Betty Davis: Is It Love Or Desire?

BETTY DAVIS: IS IT LOVE OR DESIRE? (1976; 2009)

1) Is It Love Or Desire; 2) It's So Good; 3) Whorey Angel; 4) Crashin' From Passion; 5) When Romance Says Good­bye; 6) Bottom Of The Barrel; 7) Stars Starve, You Know; 8) Let's Get Personal; 9) Bar Hoppin'; 10) For My Man.

Recorded in 1976, not released until 2009, when the small «Light In The Attic» label somehow managed to got hold of Betty's entire stock and reintroduce it to the small segment of knowledge-seeking public. This is not a bootleg, though, or some obscure rag-tag collection of demos — this is a bona fide Betty Davis LP that Island Records were supposed to release, but canceled for un­known reasons, possibly over some creative falling out with the artist or simply being way too disappointed by the low sales of Nasty Gal. In any case, from a commercial standpoint their de­cision may have been right: I seriously doubt that Is It Love Or Desire could have sold more copies than its predecessor.

For one thing, the record not only clashed with the times, it made a point out of clashing with the times — ʽBottom Of The Barrelʼ is a fierce anti-disco stand, recorded at an age when disco had not yet completely pushed «classic funk» out of the limelight, but was already invading its terri­tory with a vengeance, being still relatively fresh, hip, and, in the eyes of some people, «progres­sive», so any type of battle cry like "take off that disco, dance to what you're hearing", not to men­tion "remember how it used to be in the Sixties", might have easily been interpreted as a self-pitying retrograde rant. But, for that matter, it is probably the first rant, chronologically, that con­sciously opposes the cool sounds of the Sixties to the down-in-the-dumps musical state of today, which makes it somewhat historically important, I'd say.

Yet on the whole, Betty's fourth album itself is a little «dumpy»: one additional reason why the people at Island decided to condemn it to a quarter century of shelf life is simply that it does not stand competition with Nasty Gal on any level — songwriting, performance, production. The music is not bad at all, but it seems that throughout her short career Betty worked in sine function mode: one «red-hot» record followed by a «tempered» one, and, following that principle, Is It Love Or Desire? had in its mind to explore some new sound combinations, throw in a few subtle and not-so-subtle new messages, and also lend more space to Betty's backers than Betty herself. That last point is probably the most important: this is the only album in Davis' catalog where the primary emphasis, due mainly to production reasons, frequently shifts from Betty to the instru­mentalists and additional vocalists, so that the «nasty gal» feels more like part of a band than the out-of-her-mind band leader.

And, even though it was never in Betty's character to forget all about the music and just concen­trate on her personality in the first place, this shift of balance is still unpleasant — I mean, who the heck would want to listen to a Betty Davis album on which she feels like a bit player in her own band? Yet this is exactly the kind of thing that greets us on the title track, where the lady seems altogether lost in a thick mesh of clavinets, guitars, and back vocalists who are mixed al­most as high as the front vocalist herself. The basic clavinet groove, as usual, is funky, tough, and ideally suited to her style, but the vocal presence leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps it is just a fault of the mix, I am not denying that — but then it's a fault that permeates the entire album.

The hideously titled ʽWhorey Angelʼ is the album's centerpiece, and it is as deeply flawed as it is great — the introductory riff alone makes life worth living, but then most of the tune is given over to Fred Mills (the band's keyboard player) to sing, and there is something about his duet with Betty that just doesn't seem right; maybe a lack of distinct personality — technically, he is a bet­ter singer, but hardly a more interesting one. Still, it's a good exercise in tension-pumping: their dynamic build-up towards the "I spread my wings" bridge rocks just fine with me.

Oddly enough, it is the more quiet, suspense-oriented tracks here, with fewer overdubs and more Betty presence, that seem to crawl under the skin on a more consistent basis. The minimalistic R&B ballad ʽWhen Romance Says Goodbyeʼ and particularly the album closer ʽFor My Manʼ (unfortunately, an all-too short quasi-snippet) are really dialogs between two thrilling, subcon­science-undermining bass lines and Betty in «dark sentimental mode», and both of them point to a very interesting, unpredictable line of future development — it is hard, after all, to retain the same «nasty gal flame» for years on end, but it is also a shame to lose the flame, and stuff like ʽFor My Manʼ shows how the flame can be very successfully internalized.

Still, despite this uncomfortable muffling of personality, the actual music on the album does rule throughout, no matter if the band is playing it soft or loud, and there is little doubt that a character as strong as Betty's would be agreeing to compromise quality — thus, faced between the choice of compromising or disappearing, it is no wonder that she preferred to disappear. After her break­up with Island Records, she resurfaced only once: in 1979, a recording session was held where she redid some of the songs from Is It Love and threw in a few new ones, later bootlegged under the name of Hangin' Out In Hollywood without the artist's consent and not generally held in high esteem by the connoisseurs. Upon that, she retired completely from the music scene, and who could blame her? Most of the sweaty funk outfits of the 1970s did not survive the transition to the new decade either, crashing down in flames or, even worse, evolving into trashy, anti-mu­sical automatons; most people never had the luck of a Michael Jackson, or the enhanced-for-the-Eighties genius of a Prince...

...but that is really digressing way beyond the point, and the point is: strike my criticism off the record and, if you have already heard Betty's first three albums, get this one as well. Everybody needs an honest-to-God disco-bashing funk song in their collection, everybody needs to learn that "stars starve, you know" as narrated by a too-hot-for-stardom artist, everybody needs some catchy reggae-pop à la ʽBar Hoppin'ʼ, and on the whole, of course, this is a certified thumbs up.

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Betty Davis: Nasty Gal

BETTY DAVIS: NASTY GAL (1975)

1) Nasty Gal; 2) Talkin' Trash; 3) Dedicated To The Press; 4) You And I; 5) Feelins; 6) F.U.N.K.; 7) Gettin' Kicked Off, Havin' Fun; 8) Shut Off The Light; 9) This Is It!; 10) The Lone Ranger.

Maybe Betty herself felt that the second album was a bit softer and a tad more compromising than the first — in any case, something must have stimulated her to pull herself together and make damn sure that the third one would blow the lid off the kettle. The band was wound up tighter, the record label was changed to Island for better production and distribution, and look at that album sleeve: too hot to handle or what?..

Other than, perhaps, again lacking the same consistency of crunchy riffage as Betty Davis (none of Betty's guitar players simply had as much flashy arrogance as Neal Schon), Nasty Gal is in every other respect a funk monster. First and foremost, this is because Betty is simply unleashed: obviously, her vocal range has not improved one bit, but for sheer nastiness / bitchiness, look no further — if the singing circa 1973 might still sound a little repressed and stiff at times, in 1975 there are no inhibitions whatsoever. Usually, it takes a very well-developed artistic persona to make a slogan like "I ain't nothing but a nasty gal!" sound like the real thing — in this particular occasion, I do not even wish to consider this «artistry», it seems to be the real thing. I'm sure Tina Turner could do this if she wanted to (in fact, being a much better technical singer, she could have done this even better), but the truth is that she just didn't do it, and neither did anybody else. And when everybody else started doing it, it was too late anyway, because the accompanying music had turned to shit long ago.

Every single song on here is great in its own way. The music, heavily dependent on clavinet and funky bass parts, takes active cues from Stevie Wonder (you can almost tell how many times each of these musicians had spun Innervisions before walking into the studio), but exchanges Stevie's socially charged spirit with a sexually charged one. The nagging «nasal» riff of ʽTalkin' Trashʼ agrees with the «talking trash» message of the song to perfection; the speedy mix of keyboard and guitar notes on ʽFeelinsʼ reflects the physiological message of ʽFeelinsʼ ("pinch her, squeeze her, help her live again!", and the whole song is nothing but a rapid succession of «pinches» and «squeezes», like an aggressive-erotic musical massage); and few funk tunes have the catchiness of ʽShut Off The Lightʼ, whose clavinet backbone could almost rival ʽSuperstitionʼ, except that it intentionally goes in a «nasty fun» rather than «danceable seriousness» direction.

Somehow, even every kind of approach that did not work earlier on now does work. ʽF.U.N.Kʼ continues the line of ʽThey Say I'm Differentʼ, with Betty once again resorting to the «list prin­ciple», counting off her idols — this time, they are R&B and funk people rather than old blues­men, though, culminating in a brief reminiscence of the good times Betty had with Jimi (nobody really knows if they had an actual affair, but Miles sure thought so), and this whole stuff is much more up her alley, not to mention the music, which is darker, thicker, and, well, funkier. Even the obligatory ballad (ʽYou And Iʼ), recorded in big band jazz style, is good, as she finally learns to bypass her limitations and, instead of trying to cope with a complexly modulated vocal hook, just turns it into a hot sexual dream ("I'm just a child, trying to be a woman...") that, goddammit, is almost believable (as much as the old «nasty bitch got soul» trick is a cliché, every once in a while somebody comes along and executes it to perfection one more time).

However, the lady seems to be sitting firmest of all in the saddle when she's got someone, or something, to play off — in ʽDedicated To The Pressʼ, she addresses those critical naysayers that dared to condemn her style for extreme wildness, and for about four minutes turns her vocal tract into a veritable cat-o'-nine-tails: "Well I really don't know what they're talking about / I just can't seem to keep my tongue in my mouth / That's all folks". True enough, but it's not the tongue that matters so much, actually, as it is the throat — and not the actual words she speaks, but the way that they are spoken. The press happens to be lucky that the message was delivered by vinyl transfer — anybody who got that personally, face-to-face, would have probably melted away on the spot.

Throw in a couple of slower, steamier, subtler sexual provocations (ʽGettin' Kicked Offʼ; a new­ly re-recorded, and much sharper, version of ʽI Will Take That Rideʼ, now retitled ʽLone Rangerʼ), and Nasty Gal wins out even in terms of diversity — the message may be the same throughout, but there are several routes of delivery, thoroughfares, shortcuts, and space warping included. It is amazing that an album of this level of verve ultimately failed to chart, even despite heavy pub­licity from Island Records, but, apparently, the «black market» at the time was even more con­servative than the «white market», with people opting for Earth, Wind & Fire, Al Green, Kool & The Gang, and The Pointer Sisters instead; all of them worthy contenders, but in terms of sheer bravado, not even close to the level of fury that Nasty Gal has to offer.

But make no mistake — the reasons behind my enthusiastic thumbs up here are not at all limi­ted to the «unleashing» of the sex demon in Betty's persona, because much, if not most, of Nasty Gal is fine, top-level funk stuff as well. Even without the vocals, it would still be an impressive ins­trumental feat — one might think, though, that it probably couldn't have existed that way without the vocals, because, no doubt about it, it was nothing but the lady's fiery personality that managed to rev the musicians up to these ecstatic heights. A coin toss between Betty Davis and Nasty Gal as the finest she had to offer, but then, why choose at all when her recording career was so unfor­tunately short anyway?

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Betty Davis: They Say I'm Different

BETTY DAVIS: THEY SAY I'M DIFFERENT (1974)

1) Shoo-B-Doop And Cop Him; 2) He Was A Big Freak; 3) Your Mama Wants Ya Back; 4) Don't Call Her No Tramp; 5) Git In There; 6) They Say I'm Different; 7) 70's Blues; 8) Special People.

Out of the three completed original LPs engineered by Betty during her short career, this is the most «quiet» one, if the term is at all applicable to someone so bent on mixing glamor with a Zulu warrior image. The «quietness» mainly means that, this time around, Betty was not able to assemble such a stellar cast to play for her —there are at least twenty different people credited in the liner notes, but most are relatively unknown, and, unlike the 1973 band, they do not seem to understand that well what particular sort of «bitch-from-hell» they are supposed to be backing. Consequently, the grooves are still well-cut and the riffs are still memorable, but they generally lack the crackle, sizzle, and sparkle they had on Betty Davis.

Maybe the best way to understand what the hell I am talking about is to listen, in succession, to the first five seconds of each of the opening tracks. The bluesy riff of ʽIf I'm In Luckʼ snarls and threa­tens from the very first note — the funky riff of ʽShoo-B-Doop And Cop Himʼ is softer, subtler, and sleazier, and Betty complements it with a softer, more «sly» and «seductive» delivery than her "if I'm in luck I might just get picked up!" where you'd really be smart if you thought twice before picking up that hot little thing. In the case of ʽShoo-B-Doopʼ, though, she seems to be showing us a less aggressive side — going ash far ash introdushing a shweet little lishp to her articulation: "...and when the clock shtrikesh twelve..." Sssshekssshy!

Overall, there is a little less emphasis on heavy rock and a little more on hot funk throughout — I wouldn't mind if the band were a perfectly tight littlwe funky outfit, but it seems to be crafting arrangements rather than snatching them out of the clouds; no wonder, perhaps — given how many different musicians there are, it is not likely that many of them had enough time to gel toge­ther. Still, just like before, most tracks get along well because they have some sort of nifty com­positional idea — a bassline, a twin guitar dialog, a funny clavinet phrase, something to pin it all to with certainty. That way, even something like ʽDon't Call Her No Trampʼ, which essentially consists of little other than Betty barking out the song title, becomes contagious: that clavinet is really «nasty» in a ʽSuperstitionʼ-like kind of manner.

The title track here is a black-pride anthem to pre-war and Chicago blues heroes, appropriately set to a series of «swamp-blues» licks — Betty explicitly establishing her link with the spirits of the past: "My great-grandma didn't like the foxtrot / Instead she'd spit her snuff and boogie to Elmore James... that's why they say I'm strange / that's why they say I'm funky". Lots of sincere feeling, I guess, but somehow it still comes across as posturing, maybe because the average pedi­gree of a Robert Johnson or a Leadbelly does not get superimposed so smoothly over the Green­wich Village pedigree of the young Betty Mabry. (Then again, she did spend her youth on her grandma's farm in North Carolina, so at least what she sings about not liking the foxtrot is most probably true). Anyway, it doesn't sound bad, but it is hardly as convincing as when the lady is singing about wiggling her fanny — seems more like an attempt to explain herself in a predic­table fashion (you think this is nasty? go listen to some of my predecessors!).

Like last time around, this record also ends with a bit of «crude tenderness» — ʽSpecial Peopleʼ has Betty cooing and purring to the sounds of soft jazzy electric piano (with a punchy rhythm section playing along, it's not a «sissy» ballad or anything), showing off the uncomfortable im­per­fections of her voice and almost reveling in the amateur flair of it all. Too amateur, perhaps, but then there should be a discount for female Zulu warriors contributing to the blacksploitation scene, I suppose. One notch down from the self-titled debut, yet still a thumbs up — the grooves hold and the kettle is still boiling.

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Betty Davis: Betty Davis

BETTY DAVIS: BETTY DAVIS (1973)

1) If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up; 2) Walkin' Up The Road; 3) Anti Love Song; 4) Your Man My Man; 5) Ooh Yeah; 6) Steppin' In Her I. Miller Shoes; 7) Game Is My Middle Name; 8) In The Meantime; 9*) Come Take Me; 10*) You Won't See Me In The Morning; 11*) I Will Take That Ride.

In 1967, Betty Mabry was in luck, as she happened to be picked up by Miles Davis himself — and although their marriage lasted but three years (Miles later complained she was «too wild» for him, and whatever that really meant, I don't think I even want to know), it is said to have been greatly mutually beneficial: she introduced him to the «electric» scene of the psychedelic Sixties, thus being partly responsible for his transition to the fusion period of In A Silent Way and Bit­ches Brew (being one of the «witches», a.k.a. «bitches», herself) — and he introduced her to... umm, his bank account? Whatever — anyway, without that marriage, there would neither have been a «Betty Davis» name tag, nor, quite likely, any of these strange albums that the funk lady engineered during her short, but vivid, career.

The reason why that career never really took off, with all those albums flopping one after the other, is as plain to see as the reason why, in recent years, it has been given a serious re-evalu­ation, so that these days, Mrs. Davis is finally enjoying some serious popularity in knowledgeable circles. First and foremost, Betty Mabry was not much of a singer, and back in those days — heck, back in any days — a black performer, particularly a female one, was expected to live up to the standards: if you couldn't belt it out like Aretha, or coo the pants off your listeners like Diana, or rattle the walls and shatter the glass like Tina, you hardly stood a chance, regardless of how much character or personality you could offer in compensation. A racist standard, come to think of it, but nobody said stereotypes can be that easily overthrown.

Second, Betty Mabry was not that much of a songwriter, either. In reality, her «songs» are perfor­mance acts — theatrical monologues set to whatever musical backing she may be offered. Since all of her records are funk records, you can dance to these tracks, but you are not very likely to be humming them, or memorizing the (usually non-existent) choruses. They have neither any pop chart po­tential, nor any seductive value for those looking for musical innovation: Betty did not know that much about music to truly care about the notes, and the musicians backing her were simply having a good time in the studio.

Third, Betty «Game Is My Middle Name» Davis was admittedly way too wild, confusingly so, even, for 1973. Everywhere you look for info on the lady, you will see comparisons to Madonna and Prince popping up, but neither Madonna nor Prince were on the scene in 1973, and both Ma­donna and Prince, when they did appear on the scene, compensated for their provocative behavior with catchy hooks, so that you could simply close your eyes on the former — I mean, not even Tipper Gore found out about this before it was already too late. Not so with Betty Davis: the very major, if not the only, point of these «songs» is to drench the listener in waves and showers of aggressive, near-sadistic sexuality. Then again, what does one expect of a girl who, as far as rumors go, wrote her first song at the tender age of 12 and named it ʽI'm Going To Bake That Cake Of Loveʼ?..

Put it all together, and you can easily see that, even if the crazy musical climate of 1973 could allow for such an album to come out, the somewhat more predictable «consumer climate» could hardly allow it to be successful. Nowadays, though, as our tastes have shifted and mutated, the picture looks entirely different. Of course, Betty is not a «singer» in the technical sense, but what she does with her voice is impressive all the same — think something of a black female equi­valent of early Iggy Pop, going all the way and never looking back. The lower part of her larynx, which she heavily exploits throughout, is her chief instrument: the lack of diversity of delivery may eventual­ly get a bit on one's nerves, but the album is fairly short anyway, going off in one brief concentrated punch — or like a thirty-minute brutal «vocal rape», if you'll excuse the crude­ness of the definition. She may be singing about wanting to "get picked up", and how she is "wig­gling her fanny" to achieve that purpose, but it is pretty clear who is really doing the picking.

None of that would matter, though, if the assembled musicians were not so totally hip to whatever Betty was doing. The roster here is impressive — due to her connections in the biz, she gets no less than the regular Sly Stone rhythm section of bass genius Larry Graham and drum expert Gregg Errico, as well as certain members of Santana, including Neal Schon on guitar (well on his way to form Journey, but we will ignore that particularity), and some brass players from Tower Of Power, while The Pointer Sisters are providing background vocals. And they all cook — maybe not a prime-series «bitches brew», but, if you ask my opinion, that very title would con­vey the essence of Betty's debut much better than it conveyed the essence of Miles' hymn to fusion. Here we do have a certified «bitch», and she's brewing it up to high heaven.

Most of the songs follow the same simple pattern: set up a riff-based groove going, around which the lead instruments (guitar, organ, brass, in that particular order of preference) play circles with a very high degree of freedom allowed, to match the equally high degree of freedom for Betty to scatter, spit, and snarl out the exotic tales of her own sex drive and, occasionally, offering acid comment on other people's lives (ʽSteppin' In Her I. Miller Shoesʼ is a mean-spirited diatribe against the «celebrity itch»). This sounds fairly simple, and too much like a potential recipe for disaster to be credible — but just wait until you actually hear it.

The trick is that Betty's spitfire act must have invigorated the musicians as well, so that every­body is trying to match her in terms of «badness» and «nastiness». ʽIf I'm In Luckʼ starts sizzling from the very first second, as the Zeppelinish blues-rock riff rips through the speakers and is soon joined by the equally «badass» bass and organ parts. The time signatures and lead riffs change from song to song, but the drive and passion stay the same — occasionally, the message shifts from direct aggression to a more subtle threat, but this does not make it any less vicious: ʽAnti Love Songʼ, driven by bass-'n'-keyboards interplay rather than guitar, is the album's best tune, in fact, it is probably the hottest tune about sexual abstinence ever written.

By the time they get around to the last movement of this molten-lava-suite (ʽGame Is My Middle Nameʼ accidentally borrows the «crawling» guitar melody from The Doors' ʽBack Door Manʼ, and, while we're on it, this gal could definitely teach ol' Jim a thing or two about pork and beans), the floor has already most likely caved in from exhaustion — the only problem is that they were not able to come up with a properly soothing conclusion: ʽIn The Meantimeʼ is sort of a «ballad» that tries to wrap things up on a softer note, but this is also where Betty's disabilities as a singer come to the forefront, and the gospel organ melody that dominates the song is a snoozer com­pared to what they just did on the meat'n'potato numbers.

Still, one mediocre piece of dessert should not spoil the basic impressions of the main course — besides, if you get the remastered CD version, there are three extra, previously unreleased, cuts from the same sessions that yield 12 more minutes of violent sexual games, mid-1970s fashion, ensuring that you get your money's worth. Just remember that this ain't Funkadelic or Sly Stone — it's all a bunch of provo­cative «punk-funk» (Betty is sometimes called the godmother of Nina Hagen, although Nina was a far better singer and a far loonier type of person), which does not get by on the wings of inventive­ness of diversity. But it does show that sometimes all you need is a spirited «bitch», a decent hard-rock riff, and a well-hewn backing band to create an enduring clas­sic, or, at least, a resurrection-worthy one. Thumbs up, or we can just «wiggle our fanny» in acknowledgement.

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