Betty (Mabry) Davis, b1945, is an American funk and soul singer who grew up in North Carolina, spending time on her grandmother’s farm listening to B.B. King, Jimmy Reed, and Elmore James. At age 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. Her first professional gig was not until she wrote “Uptown (to Harlem)” for the Chambers Brothers. Their 1967 album was a major success, but Betty was focusing on her modelling career. She was successful as a model but felt bored by the work. According to Oliver Wang’s They Say I’m Different liner notes, she said, “I didn’t like modelling because you didn’t need brains to do it. It’s only going to last as long as you look good.” As a model in 1966, Betty first met jazz musician Miles Davis who was 19 years her senior at a concert. Betty began dating Miles in early 1968, and were married in September 1968. In just one year of marriage, she influenced him greatly by introducing him to the fashions and the new popular music trends of the era. In his autobiography, Miles credited Betty with helping to plant the seeds of his future musical explorations by introducing the trumpeter to Jimi Hendrix and funk innovator Sly Stone. The Miles Davis album Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968) includes a song named after her and her photo on the front cover. In his autobiography, Miles said Betty was “too young and wild,” and accused her of having an affair with Jimi Hendrix which hastened the end of their marriage. Betty denied the affair stating, “I was so angry with Miles when he wrote that. It was disrespectful to Jimi and to me. Miles and I broke up because of his violent temper.” After accusing her of adultery, he filed for divorce in 1969. Miles said that the divorce was obtained on a “temperament” charge. He added, “I’m just not the kind of cat to be married.” Betty and Miles continued to see each other after their divorce. Hendrix and Miles remained close, planning to record, until Hendrix’s death. The influence of Hendrix and especially Sly Stone on Miles Davis was obvious on the album Bitches Brew (1970), which ushered in the era of jazz fusion. The origin of the album’s title is unknown, but some believe Miles was subtly paying tribute to Betty and her girlfriends. In fact, it is said that he originally wanted to call the album Witches Brew—it was Betty who convinced him to change it. In 2017, a documentary was released entitled Betty: They Say I’m Different. -edited from Wikipedia  link

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