Sometimes referred to as “Madonna before Madonna,” Davis was the rare woman to make funk albums in the 1970s.
NEW YORK — Betty Davis, a bold and pioneering funk singer, model and songwriter of the 1960s and ‘70s who was credited with inspiring then-husband Miles Davis’ landmark fusion of jazz and more contemporary sounds, has died at age 77.
Betty Davis in an undated photo in Paris. Davis, a funk music trailblazer who was married to jazz great Miles Davis, died Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. She was 77. Sometimes referred to as “Madonna before Madonna,” Davis was the rare woman to make funk albums in the 1970s, and her three albums from that time were showcases for her fearless personality and sexuality and insistence on control of her material and her image.
Born Betty Mabry in Durham, North Carolina, she was still a teenager when she moved to New York City in the early 1960s and enrolled in the the Fashion Institute of Technology. She would eventually find work as a model for Seventeen and Glamour among other magazines and would meet Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and numerous other musicians. She was also releasing her own work, including the singles “The Cellar” and “Get Ready for Betty” and she wrote “Uptown ” for the Chambers Brothers.
“His world was progressive jazz, plus he was a lover of classical music, so there were lots of things he hadn’t picked up on,” Betty Davis told the Guardian in 2010.
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