The only people ready for the arrival of Betty Davis on the music scene were those who circulated in her star-spangled orbit. For everyone else, she was too hot to handle.
The model-turned-singer and queen of New York nightlife counted Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, Marc Bolan and Hugh Masekela among her friends and supporters. She is credited with introducing one-time husband Miles Davis to the psychedelic rock and funk that would manifest in his Bitches Brew-era directional shift.
When the time came to release the head of steam she had been building through the early '70s in her own music, Davis' connections didn't let her down. For her 1973 self-titled debut LP, she called in Sly and the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico, Graham Central Station leader Larry Graham and Santana guitarist Neal Schon, the Tower of Power horn section, and back-up singers the Pointer Sisters and Sylvester.
The resulting album is a compact slab of hard funk, presided over by a fearlessly raw singer with a surging libido and a bring-it-on attitude.
Davis scrunches her vocal cords into balls of soulful passion, as if exasperated at being unable to adequately express the intensity of her feeling. Even from the distance of more than 40 years, the sexual heat in her performance is provocative, instantly relegating the boundary-nudging excursions of Mesdames Ciccone and Ga Ga to the realm of lesser achievement.
Her first words cut to the chase: ''I said if I'm in luck I might just get picked up.''
From there, track after track reinforces the idea of women taking charge of the moment, even if some will pay a price for their impetuousness. Game Is My Middle Name is a strutting, swaggering album highlight, embodying that sense of defiance.
It was too much for radio programmers of the day, and stations that did risk airplay faced a backlash. Reissues have gone some way towards recording Davis' achievements in funk.
