portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Sunday, October 03, 2021

Another in the series of women associated with musicians

BETTY DAVIS

(no, not that one!) 


Betty Davis caught the eye of Miles Davis, who had already caught hers. 

“I saw this great-looking man at this dance concert,” she said. 

After she found out who he was, she went to hear him perform at the Village Gate. 

Mr. Davis spotted her and sent over his bodyguard to tell her, she recalled, that the trumpeter would “like to have a drink with you.”


They were married in 1968 and divorced after a turbulent, sometimes violent year. “Every day married to him was a day I earned the name Davis,” she says in the film*.


She was Miles Davis's second wife, model and soul/funk singer Betty Mabry Davis. Betty introduced Miles to Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. 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."



*

They Say I'm Different - Betty Davis 2017

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