IF THIS IS IT, IT MEANS BETTY DAVIS IS IN WIND BACK WEDNESDAY
You’d like to think it is no longer relevant to be asking the question “have we overcome our fear of strong women?”. And adding “sexy, funky” to that strong would be superfluous because, “yes, of course” is the obvious response. You’d like to think that.
But as the racist misogynist-in-chief lurches about leering, and on-air and online trolls lash out in fright, it’s not really sensible to think that. And in fact, dangerous to do so, even if things are, on balance, probably, hopefully, better than they once were.
Which makes it even more remarkable what someone like Betty Davis did half a century back, and even more important we keep telling that story. In other words, it’s always useful to be reminded, as Wind Back Wednesday does today via a 2001 reissue, of all “this”.
After all, as Davis said, “this is it!”, and she knew.
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BETTY DAVIS
This Is It! (Vampisoul/Digeridoo)
YOU CAN HEAR THEM saying it, even 30 years later, "man, there is something scary about that Betty Davis". Too smart, too funky, too damn sexually strong for men who like their Bettys more Boop than brazen. So scared that they didn't play her music or buy it. Fools.
The sexual confidence in the tell-it-like-it-is If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up and the three-way tangle of Your Man My Man not only predates Madonna but makes her look like a bit of a marshmallow try-hard. Likewise, the take no prisoners attitude of Nasty Gal and Don't Call Her No Tramp shows the indie rock riot grrls in the '90s were not the first to say bugger off, this is who we are. No wonder the wimps were scared by her.
Betty Mabry was the link between Miles Davis (to whom she was married for just one tumultuous year in 1968/69) and the funk and rock world of the late 60s, introducing him to the likes of Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix. She was a driving force in taking Miles from suits and cool to loud clothes and even louder fusion (that's her face on the cover of Davis's pre-fusion Filles de Kilimanjaro album). All of which is a decent claim to fame I guess.
But none of that matters really when you put on this compilation of her three albums -1973's Betty Davis, 1974's They Say I'm Different and 1975's Nasty Gal. Throaty and urgent, her singing was made for impact but then her songs, all written and arranged by her, were not intended for the background.
The material here it is as driving and insistent as anything Funkadelic were doing at the same time, as groove-based as anything Kool And The Gang issued in the pre-disco years and as pungent lyrically as Sly and the Family Stone managed before the drugs set in. If funk is where your head's at grab a hold of Git In Here and see how long you can stop yourself from dancing.
She didn't do it alone of course. Davis was helped immeasurably by having a band boasting the likes of Sly's rhythm section, super bassist Larry Graham and drummer Greg Errico, a couple of Pointer sisters on backing vocals and the Tower Of Power horns. Together they made some seriously hard edged but eminently danceable music which hasn't dated.
But have we overcome our fear of sexy, funky, strong women?
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