Skip to main content

Mademoiselle Mabry

By



In 1968 Miles Davis had a whirlwind romance with Betty Mabry that resulted in a major turning point in his music.  She introduced him to the world of Funk, tailored him for the 60s and became the inspiration for his album Filles de Kilimanjaro.  One of the songs was devoted to her.   You can't say it is anywhere near as funky as the album Betty Mabry would later produce under Betty Davis, but it has a nice Sunday morning feel to it with Chick Corea and Dave Holland filling in on electric piano and bass.  Apparently, Ron Carter was none too happy about giving up his double bass.  Miles' second greatest quintet broke up shortly thereafter, and he formed an electric band inspired by the music of Betty's world that resulted in one of his greatest albums, Bitches Brew.  She is credited for coming up with the title.  

It is a decidedly more hip album that combines jazz and funk in his own inimitable way.  The album was well received by Baby Boomers.  He soon landed gigs at the Fillmore East, giving up the night club circuit as there was much more money to be made in concerts.  Miles didn't like to play second fiddle to anyone, and probably considered himself the main act when his electric band traveled out west to open up for the Grateful Dead in San Francisco. That would have been one hell of a concert!

Miles was riding high in his yellow Ferrari, but unfortunately their marriage didn't last long.  Miles could get very paranoid due to a combination of cocaine and alcohol, and was convinced Betty was cheating on him with Jimi Hendrix.  She wasn't taking any of that shit and soon dumped him so that she could devote herself full time to music. She was tired of being his muse.  

She teamed up with members of Sly Stone's band and the Pointer Sisters to produce her first album in 1973 and fired off several more albums thereafter.  She had a truly unique sound that garnered her a lot of attention at the time, but with the advent of disco her music became lost, only to be dug up again in the early 2000s when Light in the Attic reissued all her old albums including one that had been left in the vaults.  Mike Judge similarly became infatuated with her and devoted one of his animated episodes from Tales from the Tour Bus to her.

Betty is still around to enjoy this rediscovered fame, which has resulted in a full length documentary Betty - They Say I'm Different.  This is similar to the resurgence of Rodriguez a few years back, also inspired by a documentary, Searching for Sugarman, only Betty had a far greater impact on the music of her time, and it is refreshing to see her finally getting the attention she long deserved.  So here is to you, Betty, may you never be forgotten again!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

The People Debate the Constitution

By
As Pauline Maier describes in Ratification , there was no easy road in getting the Constitution ratified.  After 10 years of living together as a loosely knit confederation, a few forward thinking men decided that the Articles of Confederation no longer worked and it was time to forge a Constitution.  Washington would not go until he could be assured something would come of the convention and that there would be an august body of gentlemen to carry the changes through.  But, ultimately Maier describes it was the people who would determine the fate of the new Constitution. This is a reading group for Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788 .  The book has been well received by fellow historians like Jack Rakove , among others.  Maier has drawn from a wealth of research piecing together a story that tells the arduous battle in getting the Constitution ratified.  A battle no less significant than that Americans fought for independence.
166 comments
Read more