A unique singer and songwriter whose strong personality never clicked with the public at large, Betty Davis was born Betty Mabry on July 16, 1944, in Durham, North Carolina. She grew up on a steady diet of blues music, and she began writing songs before she was a teenager. She moved to New York at age 16 and began frequenting and working at various clubs, all the while building connections in the music industry there as well as establishing herself in the bohemian scene of Greenwich Village. One of the scene’s most popular venues, The Cellar, became the subject of Davis’ first single, though it drew little notice outside of the club itself. She wrote “Uptown (To Harlem)” for The Chambers Brothers in 1967, and her modeling career was taking off. She married jazz great Miles Davis in September of 1968, though they would divorce before 1970. She recorded a smattering of singles, but her debut LP, Betty Davis, didn’t come out until 1973. The album showcased her blistering soul shout as well as her funk-heavy sound and proto-feminist, sex-positive lyrics. The album contained her most successful single, “If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up”, which climbed to Number 66 on the R&B singles chart. Her persona established, she recorded two more albums - 1974’s They Say I’m Different and 1975’s Nasty Girl - that failed to take off. There were aborted attempts for a new album in the late ‘70s but it was not officially released until 2009 as Is It Love or Desire? The album, alongside her three previously released albums, were reissued to great fanfare and her catalog received a critical re-evaluation, leading to a higher commercial profile and accolades from critics and fans all over the world. Her music was used in several motion pictures and television series including Orange is the New Black, High Fidelity, Mixed-ish, Girlboss, and others. In 2019, after a long silence and a documentary on her journey, Betty Davis released the composition "A Little Bit Hot Tonight", which was performed by singer and ethnomusicologist Danielle Di Maggio. Cancer took the life of Betty Davis on February 9, 2022. She was 77 years old.
