365 Days of Song Recommendations: Aug 3
If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up — Betty Davis
You know how in Forrest Gump the titular character stumbles into famous people and historical events just by being painfully earnest, persistent and dim? That’s the real life of Betty Davis — except she’s whip smart, sexy, painfully hip and not cloying and absofuckingunbearable.
As a wee soul goddess, her grandmother sat her down in front of the turntable and played all the blues hits. The names Jimmy Reed, Big Mama Thornton, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, come up in some of her interviews. And then at the age of 12, young Betty Mabry of Durham, North Carolina wrote a song called “I’m Going to Bake That Cake of Love” and moved to Pittsburgh — specifically Homestead, where her father took a job as a steelworker.
The two incidents are not related, but I’m always intrigued by artists whose travels took them through Pittsburgh at some point during their formative years. She left the ‘burgh at 16 (in 1961) to attend fashion school and live with her aunt in New York City, but certainly she took something away — an extra bit of attitude, perhaps— from a city that was then a study in a dramatic civic decline but still fostered a thriving arts culture through its jazz and blues traditions.
Few musicians of any era had more of that extra special sauce than Betty Davis.
She frequented Greenwich Village, absorbing its creative energies. Folk and psychedelic music. She made herself known uptown among the elite, the hip, the young and the stylish at the storied Cellar club. She began working as a model and appeared in photo spreads in Elle, Ebony, Seventeen, and Glamour. After becoming chummy with Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix, she applied her connections and released her first single, produced by soulster Lou Courtney.
She met and married Miles Davis in 1967. They swapped musical influences. Betty digested Miles’ favorite classical artists. He indulged her contemporary influences and credited her with his transition into the “electric period,” which included 1968’s Filles de Kilimanjaro (Betty Davis appears on the album cover) and 1970’s Bitches Brew. He filed for divorce after suspecting she and Hendrix had become a side item. (She denies that accusation and cites Davis’ uncontrollable temper.)
The next few years sparked the creative fires in Betty that would produce some of the most exciting funk and soul music of the 1970s. She moved to London, kept writing music. Some of those songs helped the Commodores land their Motown contract. She refused to sign a contract with Motown to write for their stable of acts because she wasn’t going to give up any ounce of control over her future. Her debut LP followed in 1972, produced by Sly and the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico, and featuring backup vocals from the Pointer Sisters. Guitar from future Journey guitarist Neal Schon. It’s a solid record, but nothing compared to what we’d see next from Betty Davis.
Her self-titled sophomore record introduced Betty Davis to the world, a sci-fi funkadelic dominatrix with a scourge whip for pipes. Her raspy vocals matched the tilted aggression of her lyrics and the driving, dirty rhythms. She was sexy, powerful, and totally in control. The opening track, “If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up,” straps you down and ties you up, teases with a gaze of mingled lust and hate and then discards you, hot, bothered and wanting more.
In the 2007 reissue of the record Carlos Santana said of Betty Davis: “She was the first Madonna, but Madonna is more like Marie Osmond compared to Betty Davis.”
I’m almost embarrassed that I hadn’t been exposed to her music until a few short years ago. I’ve written this to prevent you from taking another breath without Betty Davis in your life. After that she’ll tell you whether or not you can breathe.
