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November 12, 2009

Sleazy Listening: Betty Davis Rides Again...

Long before Lady Gaga, Beyoncé or even Madge, there was Betty Davis. Not the smoky-eyed “All About Eve” star, but the preternaturally funky 1970s diva whose high-voltage performances could melt the black off tar. She was light years ahead of her leisure-suited contemporaries, who didn’t get Davis’s piercing growl, far-out fashions and sexually charged funk-acid rock amalgam. But now, with Light In the Attic Records releasing two of Davis’s long-lost albums, “Nasty Gal” (1975) and “Is It Love or Desire” (1976), the time is right for us late adopters to catch up to this sassy soul sensation.

…Though she was nearly half his age and a billionth as famous, she kept Miles Davis on his toes. She turned him on to experimental rock and funk artists like Hendrix and Sly Stone, overhauled his wardrobe and was, for a time, his muse. She appeared on the cover of Miles’s 1968 “Filles de Kilimanjaro,” which included the track “Mademoiselle Mabry.” (Davis was born Betty Mabry in 1945.) Her funk-rock predilections influenced his classic fusion album, “Bitches Brew” (1969).