She's onstage wearing a negligee. Silver, dangly jewelry sparkles on her wrists and rests over the slope of her clavicle. Her long, mocha legs are wrapped tight in seductive hosiery. These legs are truly a sight: strong and lean and sultry. They burn. Their length is accentuated by a pair of ridiculously high-heeled, space-age go-go boots. To top it all off, her hair is poofed out in an afro the size of a small planet.
Courtesy of Light in the Attic.
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Listen to Betty Davis' "He Was a Big Freak."
Listen to Betty Davis' "Anti Love Song."
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Men can't take their eyes off of her; she reminds them of their insignificance. Women can't either; she floods them with confidence. She's strutting about the stage, pirouetting and spreading those legs so far apart, you think she'll split in two. Splash her with water, and steam would no doubt rise up.
Then she sings: "I said if I'm in luck/I just might get picked up!" She's not pleading for a date. No, this lyric is a challenge: Who'll be man enough to take her home? The all-male band behind her is funky—pure psychedelic soul funk—and Betty, always the entertainer, has made them appear shirtless and oiled onstage. Smoking as they are, however, they just fade into the background. That wild woman dancing around is stealing the show.
"I said I'm crazy/I'm wild!"
No kidding.
That was Betty Davis in 1974, onstage at New York City's Bottom Line. She was the embodiment of funk music and a true sex symbol, the forerunner to Madonna, Joi, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and Macy Gray. The list goes on to include the less obvious, such as electro shockstar Peaches and Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux. She has also been sampled by the likes of Ice Cube and Talib Kweli.
"Betty Davis is the funk," says poet and rapper Saul Williams. "It's not just that she's sexy and the music is sexy, but she's just so in the pocket! The notes she chose, the placement, to be able to dance around the music. Man, she killed that shit."
"She's a badass," says Herrema. "She was so multitalented, it seemed that she could do anything she wanted. Everything she did seemed so pure....Back then you had Funkadelic, you had Sly and the Family Stone, and Cher all dressing in an over-the-top way. With Betty's look, it was more the way she carried herself and presented herself."
"She was the first Madonna," says guitarist Carlos Santana. "But Madonna is more like Marie Osmond when compared to Betty Davis."
She was sexually and musically ahead of her time, and at some point in the early '80s, Davis disappeared. No, she didn't disappear, she just got quiet. She is still very much alive at 62, but speaking to her via phone, it's hard to believe she's the same woman.
Q: You live in Pittsburgh now?
A: Yeah.
Q: Do you do any work down there?
A: No.
Q: Is your family still in Pittsburgh?
A: Yeah.
Q: Do you play music with anyone? Friends or relatives?
A: No.
As you can see, Davis is a tough one to pry open. She speaks in abrupt, one- or two-word sentences most of the time. She is distant, removed from the present moment, and ultimately very mysterious. It could be that she is just not used to talking with the media, considering I'm maybe the fourth or fifth person to interview her in 25 years. When I tell her it's a true honor to speak with her, she responds with a spicy: "Mmm-hmm."
It could be that she just doesn't have much to say. But I find that hard to believe. She should be the ultimate source on the '60s and '70s. She was a friend and inspiration to Jimi Hendrix, hooking him up with the African American hipsters he wanted to identify with. She wrote songs for the Chambers Brothers ("Uptown [to Harlem]"). She recorded with Sly Stone's backing group, hung out with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was intimate with jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela, and, most notably, was married to the great Miles Davis, hence the surname. But not only was she married to Miles, she inspired him in much the same way she inspired Hendrix. As has been noted in biographies over the years, if it weren't for young Betty Mabry making Miles wear hip clothes and attend psychedelic rock shows, there would be no In a Silent Way or Bitches Brew.
"She was like Oprah with her panels," says Williams. "She was one of those black women who fused worlds. She saw two disparate minds and said, 'You two need to work together.'"
Whatever stories she has from the days she was fusing worlds are locked up tight inside her vault. It's not as if she's forgotten, however. She just doesn't see the big deal. You can tell by how nonchalantly she rattles off the names of these aforementioned cats. Yet her records, like those of her late ex-husband, should be part of some major label's legacy series and never out of print. But alas, there is no justice in the music business, and Davis lives alone, in an apartment outside of Pittsburgh, not doing much of anything.
