Betty Davis Radio Interview (and O-Dub, as well)
YoungAmerican
16 Posts
Hey -- I'm mostly a lurker around here, but I thought some folks might enjoy this episode of my radio show, The Sound of Young America.Betty Davis and the folks at Light in the Attic were nice enough to let me do an interview with her -- which I think is her first radio interview since she quit the record business 25 or 30 years ago. Here's that show link. I also did an interview with O-Dub about his classes at CSU-LB and about Soulsides V2.Anyway, both are free to download or stream or whatever. Let me know what you think.And... if you happen to REALLY enjoy them, you can subscribe to the show in iTunes using this link. Or you can email your local public radio station and ask them to pick it up... it's distributed by Public Radio International.
Comments
That was cool.
the Killer Mike interview from last year is fucking amazing.
keep doing your thing dude.
Speaking of Betty interviews, can't remember if I posted this before, but it's from 1975: Al Gee interviewing Betty back in the day
(thanks to Joost)
I know a lot of folks peeped, would love to hear what you think.
I was about to say - I found this record last year, great interview... glad someone else has already digitized it.
... and can I just say, to all thse 5 post wonders that bitch about "i can't ask a question without gettign clonned... THIS is the definition of a good look right here.
If you approach the Strut with respect and drop useful knoweldge and share, the Strut will be good to you.
but yeah, that movie was
And to folks who don't subscribe to the Sound of Young Americans,
They run the gamut of interesting interviews such as Devin The Dude, Harvey Pekar, Jeff Chang (author of Can't Stop Won't Stop), and a lot of stand up comedians and entertainers. The latest one is with author Elmore Leonard.
dude, are you one of Oli's students?
HOLY SCHITT!
The way she encountered Miles from the begining made her look super oppurtunistic plus she ended up dating or "kicking it" with a lot other famous musicians really just put old girl in a questionable light. Plus the fact she was only married to Miles for a year but somehow spun it and used it as springboard is
True, true. She came off a little bit like a groupie. But at the same time Miles and a whole host of other dudes all said the Betty had something "special" about her, that she radiated differently.
really?? you interview A LOT of my favorite people. louis theroux, tom scharpling, bob odenkirk, the list goes on and on.
Which is part of why her and Miles didn't work out. #1, he was abusive and that explains, to a large extent, why they didn't work out. He was also a control freak and insecure and given their diff in age, theirs was not a relat meant to last.
She wasn't a groupie by any conventional definition of the term and certainly didn't engage in the type of behavior that would have been common to groupies in the era (and to be sure, you only had to look at some of Betty's friends, like the infamous Devon Wilson, to see the difference).
But Betty wasn't like Superhead. Nowhere close.
If any of you live in a place that doesn't get the show on the radio (pretty much everywhere other than New York, Salt Lake, Santa Cruz or Hattiesburg, MS), drop your local public radio stations a line and tell them you'd like to hear it. Makes a big difference.
One cool music show that I think people here might find interesting, even though it isn't soul or hip-hop, is this one. The guests are Dan Levitin, who wrote a book about music and the brain, and the musique concrete group Matmos, who make some kind of amazing music out of weird samples and loops. One of the songs on their record uses the sound of one of the two guys in the group having his hand singed by a cigarette by one of the guys from the punk rock group the Germs. But they're fun, funny guys.
Anyway... keep those cards and letters coming, I'm really enjoying hearing people's reactions.
With the Betty Interview, she couldn't have been nicer, but she is just a very reticent person... I cut a lot of long, long, long silences out of the interview. I would say an average of two loooooong silences per response. But again, really nice woman, just not a talker. You can hear it on the Gee interview, she wasn't a big talker BEFORE she was a recluse
It's not necessarily as "sample friendly" as her first two albums but the songwriting and singing =
Stay tuned!
Why lost? It's been available on CD before.
Quintessence of Hip is as close as it gets to the first two but even that sounds a little forced. it's OK but I don't go back to it often.
No, it hasn't. It's never, ever been made available in any form (though a guy in the Netherlands has an acetate test-pressing of it).
You're talking about this album: http://www.amazon.com/Crashin-Passion-Be...36898545&sr=8-1
I'm talking about a completely different album but I know it's a bit confusing. Peep:
In 1976, Betty headed down to Bogalusa, LA to record at Studio in the Country; with her are four musicians from North Carolina who formed the core of the band that played on "Nasty Gal" and on her tours somewhere around the 1974-76 era.
They spent 2 months there and recorded an album called "Crashin' From Passion." However, for reasons that are not yet entirely clear, that album didn't come out. My most informed guess right now is that it had to do with label issues between Island and Just Sunshine though Betty's musical director at the time insists Philly Int'l was also involved (I haven't been able to confirm this with any secondary source yet though).
In 1979, Betty recorded ANOTHER album, also named "Crashin' From Passion" in NYC (I believe Martha Reeves was involved with that album somehow) but with different players and completely different songs, except maybe for the title track. Her manager at the time absconded with the masters and later pirated it - that's the album that Amazon carries. Same name, entirely different albums.
So the "Crashin' From Passion" I'm talking about (and they may end up changing the title just to prevent confusion) basically sat in the vaults of Studio in the Country and in Just Sunshine's offices for the last 30 years, doing absolutely nothing. And it is, in my opinion, a really killer album, less so for the music (it's very aggressively Black rock/funk but I don't think it will strike the fancy of people who really liked her first two albums) and more so for the songwriting and general vibe.
This other one sounds like a much more interesting prospect,I'll look forward to hearing it.
Stars Starve, You Know - Betty Davis