Remembering Betty Davis

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Betty Davis died earlier this month. She was 77. She was the very definition of a cult hero – she never cut a hit record, but her influence is still strong today. Her music was absolutely unforgettable, and her style was outrageous, like a funky Barbarella with a two-foot-wide Afro. Her band was the best of the best. Even her husband was influential. (That's Betty Davis as in Miles Davis – they say she convinced him to listen to Sly Stone and make Bitches Brew.) Davis put out three classic records in three years, and then in 1980... she stopped. She retired from music altogether and moved back to Pittsburgh, where she grew up. Stopped doing interviews, stopped playing concerts. She disappeared from public life completely. When we talked to her in 2007, she was quiet and reserved, a sharp contrast with her persona as a performer. It was her first radio interview since her retirement.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:15.0	It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.
0:17.4	Betty Davis died earlier this month.
0:20.1	She was 77 years old.
0:22.3	She was the very definition of a musical cult hero.
0:26.4	She never caught a hit record, but her influence is still strong today.
0:31.6	Davis made music that was uncompromising and raw.
0:35.4	Her style was somewhere between Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Sly Stone.
0:40.4	Visceral, aggressive and absolutely peerless.
0:44.8	Her songs and voice were bold and uncompromising and often very sexual.
0:52.2	She recorded those songs at a time when women didn't really do that kind of thing.
1:22.2	Davis was absolutely unforgettable.
1:39.9	You just heard her music.
1:41.6	She probably got a sense of that, but she also looked if anything even more outrageous.
1:47.6	Like a funky barburella with a two-foot wide afro.
1:51.4	At home on a motorcycle or for that matter, a spaceship.
1:56.3	Her band was the best of the best.
1:58.6	Larry Graham and Gregoriko of Sly in the family's stone.
2:01.8	The pointer sisters singing back up.
2:04.4	Piedescavedo playing Timbales.
2:06.7	Neil Sean and Buddy Miles playing guitar.
2:10.6	Even her husband was influential.
	...

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