Heavens to Betty

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

With the record industry currently being cut off at the knees, there has thankfully been a sudden rash of killer reissued releases finding a new audience. These forgotten chestnuts are getting a second lease on life with more and more labels existing exclusively to shed new light on these long out-of-print classics. One of the best reissue labels of freak folk, raw soul and hard funk is Seattle’s Light in the Attic Records. Their latest release is the first two records by the first lady of funk, Betty Davis. Davis’s self-titled debut and They Say I’m Different are chock full of grade-A hard ’70s funk that, to quote Ike Turner, is “funkier than a mosquito’s tweeter.”

Davis is probably best known as Miles Davis’s better half (although the marriage was short-lived) and the person who introduced her husband to Jimi Hendrix, which resulted in Davis’s landmark pollination of rock and jazz, Bitches Brew. But Davis was hardly the subservient first lady of jazz, and cut her own path with a gravity defying afro, a clenched black fist proudly hoisted overhead and risqué costumes that paved the way for many R&B sexpots that would come in her wake. Davis also proved to be a vanguard for young black women as she railed against the white, male-dominated music industry of the day, refusing help from Miles’s industry associates, and writing all of her own material, as well as producing.

Her debut was recorded in 1973, with her second record hot on the heels, released in 1974. Davis was musically neck-in-neck with the progressive funk that George Clinton’s Funkadelic was laying down out of the East, the Meters in the South and the slow groove of Sly and the Family Stone in the West, but comparisons don’t really do her justice. Her raspy, gritty vocals howled out over the tight funk groove anchored by Sly and the Family Stoner Larry Graham’s serpentine bass lines. Davis’s vocal ability may not have been on par with contemporaries like Tina Turner, but unlike Turner, Davis was truly the ruler of her own destiny all the way down the line and called all her own shots.

With her songs recently being sampled by Ice Cube, Talib Kweil and Ludacris, there has been a groundswell of attention hoisted her way, but Davis proves to be as reclusive as the day she hung it up in ’79, choosing not to do interviews and rarely talking about her past with even her closest friends. But for anybody with an interest in hard funk, these two records are nothing short of holy grails. For those of you on the download, who may want to wet their toes before diving in, throw “Game Is My Middle Name,” “Anti Love Song” or “Don’t Call Her No Tramp” into your search engines and get ready for some serious groove muscle. For the more serious nerds, just go out and get these records—not only are they some of the most important funk releases ever, but the amazing packaging and exhaustive 30-page booklets make them mandatory purchases.

Game is my middle name
Jonathan.cummins@gmail.com