Betty Davis

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For the actress, see Bette Davis, for the meteorologist, see Betty Davis (meteorologist).
Betty Davis on the cover of her Nasty Gal LP, 1975.
Betty Davis on the cover of her Nasty Gal LP, 1975.

Betty Davis (born Betty Mabry, 1945) is an American funk and soul singer. She was also Miles Davis's second wife.

Contents

[edit] Background

Betty's first twelve years of her life were spent on her grandmother's farm in Durham, North Carolina where she was born. Most 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. She worked as a model, appearing in photo spreads in Seventeen, Ebony and Glamour. [1] In her time in New York, Mabry met several musicians including Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone.

[edit] Marriage to Miles Davis

Mabry met Miles Davis in 1967 and married him in September 1968. In just one year of marriage she influenced him greatly. The Miles Davis album Filles de Kilimanjaro included a song named after her and her photo on the front cover. In his autobiography, Miles credits Mabry 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. Hendrix's friendship with Miles helped open the trumpeter up to new ideas about the sound of jazz.

It is believed that Hendrix and Betty Davis had an affair that hastened the end of her marriage to Miles Davis, but Hendrix and Miles stayed close and even planned to record until Hendrix's death. Hendrix's influence 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 the woman whose intersecting relationships helped spur the album's genesis.

[edit] Music career

Betty Davis on the cover of her They Say I'm Different LP, 1974.
Betty Davis on the cover of her They Say I'm Different LP, 1974.

After the breakup of her marriage with Davis, Betty moved to London to pursue her modeling career. She wrote music - a passion since childhood - while in the UK and returned to the US with the intention of recording songs with Santana. Instead, she organized a group of talented West Coast funk musicians to make her own recordings.

Her first record, Betty Davis, was released in 1973. It had impressive lyrics and funky grooves on songs such as "Anti Love Song," as well as an impressive list of musicians:

Davis released two more studio albums, They Say I'm Different (1974) and Nasty Gal (1975). None of the three albums were commercial successes. 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 not played on the radio due to pressure by religious groups. With the passage of time her records have become highly regarded by collectors of soul and funk music. Davis eventually stopped making music and returned to Pennsylvania.

Material from a 1979 recording session was eventually used for two further 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. Betty Davis' most obvious influence in popular culture is through the nearly identical singing style of Grammy award winning artist Macy Gray.

[edit] External links

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