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BETTY DAVIS, CULT SINGER & AFROFUTURIST, DIES AT 77

Betty Davis whose funked-up song stylings led her to be crowned Queen of Funk, earning a cult following and her defiant fashion consciousness which made her a forerunner of the Afrofuturist movement that inspired LaBelle, Prince and David Bowie, died on Feb. 9, in Homestead, PA. She was 77.

The news was confirmed to Rolling Stone by Davis’ close friend Danielle Maggio, an ethnomusicologist whose work focused on the singer’s music and life. Allegheny County communications director Amie Downs said Davis died of natural causes.

“When I was told that it was over, I just accepted it. And nobody else was knocking at my door,” Davis said to The New York Times in 2018 about her toobrief career. She said her father’s death changed her priorities. “I went to another level. It was no longer about the music or anything, it was about me losing a part of myself. It was devastating.”

In 2007,“Betty Davis” (1973) and“They Say I’m Different” (1974) were reissued by Light in the Attic Records. In 2009, the label reissued “Nasty Gal” and her unreleased fourth studio album recorded in 1976, re-titled “Is It Love or Desire?” There were extensive liner notes on both reissues which shed some light on the mystery of why her fourth album, considered possibly her best work by members of her last band (Herbie Hancock,Chuck Rainey, and Alphonse Mouzon), was shelved and remained unreleased for 33 years.

An interest in the trailblazing life of Davis was resurrected in 2017, when the independent documentary “They Say I’m Different,” directed by Philip Cox was released. In 2019, Davis released “A Little Bit Hot Tonight,” her first new song in over 40 years, which was performed and sung by Danielle Maggio, who was also associate producer on the documentary. Musicians and listeners have resurrected her definitive raw funk music that is bestowing her with muchbelated respect after her music has been re-issued and sampled by Ice Cube, Method Man, and Lenny Kravitz among others.

During her music career, Davis was an independent renegade given the status of female funkateers of which there were few. She wrote all her songs and produced her last two albums, working with her own selected musicians. Few Black women in the music industry including Tina Turner, Chaka Khan, her 1970s contemporaries or later generations like Janet Jackson or Beyoncé have ever enjoyed that level of creative autonomy so early in their careers.

“I’m me and I’m different; my music is just another level of funk. I love Tina [Turner], but we are two totally different people. The same with Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, Larry Graham, and Stevie Wonder,” said Davis during an interview with Black Music magazine in 1974. “We all make your fingers pop, but for different reasons...so don’t compare me.”

Betty Gray Mabry was born on July 16, 1944, in Durham, North Carolina, to Henry and Betty Mabry and grew up in rural North Carolina before the family relocated to Homestead, Pa., where Betty graduated from high school. Her father was a steelworker and her mother a nurse.

She was introduced to the recordings of blues singers Big Mama Thornton, Howlin’ Wolf and rock and roll singer Chuck Berry, singing along with the record player. She was 12 when she wrote her first song, “Bake a Cake of Love,” and later she sang in local talent shows.

As a teenager, Davis ventured to New York City to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). She landed a modeling job with the Wilhelmina agency, appearing in Glamour and Seventeen magazines and Jet Magazine’s centerfold. She was a friend and early muse to fashion designer Stephen Burrows. She loved the Greenwich Village cultural scene from fashion to rock and folk music during the early 1960s. She also found joy at Manhattan’s Upper West Side club the Cellar (Broadway and 90th Street), where an array of stylish folks hung out—models, actors, musicians and athletes (one of few clubs owned by a Black person during that time). Mabry became the house DJ and hostess.

Her first single “The Cellar” named after her favorite spot was produced through her friendship with singer Lou Courtney, this led to her working with arranger /producer Don Costa recording “Get Ready for Betty” and “I’m Gonna Get My Baby Back” in 1964. She recorded under Betty Mabry. In 1967, the Chambers Brothers recorded her ode to Harlem, “Uptown.” She also wrote several demo songs for the Commodores, which helped them get signed to Motown Records. The storied label offered her a writer’s contract, but she declined after they insisted on owning all her publishing. The South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, then her boyfriend, produced a 1968 single for her,“Live, Love, Learn.”

During her visit to the United Kingdom, Eric Clapton, then still with Cream, offered to produce her but she declined. She later shared with culture writer and scholar Oliver Wang, “Clapton was into a classic-type blues style whereas I’m more into an avant-garde bag. I just don’t think it would have worked.”

She met Miles Davis at a jazz club and became his second wife in 1968. Her photograph was the inspired cover of his 1969 album “Filles de Kilimanjaro,” which included the song “Mademoiselle Mabry.” Ms. Davis introduced her husband to the music of Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, catalyzing his move into rock and funk.

Even with her short-lived, abusive marriage to Miles it was evident she was much more of an influence on him than he on her. Although he helped produce a few demo songs for her in 1969, they didn’t land her a deal; she did that on her own after their divorce. It is important to note, Betty introduced Miles to her friends like Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix. At that time Miles had begun his transition to jazzrock fusion, recording his landmark 1970 electric album, “Bitches Brew” (Columbia Records). While working on the album Miles considered the title “Witches Brew,” it was Betty, who suggested “Bitches Brew” which stuck. She

From the May 26, 1973 issue of the AmNews

See JAZZ on page 21

Funk music pioneer Betty Davis passes

By JORDANNAH ELIZABETH

Special to the AmNews

It was reported that the trailblazing funk musician and singer-songwriter Betty Davis has died in Homestead, Pennsylvania at 77 years old.

Davis, whose given name was Betty Mabry, was a powerful force of unapologetic sexuality, feminine freedom and innovative musicianship that made her a Black music history legend. She released three studio albums during her brief, yet impactful music career, 1973’s “Betty Davis,” 1974’s “They Say I’m Different” and “Nasty Gal” in 1975.

She moved to New York City in 1965 after being raised in Durham, North Carolina and Pittsburgh. During her humble beginnings in NYC, Davis made a living modeling and managing nightclubs. The city was teeming with artists and she quickly connected with the local music community, meeting musicians like Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix. Davis had been writing songs since she was 12 years old, which prepared her to jump at the opportunity to record a few soul music singles. One of her songs, “Uptown to Harlem,” was covered by The Chamber Brothers in 1967.

Davis is also known for her brief marriage to jazz musician Miles Davis which has been documented as a violent and painful year of matrimony. Miles and Betty did collaborate on music together. “Her face is on the cover of ‘Filles de Kilimanjaro,’ an album Mr. Davis recorded in 1968. He produced recording sessions for his wife in 1969 with his musicians— including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and John McLaughlin—along with Jimi Hendrix’s rhythm section, Billy Cox and Mitch Mitchell. Shelved by Columbia Records, the sessions were released in 2016 as ‘The Columbia Years: 1968-69,’” writes The New York Times.

Following the divorce, she began working on her own music. Sly and the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico produced her debut album, and with the encouragement of her ex-husband, she produced and arranged her next two studio albums.

Betty Davis was a unique, some say raunchy, overtly sexual musician that many regard as a feminist figure because of her in-your-face style and explicit lyrics. She wore metallic revealing clothing and wore a perfect afro that highlighted the beauty of her Blackness and the strength of the iconic image. Unfortunately, the world was not quite ready for Davis’ prowess and after the release of her final studio album “Nasty Gal,” Davis began to withdraw and by the 1980s completely fell into obscurity.

In 2018, a documentary about Davis surfaced. “Betty: They Say I’m Different” revealed Betty’s story and image for the first time in decades. She continued to live privately until she died.

Condolences are due to this amazing Black woman pioneer who took the funk world by storm and gave the world a view of what true female empowerment looked like.

By ISHMAEL REED

Special to the AmNews

I was in New York in 2019 for my play, “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda.” At the end of the trip, I appeared on a radio show with the sculptor, Ogundipe Fayomi. He said that when times were difficult, his job was that of delivering art supplies to artists. One of those was Jean-Michel Basquiat when he was painting in gallery owner Annina Nosei’s basement. She’d made the basement of her gallery available for Basquiat to use as a studio. He invited Fayomi to an exhibition of his work. After the show, Basquiat asked Fayomi why he didn’t show, as though yearning for guidance from a Black fellow artist. Mildred Howard, an artist, told me that Basquiat tried to reach Raymond Saunders, a Black painter, when he came to San Francisco. I took his name coming up several times, ending with a conversation with Fayomi, as a sign.

I decided to write a play about Jean-Michel Basquiat. After research, my view of the artist was different from the judgment of the all-white jury of critics, gallery owners, and others who dismissed him as a “mascot,” “savage,” and one whose art reflected “intuitive primitivism.” Basquiat said that they regarded him as a “monkey man.” While friends of his who began as graffiti artists advanced in critical discussions minus the “graffiti” label, critics still regarded Basquiat as one. He resented the label. Many formed their opinion from a film called “Basquiat,” directed and co-written by Julian Schnabel, an artist who was a contemporary of Basquiat. I was offended by it, especially the scene which shows Basquiat urinating on Schnabel’s staircase. At the time, I didn’t know that Basquiat had dissed Schnabel’s work. Warhol dismissed Schnabel as “a bad painter.” Schnabel’s self-promoting film was his revenge. 2022 will be significant for Jean-Michel Basquiat. An exhibition will be held at the Whitney Museum, which didn’t show his work when he was alive. I haven’t heard from New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which, when Basquiat was alive, said that exhibiting his work would be a waste of space.

For its part, the Metropolitan Museum is selling a cruel, racist book about Basquiat written by Soren Mosdal with illustrations by Julian Voloj. I wrote about racism in New York museums in 1969. The article was published in Art Magazine. Writing the play, I juggled some of the images and metaphors associated with the relationship between Basquiat and Warhol. Because some observers said that Basquiat offered Warhol “new blood” and because Warhol was fascinated with the legend of Dracula, I inserted a running comedy routine between the son of Dracula, played by Dominican American actor Raul Diaz, one of the best Draculas so far, and the show-stopping Wolfman, played by Dominican American actor Jesse Bueno.

After a virtual reading found on YouTube, I sent a script to Crystal Field of the Theater for The New City. The play ran for three weeks at the Off-Broadway theater from Dec. 23 to Jan. 9. Despite the virus, attendance was good thanks to the Amsterdam News, the Jean Parnell Show, Felipe Luciano, and Janet Coleman’s show on WBAI.

Director Carla Blank split the stage in two. The son of Dracula’s townhouse library is positioned on stage right. Two forensics experts in lab coats, played by Monisha Shiva and Laura Robards, speculate about what killed Basquiat on stage left. They work for Mary Van Helsing, a NYPD detective who views Basquiat’s death as a cold case. AUDELCO Award winner Roz Fox plays her. Brian Simmons plays a Basquiat wannabe and AUDELCO award winner Robert Turner plays a Black abstract expressionist, an older man who could have advised Basquiat, advice that would have kept him alive. Instead, he admired drug users like Andy Warhol, the leader of a suicide/death cult, and William Burroughs who, according to a new book by John Giorno, operated a smack house where people off the streets could come in and shoot up.

Actress Kenya Wilson began as an understudy, but became one of the stars as COVID hit our cast. One of the highlights of the staging was a shadow screen,which was choreographed as a dialogue between Basquiat and Richard Pryor, whose voiceover was done by Maurice Carlton.

While “artist-in-residence” at art dealer Annina Nosei’s gallery, one visitor remarked about there being coke everywhere. This was at a time when thousands of Black and Brown kids were busted for possession of a joint. Basquiat claimed that she sold paintings at such a brisk rate that some were unfinished. Basquiat said that he was her “victim.” I point out in the script that slaves were forced to take cocaine to increase production, but nowhere did I say that Nosei bought drugs for Basquiat, which is what art critic and Warhol groupie Linda Yablonsky claimed in a review printed in Art Newspaper. This review had such glaring misrepresentations of the script, which I sent to her along with a bibliography, that she said that she was “sorry.” She also wrote that the script referred to Nosei as a slave driver and that she locked Basquiat in her basement. Not true. This article contributed to the return performance of my play, scheduled for December 2022, being shut down. I don’t blame Crystal Field, producer of the Theater for the New City, for canceling the return engagement. She provided us with a first-rate crew, stage manager, set, lighting and sound designers and a brilliant costume designer.

But powerful forces were against my interpretation of the relationship between the two artists. More acceptable will be the play and film that bears the approval of the Warhol Foundation. Probably Warhol as the benevolent white savior who brought Basquiat, the waif, in from the cold. A Nigerian director Julius Onah will also direct a film about their relationship. He claims to be influenced by the Schnabel film, but claims that the Basquiat story hasn’t been told.

The Warhol Foundation had already threatened to sue over a flier that my daughter and I created, inspired by a Basquiat painting that repeated the words, Parasites and Leeches. I took a segment of Warhol’s photograph of Basquiat in a jockstrap and inserted leeches all over his body. Inside each leech was a picture of Warhol. I was merely using Warhol’s tech-

nique of “transforming” the work of others. A judge recently decided that he didn’t transform a photograph of Prince COMMENTARY created by Lynn Goldsmith. He plagiarized it. Warhol also had a reputation for exploiting those who worked for him. Basquiat says that he did most of the work during their collaboration and that Warhol was lazy. Basquiat was also one of Warhol’s tenants. So when Basquiat wondered out loud whether he was “a flash in the pan,” Warhol, who called himself an entrepreneur, wondered whether, if this were true, Basquiat would pay the rent. Basquiat got Warhol to paint again after Warhol said that painting was dead. After Basquiat’s death, vampirism became cannibalism as there began a power struggle over who owned his work, now worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They even sold scraps. A former girlfriend, Jennifer Clement, sold a refrigerator that he’d marked up to Sotheby’s for $5,000. Another girlfriend, who told me that there were many, is editing an oral history of Basquiat for Simon and Schuster. Our actors, director, and project coordinator, AUDELCO award winner, Rome Neal, went up against a foundation with 100 million dollars in the bank and a multi-millionaire gallery owner. But it successfully challenged the narrative about Basquiat. He wasn’t just a junkie or “mascot.” He was a kid with an enormous talent who got mixed up with the wrong company. Decadent older men and women who led him astray and exploited him for profits and a racist critical fraternity so wrapped up in white supremacy that it failed to identify the multicultural influences on Basquiat’s work. The late Robert Ferris Thompson and the late Greg Tate were exceptions. I’ve tried to send the script which has challenged the racist treatment of her brother to Lisane Basquiat. She hasn’t replied. Finally, my play, “The Slave Who Loved Caviar,” though banned in New York, is not dead. The African American Shakespeare Company will launch production in the fall in San Francisco. We also have made a film version. Ishmael Reed Feb. 14, 2022

Raul Diaz (left) with Ishmael Reed, standing in for the role of The Wolfman, in a production of “The Slave Who Loved Caviar” (Tennessee Reed photo)

L-R: Detective Mary van Helsing (Roz Fox), the Baron’s agent, Antonio Wolfe (Jesse Bueno), vampire Baron De Whit (Raul Diaz) in the Theater for The New City’s production of “The Slave Who Loved Caviar” by Ishmael Reed (Jonathan Slaff photo)

By NADINE MATTHEWS

Special to the AmNews

On Thursday, Feb. 24, WORLD Channel series “America ReFramed” kicks off its landmark 10th season. The award-winning series launched in 2012 and for the past nine years has brought American audiences documentaries featuring compelling stories centering BIPOC culture and experiences. The series is a co-production of WORLD Channel and American Documentary, Inc. and is one of the signature series from WORLD Channel.

Producer Chris Hastings told the AmNews that the series came about because he and his fellow original co-executive producers wanted a series “that curated documentaries from diverse communities.” Though the other original executive producers moved on, Hastings has stayed on throughout.

The vast quantity of content from “America ReFramed” is documentary, a format that has become increasingly mainstream. “I think during a time of so many channels, so many streaming platforms,” stated Hastings, “as a Black man, I appreciate being able to sit down and see a representation of myself and my family. I think what’s happened and what continues to happen is that our marginalized communities are asking and demanding that we see better representation.” Hastings also suggested that this is what is driving the popularity of nonfiction content and compelling many other platforms to invest in BIPOC makers with BIPOC stories.

That in no small part is certainly driven by the changing demographics in America itself, posits Hastings. “If you look at the last census, America is changing,” he said. “In everything from new immigrants, new migrants, new Americans, to the LGBT community are very much a part of the fabric of our society now. Our voices are getting llouder and saying that we want more out of American life and that includes the content that we consume, and our representation in media.”

Though Hastings states he loves all of the films that have aired under the “America ReFramed” umbrella, “Personal Statement,” directed by Edwin Martinez, resonates most for him. He explains, “It was a Brooklyn-based story about four teenagers who are applying to college and it was one of our first co-productions, meaning we helped finish it. The film went on to get an Emmy nomination but it really spoke to our mission in a way that I thought was authentic.” “Personal Statement” was directed by a Latino set in New York City and features Black, Latino and LGBT characters. Hastings explained, “Their story is of trying to figure out what the next steps are after high school for people of marginalized backgrounds. And so when I think about some of the films that I’m most proud of, I love them all, but that one speaks to our mission: being able to show what a transforming America is.”

Hastings says his goal over the next 10 years is to sustain what “America ReFramed” is doing. “As I say to my team internally, we had the right idea in 2012 and with everything that has happened in the past year or so, we are on the right side of history. For what it’s worth, mainstream media can shift from BIPOC stories at any moment but as far as I’m concerned, we’ve always been here. We want to continue to be here as a resource and a platform for those stories that sometimes get missed.”

Catch the season 10 premiere film from “America ReFramed,” “Fannie Lou Hamer’s America” on Feb. 24 at 8 p.m. ET on WORLD Channel and on WORLD Channel’s YouTube Channel.

Scene from America ReFramed's season 10 premiere film "Fannie Lou Hamer's America (George Ballis photo)

Services for jazz great Leo Mickey Bass

Leo Mickey Bass, the prominent bebop jazz bassist, composer, arranger and educator, who played with everyone from Art Blakey to Lee Morgan and taught four generations of aspiring jazz musicians, passed on February 3, 2022, in Harlem, N.Y. He was 78.

The Bass family has made funeral arrangements in New York City. Services will be held on February 19, 2022, at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church at 58 West 135th St., Harlem, NY 10037, at 11 a.m. All are welcome.

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