight, flexible little band by the end of her brief run.
In 1976, after completing four splendid albums (only three of which were released at the time), she disappeared, not only from the music business but from the public eye entirely. What happened? Itâs an old story that many women in the industry will recognize: Her record company didnât know what to do with her, and wanted her to tone down her act. Betty Davis wasnât having any of that, thank you, and she hit the damn road.
She was born Betty Mabry in Durham, NC, in 1945. She grew up country, and was exposed to down-home, get-down music early. On the title track of her second album, They Say Iâm Different, she runs down the artists who served as inspirations: Big Mama Thornton, John Lee Hooker, Lightninâ Hopkins, Howlinâ Wolf, Albert King, Chuck Berry. The blues, in one form or another, is the backbone of her style.
Her family relocated to Pittsburgh when she was young, but at 16 she left home for the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. There she was hurtled into the roiling cultural vortex of the Village. She took up modeling, working for the toney Wilhelmina agency, and began running with a posse of similarly disposed, equally beautiful women who called themselves the âElectric Ladies.â Sound familiar? One of her closest cohorts was Devon Wilson, for many years a notorious consort of Jimi Hendrix known for her freewheeling, outrĂŠ sex- and drug-saturated lifestyle.
Mabry began to try her hand at singing, and cut a few self-penned singles. They were in an old-school mold in terms of structure, but her very first 45 hints at things to come. âGet Ready For Betty,â a 1964 track released by Don Costa (discoverer of Paul Anka and Trini Lopez and a key arranger for Frank Sinatra), is stodgy early-â60s NYC R&B to its core, but its message is pointed: âGet out my way, girl, âcause Iâm cominâ to take your man.â
She also made a stolid romantic duet ballad with singer Roy Arlington and, produced by cult soul man Lou Courtney, a homage to the Cellar, the New York club where she DJed. But she didnât start reaching the upper echelon of the music biz until one of her songs, a hymn to Harlem called âUptown,â was cut by the Chambers Brothers for their smash 1968 album The Time Has Come, which also included the psychedelic soul workout âTime Has Come Today.â
The Chambers association probably secured a singles deal for her at Columbia Records, and her first session for the major label was produced by her former live-in boyfriend, South African trumpeter Masekela, in October 1968. By that time, she had split with him: A month earlier, she had married a far more famous horn player, Miles Davis, whom she had met in 1967. Davis and his regular producer Teo Macero would head her second session for Columbia in May 1969.
Those two dates were released for the first time as The Columbia Years 1968-1969 earlier this month by Light in the Attic, the independent label that has restored Bettyâs entire catalog to print over the last decade. While devoted fans can be grateful that the work is finally seeing the light of day, it does not make for easy listening, for it was clearly made by people groping in the dark.
Bettyâs artistic persona was at that point completely unformed, and so her male Svengalis did their best to mold the clay in their hands, with feeble results. Masekela evidently completed just three tracks, two of which, âItâs My Lifeâ and âLive, Love, Learn,â were issued as a flop single. The homiletic song titles give the game away; the music, straight-up commercial soul backed by a large group (which included Wilton Felder and Wayne Henderson of the Jazz Crusaders and Masekela), has nothing original to say.
The date with Miles is a bigger waste, if a more spectacular one. The personnel couldnât have been more glittering: Hendrix sidemen Billy Cox and Mitch Mitchell; ex-Detroit Wheels guitarist Jim McCarty; bassist Harvey Brooks, studio familiar of Bob Dylan and former member of the Electric Flag; and Davisâ then-current or future band mates Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, and Larry Young.
But nothing jells. The material is either weak (Bettyâs directionless original âHanginâ Outâ is the best of a bad lot) or incongruous (lumbering covers of Creamâs âPoliticianâ and Creedenceâs âBorn On the Bayouâ). Worse, the jazzers are unable to lay down anything resembling a solid soul-rock foundation, and even reliable timekeeper Mitchell blows the groove on more than one occasion. Miles gets impatient with his spouse at one point, rasping over the talk-back, âSing it just like that, with the gum in your mouth and all, bitch.â
Apparently intended as demos, the failed tracks were consigned to the tape library. By late â69, Miles and Bettyâs marriage was history. She left her mark on his music: She appeared on the cover of his cover of his 1968 album Filles de Kilimanjaro and inspired its extended track âMademoiselle Mabryâ (based on the chords that opens Hendrixâs âThe Wind Cries Maryâ) and âBack Seat Bettyâ from his 1981 comeback album The Man With the Horn.
Moreover, she moved him toward the flash style that would dominate his music through the mid-â70s, by exposing him to the slamming music of Hendrix and Sly and exchanging his continental suits for psychedelic pimp togs. Would we know Bitches Brew, On the Corner, and Agharta without Betty Davis? Maybe, maybe not.
For her part, Betty remained in the wings for a while. She collaborated on demos for the Commodores; in London, she modeled, worked on songs for Marc Bolan of T. Rex, and declined a production offer from her then-paramour Clapton. Drifting back to New York, she met Santana percussionist Carabello. They became involved romantically, and in 1972 she relocated to the San Francisco Bay area, where Carabelloâs local connections led to the formation of a stellar band to back her on a debut album.
One reads the credits for Betty Davis in awe. The rhythm section was the Family Stoneâs dissident, puissant rhythm section, bassist Larry Graham and drummer Greg Errico (who also produced). Original Santana guitarist Neal Schon, future Mandrill axe man Doug Rodrigues, founding Graham Central Station organist Hershall Kennedy, and keyboardist and ace Jerry Garcia collaborator Merl Saunders filled out the instrumentation. The Pointer Sisters, Sylvester, and Kathi McDonald were among a large platoon of backup vocalists.
Issued in 1973 by Just Sunshine Records, an independent label owned by Woodstock Festival promoter Michael Lang (who also released a set by another unique woman, folk singer-guitarist Karen Dalton), Betty Davis was one hell of a coming-out party. Since her abortive Columbia dates, she had developed a unique vocal attack that could leap from a velvety croon to a Tina Turner-like shriek in a nanosecond. The stomping funk of the studio band backed her up to the hilt.
Like Turner, she was one Bold Soul Sister. The lust-filled opening invitation âIf Iâm in Luck I Might Get Picked Upâ announces that a new game was afoot. The statement of romantic/sexual independence âAnti Love Song,â the loversâ chess match âYour Man My Man,â and the self-explanatory âGame is My Middle Nameâ offer up a startling, hard-edged new model of a hard-funking female vocalist.
The albumâs most affecting track may be âSteppin in Her I. Miller Shoes,â Davisâ level-headed elegy for her sybaritic friend Devon Wilson, who sailed out a window at the Chelsea Hotel in 1971. âShe coulda been anything that she wantedâŚInstead she chose to be nothing,â Davis sings, implying that route wouldnât be one she would take herself.
âIf Iâm in Luckâ grazed the lower reaches of the R&B singles chart and the album failed to reach the LP rolls at all, but Davis was undaunted. For 1974âs They Say Iâm Different, she took the producerâs reins, which she would hold for the rest of her career. While the backup lineup is less glitzy (though Saunders, Pete Escovedo, and Buddy Miles, on guitar no less, appear), the support is still sizzling; crackling drums and burbling clavinet put over a set of songs that may have been even stronger than those heard on her debut.
No one who hears âHe Was a Big Freakâ is likely to ever forget it; itâs a startling dissection of a masochistic relationship â inspired by Jimi Hendrix, and not, as many have assumed, by Miles Davis (âEveryone knows that Miles is a sadist,â Betty remarked later). Almost as notable are âDonât Call Her No Tramp,â a prescient condemnation of what we now call slut-shaming, and the autobiographical title track, with slicing slide guitar work by Cordell Dudley.
Different and its attendant singles tanked, but Betty managed to maintain her profile with live gigs noteworthy for their uninhibited bawdiness, on-stage abandon, and the starâs Egyptian-princess-from-outer-space wardrobe sense. By early 1974 she had assembled a hot, lean road band that included her cousins Nickey Neal and Larry Johnson on drums and bass, respectively, plus keyboardist Fred Mills and guitarist Carlos Morales. This lineup would back her on her last two albums.
The end of Just Sunshineâs distribution deal liberated Davis, who, at the suggestion of then-boyfriend Robert Palmer, inked with Palmerâs label Island Records. The company released Nasty Gal in 1975, and it may be Davisâ best-executed work. The pared-down backing lets the songs shine, and there are good ones here: The shameless title song, the vituperative blast at the critics âDedicated to the Press,â and the out-front ultimatum for sexual satisfaction âFeelinsâ get right up in the listenerâs face. The most surprising track is the ballad âYou and I,â an unexpected songwriting reunion with Miles, orchestrated by the trumpeterâs famed arranger Gil Evans.
Itâs a tremendous album, and Betty supported it with live shows that ate the funk competition alive. A bootleg of an especially out-there set recorded at a festival on the French Riviera in 1976 literally climaxes with Nasty Galâs âThe Lone Ranger,â an in-the-saddle heavy breather that Davis wraps up by feigning a loud orgasm.
One should remember that at this particular juncture, Madonna was studying dance at the University of Michigan.
But Nasty Gal faded with hardly a trace, and Davisâ relationship with Island swiftly became fractious. Itâs easy to see why the label declined to issue her final album, originally called Crashinâ From Passion and ultimately released, after years as a bootleg, by Light in the Attic in 2009 as Is It Love or Desire. The collection, which leans heavily on songs about sex, doping, and heavy drinking, includes âStars Starve, You Know,â an outright condemnation of the games record companies play:
They said if I wanted to make some money
Iâd have to change my style
Put a paper bag over my face
Sing soft and wear tight fitting gowns
They donât like the way Iâm lookinâ
So itâs hard for my agent to get me bookinâs
Unless I cover up my legs and drop my pen
And commit one of those commercial sinsâŚ
And that was all she wrote. Until writers began to seek her out in the new millennium as her records became available again, Betty Davis was an invisible woman, one who had blazed a trail that other talents, such as Prince and Madonna, would blaze more profitably after her. She was definitively ahead of her time.
Asked by one writer what she had done since leaving music, Davis, who turns 71 on July 26, responded with the most tragic thing one can imagine any artist saying: âNothing really.â
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