Betty Mabry is a beautiful beautiful woman who started as a model and became a singer/songwriter and came to Miles Davis' attention and he married her and they were happy briefly. She was on the cover of one of his first "electric" albums, and there's a tune on that, Madamoiselle Mabry, named after her. She became known as Betty Davis after her marriage, I guess they figured no one would mistake her for the movie star.
There's a lot of hard to verify information about the breakup of their marriage out there, I don't know what the truth is. She was friends with Jimi Hendrix and his crowd of NYC girlfriends like Stella Davis and Collette Mimram who were fashion mavens and boutique store owners and dressed Jimi and then Miles in the hippest threads. She turned Miles onto Jimi's music, supposedly, as well as other music such as Sly Stone that became big inspiration for Miles' electric period that followed. Rumor is that Jimi and Betty were doing things together that Miles didn't approve of, but I don't know the factuality of that. Miles had a bit of a hand in Betty's first release though, which was made after the marriage, so it wasn't a severely acrimonious break up.
There were only three officially released in the seventies, and one released a few years ago finally officially for the first time.
This is the first one, probably the best in some ways. Better produced, arguably better material. Very funky and in your face lyrically.
the second one featured her road band which was a cooking raw and funky unit. I really like the guitarist, who definitely took the Jimi style into funk territory and got down hard with it. This album is rawer and raunchier.
The third was her 'seventies swan song, a slicker, more produced album that still has a lot of grit and sex oozing out of it, most of the same band with others on board, I like it a lot.
Finally a small record label called Light in the Attic put out the first two as cd reissues and they're sonically superior to any other release and beautiful digipaks. They then a few years ago put out Nasty Girl and this nnew one, the first time it was released, though it had been bootlegged several times in the eighties and nineties:
This one is most like the third one, probably the weakest but still something I like to listen to.
I think she's a fascinating woman, who remains a beauty though she dropped out of the limelight at the close of the seventies, disillusioned with the music industry and not wanting to become the victim of this or that. She was strikingly beautiful during her career and with a huge presence. If you're interested in checking her out I'd recommend the first one, and the Light in the Attic lp or cd version.
This photo is from Jimi's funeral, Miles with Betty on his left and Jimi's gal Devon Wilson on his right. 
Betty photos 
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