Betty Davis

Born in 1945 according to most sources (though she claims 1944[2]), Betty Mabry grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and just outside Pittsboro. 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 12, was called "I’m Going to Bake That Cake of Love."[3] Also at that age, her family moved to Pittsburgh.

Aged 16, Betty 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.[4]

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—"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."[5][6]

In 2017, a documentary was released entitled Betty: They Say I'm Different.[7][8]

The live action/animated TV series Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus ended its 2018 season with an episode focusing on Davis' controversial career.[9]

Betty Davis' music has been featured in such television series as Orange Is the New Black,[10] Mixed-ish,[11] and High Fidelity.[12]

As Betty Mabry, she recorded "Get Ready For Betty" b/w "I'm Gonna Get My Baby Back" in 1964 for DCP International. Sometime in that same era, she also recorded a duet with Roy Arlington and under their joint name "Roy and Betty", released a single for Safice entitled, "I'll Be There".

Betty's first major credit was writing "Uptown (to Harlem)" for the Chambers Brothers, 1967.

In 1968, when she was still involved with Hugh Masekela, she recorded several songs for Columbia Records, with Masekela doing the arrangements. Two of them were released as a single: "Live, Love, Learn" b/w "It's My Life". Her relationship with Miles Davis began soon after her breakup from Masekela and in the spring of 1969, Betty returned to Columbia's 52nd St. Studios to record a series of demo tracks, with Miles and Teo Macero producing. At least five songs were taped during those sessions, three of which were Mabry originals, two of which were covers of Cream and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Miles attempted to use these demo songs to secure an album deal for Betty, but neither Columbia nor Atlantic were interested and they were archived into a vault until 2016 when they were released in the compilation, The Columbia Years, 1968–1969, by Seattle's Light in the Attic Records.

After the end of her marriage with Miles, Betty moved to London, probably around 1971, to pursue her modeling career. She wrote music while in the UK and, after about a year, returned to the US with the intention of recording songs with Santana. Instead, she recorded her own songs with a group of West Coast funk musicians. Davis wrote and arranged all her songs.[19] Her first record, Betty Davis, was released in 1973. She released two more studio albums, They Say I'm Different (1974)[21] and her major label debut on Island Records Nasty Gal (1975). None of the three albums was a commercial success, but 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.[22][23]

Davis remained a cult figure as a singer, due in part to her open sexual attitude, which was controversial for the time. She had success in Europe, but in the U.S. she was barred from performing on television because of her sexually aggressive stage persona.[24] Some of her shows were boycotted, and her songs were not played on the radio due to pressure by religious groups and the NAACP.[25] Carlos Santana recalled Betty as "indomitable – she couldn't be tamed. Musically, philosophically and physically, she was extreme and attractive."[15]

After some recording sessions in 1979, Davis stopped making music and returned to Pittsburgh, where she has lived quietly ever since.[26]

Both Betty Davis (1973) and They Say I'm Different (1974) were reissued by Light in the Attic Records in 2007. In 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?. 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 last band (Herbie Hancock, Chuck Rainey, Alphonse Mouzon), was shelved by the record label and remained unreleased for 33 years.

Material from the 1979 recording sessions was eventually used for two bootleg albums, Crashin' from Passion (1995) and Hangin' Out in Hollywood (1996). A greatest hits album, Anti Love: The Best of Betty Davis, was released in 2000.

In 2019, Davis released her first new song, "A Little Bit Hot Tonight", in over 40 years, which was performed by Danielle Maggio, an ethnomusicologist who is a personal friend and Associate Producer on Betty: They Say I'm Different.[27]

• Liner notes to Light in the Attic Records' 2007 re-issue of Betty Davis' self-titled 1973 debut album.

• Betty Davis at AllAboutJazz
• Betty Davis at AllMusic
• Betty Davis discography at Discogs
• Betty Davis on Weave
• Betty: They Say I'm Different – feature documentary, made in collaboration with Betty Davis herself
• The Sound of Young America – interview on Maximum Fun June 21, 2007 (her first radio interview in 30 years)
• The Beautiful Dichotomy of Betty Davis: A Rare Conversation with the Elusive Mistress of Funk – interview on NoDepression, February 2010, by J. Hayes
• Miles Davis: The muse who changed him, and the heady Brew that rewrote jazz – The Guardian, September 5, 2010, by Neil Spencer (including 2010 interview)