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Monday, August 14, 2006
THEY SAY I'M DIFFERENT
Betty Davis
They Say I'm Different
Just Sunshine : 1974
[Buy It]
BOLD SOUL SISTER
Ike and Tina Turner
The Hunter
Blue Thumb : 1969
Available on: Bold Soul Sister
Hip-O : 1997
[Buy It]
THE MESSAGE FROM THE SOUL SISTERS, PTS. 1&2
Vicki Anderson
Message from a Soul Sister
Famous Flame Records : 1970
Available on: James Brown's Original Funky Divas
Polydor : 1998
[Buy It]
LADY MARMALADE
Labelle
Nightbirds
Epic : 1974
[Buy It]
If you think about it, most of the women of funk are franchise babes: Vicki Anderson, Lyn Collins and Marva Whitney of James Brown, Inc. Parlet and the Brides of Funkenstein from Clinton & Co. Teena Marie (to some extent) and the Mary Jane Girls (much more so), Rick James subsidiaries. Prince dba Vanity, Apollonia, and Sheila E. Funk men pimping out their funk women, their discoveries . . . O Columbians! Conquerors of virgin lands! What, do you think, was the price of a slot in the James Brown revue? Certainly, as far as royalties go, they were all getting screwed.
Betty Davis, as they say, was different.They say I'm different
cause I eat chitlins
I can't help it, I was born and raised on em
every morning I'd have to slop the hogs
and they'd be gettin off, humpin, to John Lee Hooker Almost every woman in the funk pantheon is a spin-off of some guy's preexisting sound, marketed to his audience, under his recording contract, with his name on the royalty checks. Betty Davis, who happened to be a stone fox, worked her stuff, hooked herself up, put together a band and invented herself as an Amazon sex goddess so fierce she reduced men to babbling idiocy. She wrote raunchy, hilarious songs, several of which I will post next week--she's just that good. But today, we're looking at Betty in context, her place in the family tree of funk, the better to appreciate her badassitry in the days to come.
"They Say I'm Different" is like a concise history of black music circa 1970: You've got this hard-rocking, ultra-funky band playing this fat R&B groove and there's Betty calling out the blues ancestors. This is the bluesy side of Betty, who's mostly straight-ahead funk. And then there's "Bold Soul Sister," the funky side of Ike & Tina, who mostly stayed on the R&B side of the tracks. Tina, with that nonsense patter right out of the James Brown songbook, and Ike, with the guitar riff lifted from Sly. In fact, I can't explain the song any better than this. Sock-it-to-me biscuits, indeed.
Tina also seems like the obvious model for Betty's vocals. That raspy thing Betty does, it doesn't always work for me, but it's got credibility, which women who came up on the R&B circuit - like Tina and Vicki and Patti Labelle - had, as it were, in spades. Just think: how would, say, Parlet or Vanity 6 have turned out if they'd been staffed with women with some grit, some hips to them, women who sweat, women who could actually SING, instead of some damn underwear models? Maybe they'd sound more like Labelle, less like some cheap keyboard set to the "breathy" function. I dunno. I can't get off on these limp chicks the way my guy friends can. Maybe that's why Labelle's "Lady Marmalade" sounds so much hotter to me than the Moulin Rouge remake.
The women I like know how to get down. Here's Vicki, calling the thing to order: "Girls, let's have a meeting." Empowerment is in the air and the soul sisters are getting restless. No more going for the okey-dokey. "If you don't give me what I want, I got to get it some other place." And there's the Ikettes, "Do whatcha wanna when ya wanna how ya wanna now, do your thing soul sister." And there's Labelle, "Hey sister, go sister, soul sister, go sister."
Now, it's not all good news with the soul sisters. Tina's actually stuck doing Ike's thing, which involves lots of stage show fellatio. Vicki's loud and she's proud, but she's the mouthpiece for James Brown's philosophy of manhood: "Let me do my own thing cause I want a man." As in a real man, a guy with a damn job and the Brownian virtues of self-respect and soul power. (Soul sisters, I wouldn't complain.) And the ladies of Labelle, early adopters of space-goddess funk, are cheering on a high-yellow prostitute, no doubt one of those infamous tragic mulattoes. A gesture of solidarity with sex-trade workers? Perhaps. The soul sisters are putting out a power vibe, but what's the real message? Drive him wild! Get a man! Blow this mike! I could be reading Cosmo.
Girls, let's have a meeting. Next week I'll be gettin off, humpin Betty Davis's leg as long as the boys of moist let me. Betty will teach on the uses and abuses of a woman's sexual power, including the care and feeding of seriously freaky boyfriends, the mating dance of the single woman, and the etiquette of sexual networking. Stay tuned.Labels: funk, megan
posted by Megan
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