Betty Davis’ Bitch’s Brew
By Anne Keehn
Meet the original “nasty gal”: Betty Davis—née Betty Mabry in 1945. She was possibly the only woman forceful and creative enough to school Miles Davis, to whom she was married for a year in 1968, when she was just 23 years old, and Miles was about 42.
She recorded three albums between 1973 and ‘75, all of which failed to find commercial success: Betty Davis, They Say I’m Different and Nasty Gal. The first two have recently been re-released by Seattle’s Light in the Attic records.
Betty is said to have introduced Miles to the psychedelic and funky sounds of Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix—who she was rumored to have had an affair with—and inspired his creative reinvigoration, which culminated in the breakthrough jazz fusion album Bitches Brew. The name of that album was apparently an ode to Ms. Betty, and the mind-expanding mixture of influences she brought into Davis’ life.
According to the Light in the Attic website, today, Betty lives in poverty and obscurity in a “Pittsburgh ghetto,” only remembered by die-hard appreciators of the funk canon. The record label says the reissue of Davis’ first two albums “mark[s] the first time that Betty will receive proper royalties for her music on CD.”
Betty was Miles Davis’ muse, and she was lost to prosperity as her creativity was absorbed by the monolithic persona of the great jazz trumpeter. But the musical revolution Betty set in motion is all around us. Ice Cube, Talib Kweli, Ludacris and countless obscure hip-hop musicians have released tracks that sampled her work, and without her bold sexuality and powerful music, there may never have been Madonna, Prince, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Erykah Badu—the list goes on and on.
More pictures after the jump.
