She recorded three albums in the seventies and then disappeared from the music industry. She was the second wife of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis.
She growled in her wild voice. She was shaken, provoked. She was a woman, black and she never let herself be overwhelmed. Betty Davis (1945-2022), pioneer of funk in the seventies, has died at the age of 77 this Wednesday of natural causes, as confirmed to Rolling Stone magazine, Danielle Maggio, a close friend and student of her work. Amie Downs, communication manager for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where Davis lived, has clarified that her death was natural.
Davis only released three albums ( Betty Davis, 1973; They Say I’m Different, 1974, and Nasty Gal, 1975) tremendously influential. From Prince to Janelle Monae. Also for artists far from funk music like Madonna, who saw in her an example of sexual fury on stage. With these three titles she got her name to be linked not only to a kind of cult artist, but to a voice that would endure over time due to her sensuality and the explicit way in which she narrated her lyrics. . The second wife of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, she had a short career as an artist, but enough to become one of the most influential figures on the New York music scene in the late 1960s.
She was born Betty Mabry in Durham, North Carolina, and grew up in North Carolina and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before moving to New York at the age of 17. It was in this city where she began to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology and began as a model and head of a club. Thanks to these early jobs, she met characters like Andy Warhol, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and Eric Clapton. Apart from her busy social life, she always had a special interest in music in which she started at the age of 12. She recorded her first songs in the late sixties and that’s when she caught the attention of Miles Davis. They married in 1968.
Although their marriage only lasted a year, it was instrumental in changing Miles Davis. Betty aesthetically transformed Miles: Afro hair, chains, colorful clothes. She taught him the music of Cream, of Sly Stone, of Hendrix. The trumpeter, always open to risky experiments, was renewed with the hot music of the moment. She can be seen on albums like In a Silent Way (1969). But Betty didn’t want to stay as her/her star’s partner’s stylist.
In 1973 she released her first album, Betty Davis, which opens with If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up, a cover letter that defines her style: libidinous messages, howling funk, abrasive sounds, and a sharp rock guitar. An album that you put on the computer and it burned. This album would be followed by two others with poor sales. Her spirits plummeted in the mid-seventies and she decided to unwind by going to Japan. There she led a life of seclusion, even visiting some monks.
When she returned to the United States, in the eighties, she did not have much desire to return to musical activity. She holed up in her Pittsburgh home and spent the next four decades there.
Amelia Warner
Amelia Warner writes all the Latest Articles. She mostly covers Entertainment topics, but at times loves to write about movie reviews as well.
