Betty Davis

Betty Davis (born Betty Mabry, July 26, 1945) is an American funk singer.

Background

Born in 1945, Betty Mabry grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and just outside Pittsburgh. On her grandmother’s farm in Reidsville, North Carolina, she listened to B.B. King, Jimmy Reed, and Elmore James and other blues musicians. One of the first songs she wrote, at the age of twelve, was called "I’m Going to Bake That Cake of Love."

Aged 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. The seeds of her musical career were planted through her friendship with soul singer Lou Courtney, who produced her first single, “The Cellar” with simple, catchy lyrics like, “Where you going fellas, so fly? / I’m going to the Cellar, my oh my / What you going to do there / We’re going to boogaloo there.”

Betty Davis (album)

Betty Davis is the self-titled debut album by Betty Davis, released through Just Sunshine Records (an upstart label) in 1973. The album was produced by Greg Errico and features contributions from a number of noted musicians such as Neal Schon, Merl Saunders, Sylvester, Larry Graham, Pete Sears, and The Pointer Sisters. While it underperformed commercially at the time of its release, it is now regarded as a classic album. In 2007, the album was re-issued on CD and vinyl by the Light in the Attic label.

Content

Background

Before the album's release, Davis was best known as the second wife of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, and also as the featured model on the front cover of the jazz legend's 1968 album Filles de Kilimanjaro. The song "Mademoiselle Mabry" off Filles... is dedicated to Davis (whose maiden-name is Mabry) and was recorded around the time of their marriage in September 1968. Unbeknownst to most, the then-23-year-old Davis was herself a professional model and also a performer of soul and funk music, having written for the Chambers Brothers and put out a single on Don Costa's DCP imprint. Davis was a known face in emerging musical circles who had a strong stylistic and musical influence on her former husband (she personally introduced him to Jimi Hendrix) during their short marriage which ended after just a year.

Elizabeth Peke Davis

Elizabeth Peke Davis or sometimes Betty Davis (1803–1860) was a Hawaiian high chiefess, being the hapa haole daughter of Isaac Davis, the Welsh advisor of Kamehameha I, who helped him unify the island in 1810. She was the wife of George Prince Kaumualiʻi, also known as Humehume.

Early life

Betty was born on February 12, 1803 or December 24, 1803, at Waimea, Hawaii Island. Her 45-year-old father, Isaac Davis from Milford Haven, Wales, known as ʻAikake by Hawaiians, was one of Kamehameha's closest friends and advisors. He was given vast tracts of land and treated like nobility due to his service. Her mother was the chiefess Kalukuna, a distant relative of Kamehameha I, and her father's second wife. She was given the name of Elizabeth and often referred to as Betty or Peke, the Hawaiian version of Betty. She was the youngest sister of Sarah Kaniaulono Davis and George Hueu Davis.

Tragedy would strike her father in 1810. ʻAikake was poisoned by the chiefs who disliked the peaceful capitulation of the Kingdom of Kauaʻi, under King Kaumualiʻi, into a vassal state of King Kamehameha. After his death, his companion, John Young, looked after Betty and her brother and sister. Two of them were living with him in 1807, and after Davis's murder Young continued to raise them along with his five children James, her future-brother-in-law; Fanny, mother of Emma Rooke; Grace, hānai (foster) mother of Emma; John, future premier or kuhina nui; and Jane, mother of Peter Kaeo and Albert Kunuiakea, at his homestead at Kawaihae. In his will, dated 1834, Youg divided his lands equally between all his and Davis's children.

The Weather Channel

The Weather Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television channel that is owned by a consortium which includes The Blackstone Group, Bain Capital, and NBCUniversal. The Weather Channel has its headquarters located in Atlanta, Georgia.

Launched on May 2, 1982, the channel broadcasts weather forecasts and weather-related news and analysis, along with documentaries and entertainment programming related to weather. A sister network, Weatherscan, is a digital cable and satellite service that offers 24-hour automated local forecasts and radar imagery.

In addition to its programming on the cable channel, TWC also provided forecasts for terrestrial and satellite radio stations, newspapers and websites, and maintained an extensive online presence at weather.com and through a set of mobile applications for smartphones and tablet computers. These services are now administered by The Weather Channel's former parent company, The Weather Company, which was sold to IBM in 2016. The Weather Channel continues to license its brand assets and weather data from IBM.