Betty Davis

Betty Mabry

Betty Gray Mabry was born in Durham, North Carolina on July 26, 1944. She spent part of her childhood in Reidsville, where her grandmother introduced her to blues musicians, and the family later settled in Homestead, Pennsylvania, where her father worked in a steel mill. She wrote her first song, "I'm Going to Bake That Cake of Love", at twelve. At sixteen she moved to New York, studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology and modeled for Seventeen, Ebony and Glamour.

She recorded "Get Ready for Betty" for Don Costa's DCP International in 1964 and wrote "Uptown (to Harlem)" for the Chambers Brothers in 1967. In 1968 Columbia issued two singles, "Live, Love, Learn" and "It's My Life", with Hugh Masekela arranging. Demos she made at Columbia's 52nd Street studios in 1969, with Miles Davis and Teo Macero producing, stayed unreleased until The Columbia Years 1968-1969 (Light in the Attic, June 28, 2016). Miles Davis later credited her with introducing him to Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone.

Three albums

Back from modeling in London, she recorded with West Coast funk musicians. Betty Davis (Just Sunshine, 1973) was made at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco, produced by Greg Errico of Sly and the Family Stone, with the Pointer Sisters and Sylvester among the backing singers. They Say I'm Different (1974) was recorded at the Record Plant in Sausalito and produced by Davis herself, and Nasty Gal (Island, 1975), with the engineer Bob Clearmountain, was recorded in May 1975; Robert Palmer helped secure the Island deal. She wrote almost every song she recorded and produced most of her albums with musicians she chose, which Oliver Wang noted in an NPR obituary few Black women had been able to do so early.

The records were too direct for much of the radio of the time: her shows were boycotted in places, she was kept off US television and songs were pushed off the air under pressure from religious groups and the NAACP. A fourth album for Island, recorded in 1976 in Bogalusa, Louisiana, was shelved, with the reason reported two ways (a rift with Island's Chris Blackwell, or a studio holding the masters over unpaid fees), and came out as Is It Love or Desire in 2009. The final sessions of 1979 were released as Crashin' from Passion in 1995. In 1980 she returned to Homestead and withdrew from public life for about twenty-five years.

Rediscovery

Light in the Attic reissued the first two albums in 2007, Nasty Gal in 2009 and the debut for its fiftieth anniversary in 2023; the compilation Anti Love: The Best of Betty Davis and This Is It! (Vampi Soul, 2005) had kept her in circulation. The documentary Betty: They Say I'm Different (2017, directed by Phil Cox) found her living with no phone, internet or car. Her music has been used in Orange Is the New Black, High Fidelity and Pistol, and Ice Cube sampled "Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him" on "Once Upon a Time in the Projects". Carlos Santana called her indomitable and said she couldn't be tamed; AllMusic called her a wildly flamboyant funk diva with few equals. She said in a 2005 interview: "I don't think I was ahead of my time, I think I was just testing the time." She died on February 9, 2022.