her album "nasty gal" REALLY needs the remaster/re-issue treatment. i'm wondering if maybe it isn't my favorite of her albums. "F-U-N-K" and "dedicated to the press" kick my ass every time i hear them. it's just like her music bulldozes its way directly into the middle of me and shakes the hell outta me. i love it. love, love, love it.

Anxiety said:

I just listened to "FUNK" on Betty's myspace page. That song isn't bad at all. All that I've read about her third album says it's not as good, but based on this track I'd still hit it.

What is the name of the track she has that starts with a guitar riff and
she says funky like a donkey. My mp3 file doesn't list the title of the track just the artist name and track 2. That joint is tight.

It's never occurred to me that the "Betty Davis" from the "she's got Betty Davis eyes" was Miles' wife... How have I always missed out on this connection?

phunkdaddy said:

That's "Walkin Up The Road", the second track on Betty's first album. I'm listening to it right now (third day in a row).

on Betty's myspace page.

Anxiety said:

How's that spelled out? ON "betty davis" I got some barely legal little white girls page.

PFunkjazz said:

i think the display name is "betty davis (tribute page)"

try this:

http://www.myspace.com/bettymabrydavis

there are some GREAT pics on there i've never seen before.

I won't cop THEY SAY I'M DIFFERENT until Mon, but can someone list the musicians used on this recording?
[Edited 5/25/07 21:02pm]

Betty Davis
Betty Davis / They Say I'm Different
[Just Sunshine; 1973; 1974; r: Light in the Attic; 2007]
Rating: 8.9 / 8.6

It's rare that a pop history footnote looms as large as the figures she's meant to support, but then again, Betty Davis is one hell of a footnote.

Malcolm Gladwell groupies can tell you all about "connectors," roaming person-to-person hubs that link disparate corners of society. Well, in the late 1960s, Betty Davis-- then Betty Mabry-- was the link connecting such luminaries as Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and Miles Davis, the latter ultimately contributing his last name through a relatively short but tumultuous marriage. His 1968 album Filles de Kilimanjaro features then-model Betty on the cover; the track "Mademoiselle Mabry" was inspired by her.

As legend has it, Miles grew jealous of Betty's friendship with Hendrix (which Miles allegedly suspected may have been more than that), but Betty's place in the middle of this intersection of geniuses apparently resulted in more than just divorce filings. By popular account, it was Betty who turned Miles on to Sly and Jimi, which in turn may have been the catalyst for Miles' most radical musical evolution: the still awe-inspiring Bitches Brew, released in 1970, a year after his separation from Betty.

Betty Davis' own response was her self-titled 1973 debut, a groundbreaking slab of funk that featured a huge hunk of the Family Stone (it was produced by drummer Greg Errico) and fused soul, sex, and hard rock like the best Sly or Funkadelic disc, albeit from a female perspective. But if George Clinton waved his freak flag proudly, Betty Davis wore it as underwear then rubbed your face in it. An oft-quoted passage in Miles Davis' autobiography gets it just right: "If Betty were singing today she be something like Madonna, something like Prince, only as a woman," wrote Davis back in 1989. "She was the beginning of all that when she was singing as Betty Davis."

No doubt. Betty Davis never gives up in its aim to seduce and destroy; songs like "If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up", "Ooh Yeah", and "Game is My Middle Name" are raw and relentless in their intent. Then-Afrophile nympho Brian Eno might have called it Music for Fucking, though the semi-classic "Anti Love Song" is music for fucking with, specifically fucking with a former lover many suspect is Miles, but who might as well be any man stupid enough to do Betty wrong (in every sense).

Davis' part banshee/part Amazon shriek isn't the smoothest delivery system for seduction, but it does get the point across. Supposedly it was Marc Bolan who encouraged Davis to write her own songs, and there's no question Davis understood the best way for her to perform them was to wail like she was about to bite someone's head off.

As underscored by Oliver Wang's informative liner notes (drawn in part from one of the only interviews Davis has consented to in the last several decades), Davis' ever-growing sense of empowerment played a part in her decision to self-produce her 1974 record, They Say I'm Different. While the self-titled disc's band (which also included Neal Schon on guitar and future disco queen Sylvester on backing vocals) was dissolved, the sound remained mostly the same, and Davis' outré sexuality just as out there.

On "He Was a Big Freak", she essentially spars with a lover over who is freakier: the whipped or the whip-wielder. "Git In There" is house party in progress. The defensive title track finds Davis casting herself against her grandfather's more traditional blues favorites, while "Don't Call Her No Tramp" makes a distinction between an "elegant hustler" and a hooker (according to Wang, the song drew the ire of the NAACP for its "demeaning" depiction of black women). It's a slightly slicker album than its predecessor, but no less unreserved.

Yet despite the fact that these albums drip with personality, Betty Davis remains something of an enigma. Her catalog (including a short but confusing and uneven string of follow-ups to They Say I'm Different) have gone in and out of print over the years, while the singer herself is reportedly living in Pittsburgh, broke, bemused but largely ignoring the attention her brief career continues to garner.
And no wonder: Light in the Attic claims Davis never received any royalties from previous releases. Without steady checks coming in, what's cult fame even worth? Better to just keep on keeping on and let other folks parse out the legacy, but hopefully these reissues will remedy the situation. Anyone whose albums sound as electric as ever over 30 years late deserves more than Davis has received.

-Joshua Klein, May 22, 2007
http://www.pitchforkmedia...-different

I've picked-up both of these and while the mix is cleaner for the most part, the high-end is tweaked-the-fuck-out. I've listened to it on a couple of different systems and I'm kind of irritated by it. The liner notes have great content/research and the overall big picture of the cd being cleaner is good. The extra songs are worth the money but between this high end thing and the printing being a little bad (out of register) these attic guys seem like hacks or maybe just on a shoestring budget.

I've picked-up both of these and while the mix is cleaner for the most part, the high-end is tweaked-the-fuck-out. I've listened to it on a couple of different systems and I'm kind of irritated by it. The liner notes have great content/research and the overall big picture of the cd being cleaner is good. The extra songs are worth the money but between this high end thing and the printing being a little bad (out of register) these attic guys seem like hacks or maybe just on a shoestring budget.

Slave2daGroove said:

i don't think they're hacks but i do think they're on a low budget, and based on that i'm really impressed with what they were able to do. i listened to an advance copy of both remasters at a friend's house this weekend and he has a surround sound system...and i gotta tell you, it sounded GREAT. but maybe anything would sound great on his system, i dunno.

i'm just happy that these remasters are out there and getting betty the attention she deserves. i think that's the most important thing. i have a jankity semi-bootleggish copy of her "nasty gal" album on CD, and if the quality of that is anything to compare to what was out there before the remasters of her first two cds, then Light In The Attic has given us a fantastic improvement on what we've been able to access from her music up till now.

Slave2daGroove said:

I agree there's a DIY-quality to "these attic guys", but the good outweighs the bad and the ugly.

Bought the 2cd remaster. Damn that is some fierce funk, great band she used. Ill be gettin the others also.

PFunkjazz said:

that's a really long list.

i'm not gonna type it all out, but errico, graham and schon were out (as well as the pointer sisters), and the band on the second album were mostly friends of hers from her pre-NYC days, with a little bit of help from pete escovedo and buddy miles. the core of her band on this one is basically what ended up being her touring band.

Anxiety said:

Sheila E.'s dad

My friend mentioned this artice last night. So she lives!

GangstaFam said:

...and you gotta admit, the woman is fascinating. even if she'd never recorded those amazing albums, she led a phenomenal life.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

i hope she was careful, cuz i heard HE WAS A BIIIIG FREAK

It's never occurred to me that the "Betty Davis" from the "she's got Betty Davis eyes" was Miles' wife... How have I always missed out on this connection?

who the hell is she?

Despite the misspelling, I thought this was about you know who....




Smooches;)
[Edited 6/8/07 9:58am]

MsMisha319 said:

just start at the beginning of this thread and fill in the pieces. you'll never hear the name "betty davis" and think first about "all about eve" again!