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For Women's HIstory Month 2022 and International Women's Day (on Tuesday, 3/8): a profile of Betty Davis, the cult-heroine dubbed "Queen of Funk," who died last month at the age of 76 in her hometown of Homestead, Pennsylvania.

Born Betty Mabry in 1945, she was married for a year to Miles Davis in the late 1960s, and was friends with Jimi Hendrix, Hugh Masekela, Marc Bolan, and Eric Clapton. The former singer, songwriter, fashion design student, and model, toiled in the music industry during the 1960s and 1970s, but her famous last name and connections weren't enough to bring her success — at least initially.

Ms. Betty Davis certainly did make waves. Her suggestive lyrics and a sexually-aggressive, "unladylike" performance style provoked religious groups and the NAACP to get her banned from a number of radio stations, while her concerts were subject to boycott pressures too. Television outlets wanted nothing to do with her.

Davis put out three LPs in three years, but by 1976, Island Records unceremoniously dumped her contract. Her fourth album was buried for decades, and Betty disappeared from the public eye until fifteen years ago, when Light In The Attic Records began to reissue (and release) her entire discography. An indie documentary, Betty Davis: They Say I'm Different, followed a decade later.

In 1974, before the release of her third album, Nasty Gal, the New York Times said: "Miss Davis is trying to tell us something real and basic about our irrational needs, and western civilisation puts its highest premiums on conformity and rationality and rarely recognises the Bessies or the Bettys until they’re gone.”

In her obituary in The Guardian of London, Rebecca Bengal writes: "Rather than conform, Davis let the landmark discography she recorded in the 1970s speak for her, along with the sultry, futurist stage persona she created in a powerfully tall afro, cosmic leotards, sequinned hot pants and silver thigh-high boots. 'I made three albums of hard funk,' Davis said... 'I put everything there.'”

On the Monday, March 7 edition of "The FPT," consideration of the origins of Betty (Mabry) Davis, her impact and influence, both as a muse to Miles Davis but mainly as a trailblazing, feminist music icon. It'll be a RAW hour of music and commentary.

Airing March 7, 2022, from 11am-12noon PST on KCSB-FM 91.9 in Santa Barbara. Streaming Live at kcsb.org.

An Archival Stream Follows For Two Weeks Thereafter via this link HERE.