Wild funk pioneer Betty Davis dies at 77

He growled in his wild voice.

She was shaken, provoked.

She was a woman, black and she never let herself be overwhelmed.

Betty Davis (1945-2022), pioneer of funk in the seventies, has died at the age of 77 this Wednesday of natural causes, as confirmed to

magazine by Danielle Maggio, a close friend and student of her work.

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missing links of jazz

Davis only released three albums (

1973;

1974, and

1975), but they were hugely influential.

From Prince and Lenny Kravitz to Janelle Monae.

Also for artists far from funk music like Madonna, who saw in her an example of sexual fury on stage.

With these three titles she got her name to be linked not only to a kind of cult artist, but to a voice that would endure over time due to her sensuality and the explicit way in which she narrated her lyrics. .

The second wife of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis had a short career as an artist, but enough to become one of the most influential figures on the New York music scene in the late 1960s.

She was born Betty Mabry in Durham, North Carolina, and grew up in North Carolina and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before moving to New York at the age of 17.

It was in this city where she began to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology and began as a model and head of a club.

Thanks to these early jobs, she met characters like Andy Warhol, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone or Eric Clapton.

Apart from her busy social life, she always had a special interest in music in which she started at the age of 12.

She recorded her first songs in the late sixties and that's when she caught the attention of Miles Davis.

They married in 1968.

Although their marriage only lasted a year, it was instrumental in changing Miles Davis.

Betty aesthetically transformed Miles: Afro hair, chains, colorful clothes.

She taught him the music of Cream, of Sly Stone, of Hendrix.

The trumpeter, always open to risky experiments, was renewed with the hot music of the moment.

He can be seen on albums like

(1969).

But Betty didn't want to stay as her/her star's partner's stylist.

In 1973 he released his first album,

which opens with

, a cover letter that defines his style: libidinous messages, howling funk, abrasive sounds and a sharp rock guitar.

An album that you put on the computer and it burned.

Although she kept the last name of the trumpeter after her separation, she never wanted to live in the shadow of her famous ex-partner.

“I wanted my music to be taken seriously.

I didn't want to become a Yoko Ono or a Linda McCartney," she said, referring to

couples John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

His second album includes his best-known song

where he sings, always playing with double meanings: “They say I'm different because I'm a piece of sugar cane”.

In the song she cites musicians she loved, like Howlin Wolf, Big Mama Thornton or John Lee Hooker.

However, her records had little impact on sales.

Her spirits plummeted in the mid-seventies and she decided to unwind by going to Japan.

There she led a life of seclusion, even visiting some monks.

The singer in 1975. Fin Costello (Redferns)

When he returned to the United States, in the eighties, he did not have much desire to return to musical activity.

He holed up in his Pittsburgh home and spent the next four decades there.

A series of reissues of her records and a 2017 documentary about her life,

, spurred him to write her first song in 40 years,

.

However, she did not dare to sing it and offered it to her friend Danielle Maggio, the same one who has announced her death.

In 2018 he lent himself to do one of the few interviews after his retirement.

He went to the

where he said: “I like that nobody knows who I am when they see me.

I like to live quietly, without being disturbed.

But it would be nice to remember that at some point he made good music and made people smile.”