She was so ahead of her time.

hayesmusicdesign said:

oh man... you missed my interview with her from last year!

http://www.nodepression.com/profiles/blogs/the-beautiful-dichotomy-of

Great interview!

SuperFunk59 said:

A friend of mine loaned me Betty's first 3 albums on CD the other night.....................Jesus H Christ, this is some of the rawest, nastiest funk that I've ever heard!!!!!!

I've got nearly all of Miles Davis' albums and knew his 2nd wife Betty had recorded a couple of albums but never bothered to hunt them down as I just thought that they'd be jazzy mellow stuff....how wrong was I!!!!!!

Then I heard Anti Love Song on a compilation and thought, mmmm that's nasty, I'll have to see if I can find some of her other stuff and my mate had the reissues on CD.

I can't get enough of her now!!!!!

I still need to get that 1976 album by her...the one that was shelved all these years.

Has anyone been able to find any footage of her performing in the 70s? Did she make any TV appearances?

SoulAlive said:

SuperFunk59 said:

A friend of mine loaned me Betty's first 3 albums on CD the other night.....................Jesus H Christ, this is some of the rawest, nastiest funk that I've ever heard!!!!!!

I've got nearly all of Miles Davis' albums and knew his 2nd wife Betty had recorded a couple of albums but never bothered to hunt them down as I just thought that they'd be jazzy mellow stuff....how wrong was I!!!!!!

Then I heard Anti Love Song on a compilation and thought, mmmm that's nasty, I'll have to see if I can find some of her other stuff and my mate had the reissues on CD.

I can't get enough of her now!!!!!

I still need to get that 1976 album by her...the one that was shelved all these years.

The album you are looking for, SoulAlive, is called "Is It Love or Desire?", recorded in 1976 but only released by Light In The Attic Records in 2009. It is available on their website or you can order it on Amazon, which I just did. I also found her last LP from 1979 on Amazon called "Crashin' From Passion," which I just got in the mail today. I can't wait to hear it tomorrow! But I just got back from an X-Japan concert which was the bomb and I need shut-eye! Can't wait until "Love or Desire" arrives...

purplethunder3121 said:

SoulAlive said:

I still need to get that 1976 album by her...the one that was shelved all these years.

The album you are looking for, SoulAlive, is called "Is It Love or Desire?", recorded in 1976 but only released by Light In The Attic Records in 2009. It is available on their website or you can order it on Amazon, which I just did. I also found her last LP from 1979 on Amazon called "Crashin' From Passion," which I just got in the mail today. I can't wait to hear it tomorrow! But I just got back from an X-Japan concert which was the bomb and I need shut-eye! Can't wait until "Love or Desire" arrives...

Thanks for the info.I just ordered it too

I assume that 'Crashin From Passion' is a collection of songs and demos she recorded in 1979 for an album that was never finished/released?

purplethunder3121 said:

After hearing Nasty Gal, I ordered They Say I'm Different and Is It Love Or Desire. Can't get enough of that raw down-and-dirty funk!

That's what I like about her music: it's hardcore,gritty funk! Raw and dirty.

Unfortunatley I dont know anything about Betty Davis. Ill look this up and listen once I get home...I know OF her..just really nothing ABOUT her.

Nice to see orgers getting into Betty.

I could hear Meshell N'Degeocello doing a cover of "Anti Love Song". As A matter of fact, the bass line of "If That's Your Boyfriend" kinda sounds inspired by it.

Graycap23 said:

I'm amazed that I've never heard of this woman until folks on the org started bring her up.

Hard 2 believe.

Seriously. My brother told me about her, but only about a month before reading about her here.

I went my whole life without knowing who she was (other than the woman on the mIles Davis album cover) Bought my first cd of hers only two weeks ago!

I think there is something of a re-discovery going on with her, though. The greats never seem to be appreciated when they are around. I can't see why she wasn't popular in her time, though, she's not that out there.

SoulAlive said:

purplethunder3121 said:

The album you are looking for, SoulAlive, is called "Is It Love or Desire?", recorded in 1976 but only released by Light In The Attic Records in 2009. It is available on their website or you can order it on Amazon, which I just did. I also found her last LP from 1979 on Amazon called "Crashin' From Passion," which I just got in the mail today. I can't wait to hear it tomorrow! But I just got back from an X-Japan concert which was the bomb and I need shut-eye! Can't wait until "Love or Desire" arrives...

Thanks for the info.I just ordered it too

I assume that 'Crashin From Passion' is a collection of songs and demos she recorded in 1979 for an album that was never finished/released?

Oddly the song "Crashin' From Passion" IS on Is It Love or Desire? You should get it any way you can. It's a fabulous album. She actually dissed disco in one of the tracks but I could see where she was coming from. She was a funkateer with blues roots. So she gets a pass on that considering she was raw. I'm actually glad she didn't conform to disco. She actually rebelled again by quitting at a time when they would've probably approached her to go disco. I'm thinking had she continued, she might've continued to do some funk rock with some metal influences but who knows lol

NDRU said:

Graycap23 said:

I'm amazed that I've never heard of this woman until folks on the org started bring her up.

Hard 2 believe.

Seriously. My brother told me about her, but only about a month before reading about her here.

I went my whole life without knowing who she was (other than the woman on the mIles Davis album cover) Bought my first cd of hers only two weeks ago!

I think there is something of a re-discovery going on with her, though. The greats never seem to be appreciated when they are around. I can't see why she wasn't popular in her time, though, she's not that out there.

Well by today's standards, she isn't. But hell most of us on this board with few exceptions knew how it was in the '70s so who's there to say that she could've fit in the '70s landscape considering she had these strikes against her (which shouldn't have been strikes):

1.) She's black.

2.) She wasn't an R&B, soul or disco singer

3.) She was raunchy.

4.) She's a woman.

The best advantage she had was that she scared conservatives and religious folks and even black folks didn't know what to do with her. As much as we talk about how some artists "turn on" the black community, the black community turned off on Betty, which was probably devastating to her considering the stuff she was doing was no different than Funkadelic, but to be frank, Funkadelic was also out of favor with R&B audiences' tastes until the very late 1970s.

I have all of her CD's and love 'em tender.

Timmy84 said:

NDRU said:

Seriously. My brother told me about her, but only about a month before reading about her here.

I went my whole life without knowing who she was (other than the woman on the mIles Davis album cover) Bought my first cd of hers only two weeks ago!

I think there is something of a re-discovery going on with her, though. The greats never seem to be appreciated when they are around. I can't see why she wasn't popular in her time, though, she's not that out there.

Well by today's standards, she isn't. But hell most of us on this board with few exceptions knew how it was in the '70s so who's there to say that she could've fit in the '70s landscape considering she had these strikes against her (which shouldn't have been strikes):

1.) She's black.

2.) She wasn't an R&B, soul or disco singer

3.) She was raunchy.

4.) She's a woman.

The best advantage she had was that she scared conservatives and religious folks and even black folks didn't know what to do with her. As much as we talk about how some artists "turn on" the black community, the black community turned off on Betty, which was probably devastating to her considering the stuff she was doing was no different than Funkadelic, but to be frank, Funkadelic was also out of favor with R&B audiences' tastes until the very late 1970s.

I hear you, but you are basically describing Tina Turner. The 70's were crazy, and she seemed to fit that vibe perfectly. She certainly was not as out there as Miles.

I guess she obviously had some success, she was signed to a record deal after all & dated/maried Miles, Robert Palmer, Eric Clapton (so she was around music royalty) And okay, I can see why she was maybe not not mainstream in her time (the album I have does not have an obvious radio single), but it is surprising that I had not even heard of her after all this time.

NDRU said:

Timmy84 said:

Well by today's standards, she isn't. But hell most of us on this board with few exceptions knew how it was in the '70s so who's there to say that she could've fit in the '70s landscape considering she had these strikes against her (which shouldn't have been strikes):

1.) She's black.

2.) She wasn't an R&B, soul or disco singer

3.) She was raunchy.

4.) She's a woman.

The best advantage she had was that she scared conservatives and religious folks and even black folks didn't know what to do with her. As much as we talk about how some artists "turn on" the black community, the black community turned off on Betty, which was probably devastating to her considering the stuff she was doing was no different than Funkadelic, but to be frank, Funkadelic was also out of favor with R&B audiences' tastes until the very late 1970s.

I hear you, but you are basically describing Tina Turner. The 70's were crazy, and she seemed to fit that vibe perfectly. She certainly was not as out there as Miles.

I guess she obviously had some success, she was signed to a record deal after all & dated/maried Miles, Robert Palmer, Eric Clapton (so she was around music royalty) And okay, I can see why she was maybe not not mainstream in her time (the album I have does not have an obvious radio single), but it is surprising that I had not even heard of her after all this time.

That "success" didn't generate sales for her.

Just listen to her struggles in "Stars Starve, Ya Know".

So while Tina Turner may have been overlooked (in time), so was Betty Davis. "Some success" don't count it because if those things really mattered, Betty would be a household name now...and she's starting to become one now, in a sense.

You'd think someone who had those connections would be a superstar but that wasn't in the cards for the former Ms. Mabry.

[Edited 9/29/10 11:56am]

Timmy84 said:

NDRU said:

I hear you, but you are basically describing Tina Turner. The 70's were crazy, and she seemed to fit that vibe perfectly. She certainly was not as out there as Miles.

I guess she obviously had some success, she was signed to a record deal after all & dated/maried Miles, Robert Palmer, Eric Clapton (so she was around music royalty) And okay, I can see why she was maybe not not mainstream in her time (the album I have does not have an obvious radio single), but it is surprising that I had not even heard of her after all this time.

That "success" didn't generate sales for her.

Just listen to her struggles in "Stars Starve, Ya Know".

So while Tina Turner may have been overlooked (in time), so was Betty Davis. "Some success" don't count it because if those things really mattered, Betty would be a household name now...and she's starting to become one now, in a sense.

You'd think someone who had those connections would be a superstar but that wasn't in the cards for the former Ms. Mabry.

[Edited 9/29/10 11:56am]

yeah by some success, I just mean that she wasn't completely unappreciated in her time. There were people who saw her talent, it just didn't translate into sales, as you say.

But people discover the music, like Funkadelic. It is later in coming for Betty, but it's happening I guess.

NDRU said:

Timmy84 said:

That "success" didn't generate sales for her.

Just listen to her struggles in "Stars Starve, Ya Know".

So while Tina Turner may have been overlooked (in time), so was Betty Davis. "Some success" don't count it because if those things really mattered, Betty would be a household name now...and she's starting to become one now, in a sense.

You'd think someone who had those connections would be a superstar but that wasn't in the cards for the former Ms. Mabry.

[Edited 9/29/10 11:56am]

yeah by some success, I just mean that she wasn't completely unappreciated in her time. There were people who saw her talent, it just didn't translate into sales, as you say.

But people discover the music, like Funkadelic. It is later in coming for Betty, but it's happening I guess.

I think she was mostly unappreciated. Musicians gave her respect, yes, but for an audience that wanted radio hits, Betty was a no-story as far as they were concerned.

But now people ARE discovering her now for what she was/is.

Timmy84 said:

NDRU said:

yeah by some success, I just mean that she wasn't completely unappreciated in her time. There were people who saw her talent, it just didn't translate into sales, as you say.

But people discover the music, like Funkadelic. It is later in coming for Betty, but it's happening I guess.

I think she was mostly unappreciated. Musicians gave her respect, yes, but for an audience that wanted radio hits, Betty was a no-story as far as they were concerned.

But now people ARE discovering her now for what she was/is.

yeah certainly unappreciated by a mass audience

Looking back she really does not seem so wild. Eh, there are good artists not being appreciated today, I suppose. Certainly nobody cares about my band!

Timmy84 said:

SoulAlive said:

Thanks for the info.I just ordered it too

I assume that 'Crashin From Passion' is a collection of songs and demos she recorded in 1979 for an album that was never finished/released?

Oddly the song "Crashin' From Passion" IS on Is It Love or Desire? You should get it any way you can. It's a fabulous album. She actually dissed disco in one of the tracks but I could see where she was coming from. She was a funkateer with blues roots. So she gets a pass on that considering she was raw. I'm actually glad she didn't conform to disco. She actually rebelled again by quitting at a time when they would've probably approached her to go disco. I'm thinking had she continued, she might've continued to do some funk rock with some metal influences but who knows lol

If proof was ever needed that the art of sampling in hip-hop is a GOOD thing, I was first turned on to Betty years ago through this:

So, being the sample-hungry kid and funk fan I was, it led me to discover this:

Got myself a hold of Betty's discography and have been hooked since.

Glad to see Betty getting the love.

I thought my effort would be wasted lol. It's also live over at MoQuake.

~

Timmy, Stars Starve You Know is NUTS! So much anger and frustration blazing through that funk and voice....she spoke absolute TRUTH on it. I also agree with her about disco.

To those who are thinking about getting the bootleg, Hangin' Out In Hollywood/Crashin' From Passion, note that the tracks were unfinished and disliked by Betty herself, they weren't supposed to be heard. Having said that, there are a couple of hits on there, but just nothing on the music that came before that she actually wanted to make. She scrapped the whole project.

[Edited 9/29/10 13:33pm]

paisleypark4 said:

Unfortunatley I dont know anything about Betty Davis. Ill look this up and listen once I get home...I know OF her..just really nothing ABOUT her.

[Edited 9/29/10 15:59pm]

SoulAlive said:

Has anyone been able to find any footage of her performing in the 70s? Did she make any TV appearances?

Oddly, there is ZERO footage of her circulating. I think the only footage of her we could possibly get is from today, if she decided to do something. I don't see past footage appearing anytime soon....if there is any that is.

WetDream said:

Glad to see Betty getting the love.

I thought my effort would be wasted lol. It's also live over at MoQuake.

~

Timmy, Stars Starve You Know is NUTS! So much anger and frustration blazing through that funk and voice....she spoke absolute TRUTH on it. I also agree with her about disco.

To those who are thinking about getting the bootleg, Hangin' Out In Hollywood/Crashin' From Passion, note that the tracks were unfinished and disliked by Betty herself, they weren't supposed to be heard. Having said that, there are a couple of hits on there, but just nothing on the music that came before that she actually wanted to make. She scrapped the whole project.

[Edited 9/29/10 13:33pm]

It's probably my favorite track on that album too.

WetDream said:

SoulAlive said:

Has anyone been able to find any footage of her performing in the 70s? Did she make any TV appearances?

Oddly, there is ZERO footage of her circulating. I think the only footage of her we could possibly get is from today, if she decided to do something. I don't see past footage appearing anytime soon....if there is any that is.

Wow,that's a shame.I would love to see footage of her in the 70s.I bet her shows were WILD!

UPS guy just delivered They Say I'm Different and Is It Love or Desire? A whole afternoon of F.U.N.K.! Putting them on NOW!

Re-posting the Betty Davis articles I posted on another thread for those who may not have read them :

Bold Betty Davis

In a rare interview, '70s funk goddess Betty Davis talks about growing up in North Carolina

by Chris Toenes (Indyweek.com)

When Betty Davis was making blues-gone-heavy funk records in the mid-'70s, unaware club owners often thought she and her band of cousins were going to play jazz. Davis, after all, married Miles Davis in 1968. The marriage was short, but it was an intensely creative time for them both. But after Betty and Miles split, she hopped between New York, San Francisco and a modeling stint in London. She found her own artistic identity early on, even if it's only just now finding the proper audience.

In 1972, Davis put together a band with the help of Greg Errico, former drummer for Sly and The Family Stone and innovator of the hi-hat and bass drum technique prevalent on the group's hits like "Dance to the Music" and "Stand." He was in the middle of a recording session, but—after her then-boyfriend and then-Santana percussionist Michael Carabello introduced the two—she made him an offer.

"That very day she told me she had this record deal, and asked if I would produce it," Errico remembers. "She knew what she wanted: funk, down and dirty funk."

Choosing Errico was very calculated. He had connections, and he built a band that included some of funk's architects: bassist Larry Graham of Sly and The Family Stone, Tower of Power's horns, Merl Saunders on piano and The Pointer Sisters doing background vocals. Neal Schon (Santana/Journey) played guitar, with Errico on drums and disco star Sylvester adding some vocals. Davis' unflinching charisma put her in the driver's seat, a very rare place for a black female performer at the time.

"It was pretty far ahead of what was status quo during the day," says Errico.

Far enough ahead, actually, that the NAACP protested her "If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up" and religious groups complained her records were downright dangerous. She was an anomaly, compared mostly to men like George Clinton and his Parliament-Funkadelic family. But while Clinton was climbing out of a UFO into his band's cosmic slop, Davis was strutting, unchained, delivering lyrics where the woman retained power, and using that strength of sexual prowess like a weapon. Those traits shape Davis' first two records—1973's self-titled record and 1974's They Say I'm Different. Both were reissued last year by Light in the Attic Records. After years of bootlegged copies, it was the first time Davis received any royalties for her records since their original release.

So what makes this music worth revisiting almost 35 years after it was recorded? A large portion of Davis' groundbreaking appeal and attitude—and the funk music that supported both—reflects her Carolina past. She learned how to be herself in Reidsville.

Before she became Mrs. Davis or embarked on a self-made career of four innovative records, Betty Davis was Betty Mabry—born in Durham on July 26, 1945, and raised on a Reidsville farm with her grandmother until age 9. She enjoyed the simple pleasures of rural life, like her mother's and grandmother's cooking.

click to enlarge

• Davis' performance high kick

"I like Southern food, like cornbread, fried chicken and greens," she says from her home in Pittsburgh. Davis rarely does interviews, but she was interested in speaking to someone from the place she used to call home.

Incorporated in 1873 around a knoll overlooking the Troublesome Creek, in the center of Rockingham County, Reidsville depended largely on tobacco crops and farming. Music was a big part of life on the Mabry farm: While she did chores like feeding chickens in grade school, Davis often listened to her grandmother's extensive blues and jazz collection. She remembers Lightnin' Hopkins and Muddy Waters the most.

"She had been listening to music since she was a teenager," Davis remembers of "grandma." She often told Davis of the trip she made to see Ike and Tina Turner, a powerful piece of oral history that made an impression. Years later, Davis' music would be compared to Tina's ferocity, though her work ironically presaged Turner's own solo rise.

Davis left for Pittsburgh when her father got a job at a steel mill. At age 16, she jumped to New York, where her aunt lived, to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology. She ended up meeting Miles there in 1966 in a jazz club, but she initially didn't even know who he was. While living in L.A. for a bit with some girlfriends after an intense romance with Miles, she met Hugh Masekela. He recorded her performing two songs. When she returned to New York, Miles proposed, but their marriage would only last a year. She became a fiery muse to Miles, often credited with introducing him to the rock world of Sly and The Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix, resulting in his new direction into fusion (and it's said she advised him to change the title of his historic record of the time from Witches' Brew to the saucier Bitches' Brew). She's the striking visage on Miles' album Filles De Kilimanjaro, and the couple recorded a handful of unreleased songs, including an old Creem song, "Politician."

Davis received her first songwriting credit in New York for "Uptown" when the song landed on a 1967 Chambers Brothers record. In one of the many unconfirmed tales of Davis' career, she also wrote songs for the Commodores, only to be stripped of credit to the point that she opted out of the project completely. Her perseverance landed Davis offers from several streams of the music world. She was so independently minded and singular in her vision that she had an uncanny ability to turn down projects that didn't appeal to her.

But during Davis' busiest years, she'd still come back to visit Reidsville. "I would just eat and listen to music at my grandma's house," she says, "and we would go out shopping." Davis, the internationally successful model, liked a large department store in Reidsville.

Similarly, she would eventually turn back to her North Carolina cousins to play in her band. Her cousins—including a drummer, Nicky Neal, and a bassist, Larry Johnson—would stop by during her hometown visits. She would eventually meet their friends, Fred "Funki" Mills and guitarist Carlos Morales, who were busy sharpening their chops in the Reidsville and Greensboro area.

click to enlarge

• Davis' high reach

"I know they listened to Sly," Davis says, when describing her bond with them. Neal called Mills in 1974 and said Davis needed a band. Neal, Johnson and Mills had been pals since childhood, exploring music as teens with the support of their families. "We grew up together in Reidsville. Nicky's dad had a little club called the Teenage Club, and bought equipment for us to use," says Mills, a Vietnam veteran who still plays actively with the Durham-based group Sweet Dreams and works with youth music-education programs in the area. "His dad went in on a bus for us, and we used it to get to gigs." They would go on to record Davis' third record, Nasty Gal. Released in 1975, the album included an arrangement by Miles Davis of "You and I," where she wrote and sang of their relationship.

Life on the road with Davis was different: Mills describes himself as a guy from a small town, and here he was meeting some of his heroes while traveling the world.

Some people saw Betty narrowly as Miles' ex-wife. She kept in touch with Miles, even though they'd been divorced for the better part of a decade: "He was a funny guy," says Mills, recalling Miles joking with him, giving him advice on how the band should play parts, or asking about where exactly she was at any given time. "He would call and be looking for her, 'Where is she, I know she's back there.' With relationships like that then, you were still in touch a lot."

Mills says the band's music was highly rehearsed and its presentation was immaculate. It was her obsession. All of their dance moves were prepared in advance: "She would never let me wear a shirt on stage," Mills told Oliver Wang in the reissue liner notes of Davis' second album, They Say I'm Different. "Before every gig, I'd have to go into the dressing room and she would put baby oil all over my body." The rest of the men in the band often remained shirtless. At initial shows, some of the crowd might get scared off, but those who got it wanted to be up front.

Davis went her own way in a male-dominated industry, exhibiting flair as a conceptual performer: From her trademark silver boots (which she credits to former boyfriend Eric Clapton) to her sheer negligees, Davis made statements. "They all go hand in hand, really," she says. "When you're an artist, you're a part of everything you do."

Davis' songs explored the nuances of not seeking the affections of a man (rumored to be Miles Davis) in "Anti Love Song," about defending sexual freedom and people of the streets in "Don't Call Her No Tramp." The title track from They Say I'm Different references "hogs, getting off, humping," and "He Was a Big Freak" explores reversing sexual dominance roles when Davis sings about controlling her suitor: "I used to beat him with my turquoise chain."

click to enlarge

• Davis back by her North Carolina-based band and her backup singers, "The Ladies"

Both of those references stem from Davis' North Carolina past: "I remember slopping the hogs in the morning and they'd be gettin' off humpin' to John Lee Hooker," she says. She patiently repeats those loaded words, which had been garbled over the phone call from Pittsburgh. "They'd be gettin' off havin' sex ... the hogs." She just laughs. She also remembers getting a whipping with a sunflower once.

She was a proto-feminist in the music business, not willing to put up with sexual discrimination, but unafraid of her own sexuality. "Betty had this complex, that if anything went wrong, if she was a man, it wouldn't go that way...," says Mills. It seemed nothing could hold her back: gender, race, the sexual mores of the day. That is, until Davis flipped her powerful switch to its off position.

Dismay followed when Davis' seemingly unconquerable drive stopped in 1979. She had never been a large commercial success, and she disappeared from the scene after Island Records didn't pick up her fourth record, Crashin' from Passion, which she was recording with Neal, Johnson, Mills and Morales in a live-in studio in Bogalusa, La.

Davis says she quit the business simply because she couldn't get a record deal: "I just had my time, and figured my time was over, ya know?" Her mother and grandmother had died, so she moved back to Pittsburgh. She had partly grown up there, and her brother Henry was a postman in town. It was a welcoming home base for her.

Many companies contacted Errico over the years, looking for leads on Davis, offering documentary films and all kinds of deals. When he finally spoke with her, she "wanted none of it." That self-titled debut, he says, "always stayed like an underground cult thing, people always knew about it." Between crate diggers and the Internet, word spread. It was finally to be her time again. John Ballon, who has written extensively on Davis, found her in Pittsburgh, and convinced her to let Light in the Attic reissue the discs, which provided her overdue royalties.

click to enlarge

• Beautiful and strong

"Good music finds its way," Errico says.

While Davis maintained a private life, her bandmates from North Carolina continued and succeeded: Morales played on Julian Lennon's solo album. Mills played in Chops, who became the horn section for The Police, and he played on The Rolling Stones' Undercover.

As Mills recounts the wide-eyed wonder he experienced as a Reidsville native suddenly surrounded by stars like Sly or the Stones, he speaks to how Davis' life down South crept into her work. Davis, like her cousins, was a real person from a real small Southern town. The reasons "they" said she was different has everything to do with her Southern upbringing: "Because I eat chitlins, but I can't help it I was born and raised on 'em," she sang. Her great-grandma didn't like the foxtrot. She liked jazz and blues. She liked moonshine, strong and pure. The funk and frankness in Davis' music grew from tough roots. Davis was "different" to the cosmopolitan crowd surrounding her in the fashion and rock music industries. She grew up in the North Carolina countryside listening to strong blues music and surrounded by stronger women.

Her talk about love and sex—using both the blues' innuendo and direct sexual come-ons—loosened the moral strictures for female performers. Mills notes she predated Labelle or Prince associate Apollonia; Prince himself must've listened and seen her unfettered energy. Unquestionably, her music found its way into pop culture, and several artists have rapped over her tunes. Ice Cube has said she was "a G for real," and De La Soul's Prince Paul has called her music "pure uncut funk." Maybe Carlos Santana's oft-quoted, but apt, line about Davis puts her in the proper pop-star category she deserves: "She was the first Madonna," Santana has said, "But Madonna is more like Marie Osmond when compared to Betty Davis."

Betty Davis should have always been a funk super-heroine. Maybe now she can see the credit due her legacy.

Miles Davis: The muse who changed him, and the heady Brew that rewrote jazz

Forty years ago, Miles Davis rewrote the jazz rulebook with his album Bitches Brew – but he never would have made it without the inspiration of the amazing Betty Mabry, as she now reveals in a rare interview.

Betty and Miles Davis ringside at the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier title fight in New York, 1971. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Corbis

As the incendiary year of 1968 dawned, Miles Dewey Davis found himself in a most unusual situation: he was no longer hip. The trumpeter had reigned as the crown prince of jazz for nearly two decades, his music mutating subtly through hard bop to the mesmeric lyricism of 1959's Kind of Blue. Where he led, others followed. To go with his music was Miles's persona as the acme of cool, aloof in immaculate mohair suits, an outsider unreachable behind an unsmiling glare, with the Zen riddle of "So What" for his signature tune.

Yet at 41 years of age, the crown prince of jazz had unaccountably slipped behind the beat of the times. He and his quintet still held court at New York's Village Gate and were still making albums of poise and invention such as Miles Smiles (1966) and Sorcerer (1967), but for a new generation weaned on Motown and Black Power, Davis and his music were suddenly passé. The young African-Americans being conscripted to fight for Uncle Sam in Vietnam went to war humming James Brown, not "So What".

Even arch jazzers in search of new frontiers were beholden to the "free" experimentalism of Ornette Coleman rather than to Miles. Still, as Miles would put it in his 1990 autobiography: "I wasn't prepared to be a memory yet." Over the next two years, he would pull off a breathtaking act of reinvention, disbanding his lauded quintet in favour of electrically charged line-ups using two drummers, two bass players and two, even three, keyboards. It was a process of exploration that culminated in 1970's Bitches Brew – an album that spawned a new genre, fusion – which has has now been lavishly reissued for its 40th anniversary. En route, the elegant suits were swapped for a garish wardrobe of suede, leather, jerkins and scarves, the respectful world of jazz clubs for noisy rock venues.

Miles's embrace of electricity split the jazz world between excitement and contempt but he remained unrepentant. "I had seen the way to the future and I was going for it like I had always done," he reflected later. "I had to change course to continue to love what I was playing."

The catalyst for Miles's change, the woman responsible for his glimpse of the future, was his new lover Betty Mabry, a 22-year-old model whom he had met late in 1967 and whom he would make his second wife a year later. Their marriage would last only a year, yet the influence of Betty Davis (she retained her married name) on Miles would be profound.

When they met, Mabry was a successful model, her stunning looks matched by a fiery spirit and a cutting-edge sensibility. She already hosted her own New York club, the Cellar, and planned to become a singer, an ambition she would realise a few years later on a trio of sassy albums. It was Betty who turned Miles's ears towards rock and funk, to James Brown and Sly Stone and especially to the cosmic forays of Jimi Hendrix, whom she knew and whose music, bafflingly, had evaded Miles's radar.

"His world was progressive jazz, plus he was a lover of classical music, so there were lots of things he hadn't picked up on," Betty told me in a very rare interview. Only recently, after the reissue of her long-deleted albums, has she re-emerged from the seclusion she entered at the close of the 1970s. She now lives in Pittsburgh, and sounded demure when we spoke, no longer the wild child.

Her influence on her ex-husband has never been forgotten, however. Speaking in 2003 about Miles's conversion to an electric groove, guitarist Carlos Santana recalled Betty as "indomitable – she couldn't be tamed. Musically, philosophically and physically, she was extreme and attractive".

The courtship was not without problems. At their first meeting, Miles patted a stool and asked Betty to "sit on my hand" – she demurred – and as he drove her home in his Lamborghini told her he "liked little girls". "I ain't no girl," she spat back.

Betty's impact on Miles is etched into Filles de Kilimanjaro, the album he released in the autumn of 1968, which featured his new wife on its sleeve and contained two tunes inspired by her, "Mademoiselle Mabry" and "Frelon Brun". Both are modelled on Hendrix riffs, respectively "The Wind Cries Mary" and "If 6 Was 9".

By then, Betty had introduced Miles to Jimi in person. The young rock god and jazz elder hit it off, the mutual fascination leading to talk about playing together. Betty's influence on Miles extended to his clothes and his drug habits: "I never took drugs. I was really into my body and I wouldn't do anything to damage myself. When I was with Miles, he was clean – he even stopped smoking. I had something to do with it, but it was his willpower," she says now. "I loved Miles's suits, but he grew fond of clothes from a place I used to shop at, Hernandos, which had Mexican designs and which would custom-make items for him."

It was also Betty who named Bitches Brew: "Miles wanted to call it Witches Brew, but I suggested Bitches Brew and he said, 'I like that.' Contrary to what some people said, there was nothing derogatory about it."

Relations between husband and wife soon soured, however. In his autobiography, Miles complained she was "too young and wild" and suspected her of having an affair with the raffish Hendrix, something she flatly denies. "I was so angry with Miles when he wrote that. It was disrespectful to Jimi and to me.

"Miles and I broke up because of his violent temper," she continues. "Other than that, it was a good experience for me because I developed creatively – Miles produced an album of mine that never came out."

Even after the pair had split at the end of 1969, they continued to see each other. "When two people are tied together you just have to find a way through it," she adds phlegmatically.

Away from Miles, Betty had her own career to build. Her eponymous first album featured a stellar line-up put together by Sly Stone drummer Greg Errico and including the Pointer Sisters on backing vocals. Its tough funk grooves were fronted by vocals that rasped, rocked and screamed with something between delight and threat.

The subsequent They Say I'm Different and Nasty Gal likewise presented her as a proud, predatory woman beholden to no man with cuts including "If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up", "He Was a Big Freak" and "Nasty Gal", the last declaring: "You dragged my name in the mud… but I used to leave you hanging in bed by your fingernails." There has been a widespread assumption that Betty's songs referred to her ex-husband (or to Hendrix) but she claims she was merely "exercising my creativity".

Despite critical acclaim, none of her albums achieved much commercial success (a fourth was never released), their cause not helped by radio's aversion to their sexual explicitness (pretty mild by today's standards), but her talent was never in doubt. "She was the first Madonna, but Madonna was like Donny Osmond by comparison," reckoned Carlos Santana.

By contrast, Miles's move into fusion won him a new generation of fans. Following 1969's transitional In a Silent Way, the electric storm of Bitches Brew in 1970 became the biggest-selling jazz album in history, shifting 500,000 copies instead of the 60,000 usually commanded by his releases.

The influence of Hendrix is all over Brew. Like Electric Ladyland, it's primarily a studio creation, complete with splices and special effects, while "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" echoes Jimi's "Voodoo Chile". In 1970, the two men even appeared on the same bill at the Isle of Wight festival before an audience of 600,000. Miles arrived on stage in a red leather jacket and blue rhinestone trousers.

Many of Miles's accomplices would go on to write their own careers in "fusion", among them Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea and Larry Young. For drummer Jack De Johnette, the process that created Bitches Brew, while thrilling, had human as much as artistic origins: "It was a midlife crisis played out through experimental jazz."

Bitches Brew (Legacy Edition) is out now on Sony Jazz

(This article appeared on p28 of the The New Review section of the Observer on Sunday 5 September 2010. It was published on guardian.co.uk at 00.05 BST on Sunday 5 September 2010.)

BTW, the sound quality on these Light in the Attic re-masters is simply amazing! Clear, clean, and crisp yet warm as can be--sounds like I'm listening to brand new vinyl originals! Can't remember the last time a CD sounded so good blasting through my stereo speakers... "Special People" indeed.

The song Is It Love or Desire? is just too hot for words...wish it was longer! :smoke coming from the speakers:

Whorey Angel and Crashin' From Passion are exciting funk jams, while When Romance Says Goodbye is deep, smokey, and seductive. What a versatile voice she has--Betty can growl, snarl, and belt like a trooper and yet sing a hauntingly seductive jazzy song also. I wanted some "new" music--well, this is it! I'd better put it on my Ipod, otherwise, I will wear out these CDs. If you don't have 'em, then grab 'em while they're still available!

[Edited 9/30/10 14:35pm]

WetDream said:

purplethunder3121 said:

After hearing Nasty Gal, I ordered They Say I'm Different and Is It Love Or Desire. Can't get enough of that raw down-and-dirty funk! Wonder what she sounds like now...

Have you heard them? If not, i wish i was you!

We may never know what she sounds like unfortunately, but a lot of people are trying with her. Even hardcore fans like myself are trying via nagging labels etc. Never underestimate the power of a fan, after all, it was a fan that tracked down Betty after years of her reclusive behaviour (her old label couldn't even find her!). I'm trying to get a few people on her case....but in the words of Betty herself, spoken last year: "We'll see."

Haven't heard any of Betty's stuff since I was a kid in the '70s. Gimme this snap-the-strap-slap-the-skin-off-the-chicken-and-fry-it-gritty-funky-ole-school R&B any day, any time, any decade!

Thanks for posting those excellent articles! Alot of good information on Betty.