Betty Davis
| Betty Davis | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Betty Mabry |
| Born |
July 26, 1945 Durham, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Origin | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Genres | Funk rock, R&B, soul, rock |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, songwriter, model |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 1960s–1979 |
Betty Davis (born Betty Mabry, July 26, 1945) is an American funk and soul singer. She is frequently praised as a music pioneer who was well ahead of her time and a performer who was known for her memorable live shows.
Born in 1945, Betty Mabry grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and just outside Pittsburgh. On her grandmother’s farm in Reidsville, North Carolina, she listened to B.B. King, Jimmy Reed, and Elmore James and other blues musicians. One of the first songs she wrote, at the age of twelve, was called "I’m Going to Bake That Cake of Love."
Aged 16, she left Pittsburgh for New York City, enrolling at the Fashion Institute of Technology while living with her aunt. She soaked up the Greenwich Village culture and folk music of the early 1960s. She associated herself with frequenters of the Cellar, a hip uptown club where young and stylish people congregated. It was a multiracial, artsy crowd of models, design students, actors, and singers. At the Cellar she played records and chatted people up. She also worked as a model, appearing in photo spreads in Seventeen, Ebony and Glamour.
In her time in New York, she met several musicians including Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. The seeds of her musical career were planted through her friendship with soul singer Lou Courtney, who produced her first single, “The Cellar” with simple, catchy lyrics like, “Where you going fellas, so fly? / I’m going to the Cellar, my oh my / What you going to do there / We’re going to boogaloo there.”
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