Betty Davis is a real Nasty Gal. She is one of the icons of funk, not just the music scene but the club life and style. And yes, she is Davis because of Miles Davis. But, believe me, It’s not the marital status that makes her special - it is her influence on the great trumpeter that changed the shape of music forever. Betty was the one that introduced Miles to the music of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. It was that exact period when Miles introduced jazz-rock to the world and set the new direction in music. The Miles Davis album Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968) includes a song named after her and her photo on the front cover. Betty was the muse of the era and she was so ahead of her time that her music got truly discovered much after the funk explosion. Her raw uncensored, funk grooves and lyrics are a pure mirror image of her flamboyant female sexuality. She was the irresistible genius in the center of the boosting New York funk scene. Davis remained a cult figure as a singer, due in part to her open sexual attitude, which was controversial for the time. Some of her shows were boycotted and her songs were not played on the radio due to pressure by religious groups and the NAACP.
She started her career as Betty Mabry, when she recorded "Get Ready For Betty" and "I'm Gonna Get My Baby Back" in 1964. Around that time, she also dueted with Roy Arlington under their joint name "Roy and Betty." They released a single for Safice entitled, "I'll Be There."Betty's first major credit was writing "Uptown (to Harlem)" for the Chambers Brothers, 1967.
After the end of her marriage with Davis, Betty moved to London, to pursue her modeling career. She wrote music while in the UK and returned to the US around 1972 with the intention of recording songs with Santana. Instead, she recorded her own songs with a group of West Coast funk musicians. Her first record “Betty Davis” was released in 1973. She had two minor hits on the Billboard R&B chart - "If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up", which reached no. 66 in 1973, and "Shut Off the Lights", which reached no. 97 in 1975. She released two more studio albums - “They Say I'm Different” (1974) and her major label debut on Island Records “Nasty Gal” (1975). None of the three albums was a commercial success.
