Fifty years on, Betty Davisstands up to repeat listens.
BY JIM CAMPILONGO
MY FRIEND ANDY HESSand I were reminiscing about how amazing the Bay Area music scene was in the ’70s and early ’80s. There was Tower of Power, Malo, Santana with Neal Schon, Larry Graham, Sly Stone, Merle Saunders, the Pointer Sisters, Pete Escovedo at Cesar’s Latin Palace, Sylvester, and Journey before Steve Perry. The club Larry Blake’s had a great blues scene, as did the South Bay over at the Saddle Rack, while the Oakland music community was vibrant and diverse with artists who pushed the musical envelope while performing some of the best funk ever played by human hands.
Among the many performers in that scene was Betty Davis. The second wife of Miles Davis, Betty was about two years divorced from the trumpeter when she cut this self-titled album in 1973 for the Just Sunshine label. The record wasn’t a big hit, but reissues by Light In the Attic have helped to bring Betty some of the attention she so richly deserves, while they give us a chance to hear the early work of great East Bay players of that era who appear on this debut, including Neal Schon and Larry Graham.
Betty is less a singer and more an animalistic messenger, taunting the listener as she oozes sexuality from one track to the next. We meet her on side one’s opener, “If I’m in Luck, I Might Get Picked Up,” where the band plays a fantastic monolithic funk-rock groove. Betty leaps out of the speakers, an unapologetic badass singing, “So all you lady haters, don’t be cruel to me / I said I’m vampin’, trampin’, you can call it what you wanna.” Neal Schon kicks off “Walking Up the Road” with a great funky intro as the drums establish the downbeat on this hypnotic riff, over which Betty sings, “I’m walkin’ up the road / I’m gonna uplift your soul.” “Anti-Love Song” has the extraordinary Larry Graham grooving and basically inventing slap bass, while Schon’s wah lines complement the lyrics. Betty’s performance is understated and personal as she whisper-sings, “I know you could have me shaking/ I know you could have me climbing the walls / That’s why I don’t wanna love you…” The funk boogaloo “Your Man, My Man” closes side one, with Betty telling off another woman with whom she shares a two-timing lover. Betty Dav
