FUNK ROCK STARTED SOMEWHERE

This could be good. Unreleased early stuff by Betty Davis, recorded in 1968-69, with Mitch Mitchell on drums, guitarist John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock on keyboards, Wayne Shorter on sax, and organist Larry Young. The three songs I've heard are telling, not quite as hard as the stuff she did just a couple years later, but you can hear it coming.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Betty Davis - Down Home Girl mp3 at Aquarium Drunkard Go there to get it.
Betty Davis - Hangin' Out (streaming) at F Yeah Black Rock Music
Betty Davis - Polititian Man (sample, streaming) at Sound Shelter
Earlier:
Betty Mabry - Get Ready for Betty (streaming) at YouTube
Later:
Betty Davis - He Was a Big Freak mp3 at Surreptitious Music
Betty Davis - Anti-Love Song mp3 at The Frump
Visit:
Betty Davis - Interview on The Sound of Young America at Maximum Fun
Podcast:
Behind The Black Power Goddess: Betty Davis' Early Demos Released at NPR
Video teaser:
Betty Davis - The Columbia Years 1968-69 at YouTube

TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE

I'd never heard Betty Mabry before tonight and, man, was I blown away. Not by the song, "Get Ready For Betty" released in 1964, but by the juxtaposition of it and "He Was a Big Freak", released ten years later under her married name Betty Davis.

Quote her ex-husband, Miles Davis: "Betty was too young and too wild for the things I expected from a woman." "Betty was a free spirit - talented as a motherfucker...she was raunchy and all that kind of shit, all sex...I just got tired of it."

Quote her: "The music is physical, and it's about sex. In the sixties everyone was into dope and staying high. Now it's sex. Man and woman. My lyrics go right to it. I don't beat around the bush. It's hip to eat pussy these days. Really hip."

Ohh la la, m'lady. Where were we? Oh yeah, "Get Ready For Betty" is Northern Soul dance floor fare. Good, really good, but not mindblowingly so. But listen to it and then check out "He Was a Big Freak", the latter sounding like a salad bowl of Bill Withers's "Use Me", the Slits, the Contortions, Gang of Four, and more. And that was 1974, ahead if it's time and all that jazz. Eat that.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Betty Mabry - Get Ready for Betty (streaming) at YouTube
Betty Davis - He Was a Big Freak mp3 at Surreptitious Music 
Betty Davis - Anti-Love Song mp3 at The Frump
Visit:
She Was a Big Freak - Betty Davis Profile at The Stranger 

In Your Face: The Woman Who Wore Out Miles Davis

Miles Davis: "Betty was too young and too wild for the things I expected from a woman...Betty was a free spirit - talented as a motherfucker...she was raunchy and all that kind of shit, all sex...I just got tired of it."

.

Betty Davis: "The music is physical, and it's about sex. In the sixties everyone was into dope and staying high. Now it's sex. Man and woman. My lyrics go right to it. I don't beat around the bush. It's hip to eat pussy these days. Really hip."

.

Phew! Really. A lesson in How Reissues Can Reap Long Overdue Respect, Betty Davis is finally getting credit as a trailblazer, not only as a woman (or a black woman, or an overtly sexual black woman) but as a musician who called her own shots and had a significant influence on other musicians.

.

Married for a short time to Miles Davis, she helped revamp his career, both musically and stylistically. Among her collaborators, friends and lovers were Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, Mark Bolan and the Chambers Brothers. She wrote her own songs, assembled her own bands and, for part of her career, produced her own records.

.

Her music was sexy, but it wasn't sultry. It was hard and raw. She wasn't your typical soul songstress or as dance-ably funky as her contemporaries. What set her apart is that she didn't care. She was in your face.

.

Betty Davis - He Was A Big Freak, Steppin' In Her I. Miller Shoes, at Shameless Complacency
Betty Davis (eight songs) at Last Days of Man on Earth

Read:

She Was A Big Freak at The Stranger

Liberated Funk, an excellent lengthy bio in Wax Poetics (newsstand only, no online content)