Funk's femme fatale

It's time for the world to meet Betty Davis, the funkiest, most ferocious singer of the 1970s.

By Oliver Wang

BETTY DAVIS OWNED me from the moment I heard her voice, a deceptively seductive lilt at one moment, and then in an instant, slicing like a dagger. Her music was a tidal wave too, a blend of funk, rock, and blues that could spin a person dizzy, drag you in deep. But the real attraction was her attitude: as loud, black, and proud as her Afro, lit by the spark of youth but powered by the proverbial fury of a woman scorned. She didn't sing love songs, she sung anti-love songs, but even though she whispered warnings about her cruelty and cattiness, I fell for her anyway. In the space of a song Davis could make you crawl, make you sweat, and before you knew it – game over, she'd foreclose on your soul.

Discovering Davis helps fill in a crucial missing link in the lineage of funk's leading ladies. Though her three albums – Betty Davis (1973), They Say I'm Different (1974), Nasty Gal (1975) – never propelled her to even the modest stardom shared by Jean Knight, Lynn Collins, and Chaka Khan, now that the U.K.'s MPC Ltd. has released all three on CD for the first time, that should change. With her unabashed sexuality, flamboyant image, and tortured vocals, she didn't just connect Marva Whitney to Parlet, Nina Simone to the Brides of Funkenstein: she laid down the foundation for funky femmes like Macy Gray, Kelis, and Joi. And unlike her peers who served as female mouthpieces for male producers and songwriters like James Brown and George Clinton, Davis wrote and arranged every song on every album and produced the latter two albums herself.

Davis was already known in pop music circles before she launched her solo career, but only as a footnote. Born Betty Mabry, she took her surname from a one-year marriage in 1968 to Miles Davis, 25 years her senior. Most jazz historians don't make much of the brief pairing between Davis and the 23-year-old ex-model except to note that her visage appears on his Filles de Kilimanjaro LP and that the album's "Mademoiselle Mabry" was written for her. What they fail to note is that she, already a budding songwriter, introduced her husband to Jimi Hendrix, a relationship that would be integral to the jazz giant's explorations of fusion. He is said to have observed that his ex-wife (with whom he was fairly close despite their failed marriage) could – with more support and better luck – have been as big as Madonna.

Despite her brief reign as first lady of jazz, Davis was a child of the blues, a point she proudly proclaims on the title track for They Say I'm Different, name-checking Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, Big Mama Thorton, and everybody in between. However, she was not one to wallow in pain. Instead, in a torrent of slapping bass lines, serrated guitar riffs, jabbing drum breaks, and her own scratchy voice, she used funk's cathartic energy to exorcise frustrations and indulge fantasies. You can hear influences from across the soul spectrum: the tight Southern R&B of Stax and Malaco on They Say I'm Different and Sly Stone's experiments in rock-funk fusion on Betty Davis and Nasty Gal. Uninterested in soul's sentimental preoccupation with love, Davis embraced funk's heat, screaming and hollering about lust, obsession, and rapture. She didn't emote so much as she inflicted, roughing you up, dragging you down, and leaving you begging for more.

Her best songs capture and channel an awesome, mesmerizing sexuality. On "If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up" (Betty Davis) Davis, backed by Larry Graham's rumbling bass and Doug Rodrigues's power chords, sidles up to the mic, bragging, "I said I'm wiggling my fanny / (Oh ho man) / I'm raunchy, dancing / I'm a doin' it, doin' it / (Get down) / This is my night out." On "Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him" (They Say) Cordell Dudley's guitar slithers sensuously while Davis confesses to her trio of backup singers (Debbie Burrell, Elaine Clark, Trudy Perkins), "I'm going to move it slow like a mule / (Go on and move it girl) / I'm going to love him funky, free and foolish / I'm going to do my best / And try hard to get him / Ain't he fine?"

Her greatest moment comes on Betty Davis, in the provocatively titled "Anti Love Song." She pushes and tempts, purring, "No, I don't want to love you / 'Cause I know how you are / I know you could possess my body / I know you could make me crawl." And then, in the wink of an eye, she turns the tables: " 'Cause you know I could possess your body too / (Don't cha) / You know I could make you crawl / And just as hard as I'd fall for you / (Boy) / Well, you'd know you'd fall for me harder." Truer words were never spoken.

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