Sad. Love her music. So under rated and so maligned

She was too far ahead of her time. The Rock'n'Roll world was not ready for such an independent, sexual, and black woman in the 1970s

How did you figure she was "maligned" exactly? She was extremely well-respected and well-connected. She wrote the tracks for the Commodores that got them signed to Motown Records as well as wrote "Uptown for the Chambers Brothers. And this was in the 60's long before she ever met Miles. Barry Gordy even offered her a job as a songwriter for Motown. She put out her first album and had the Pointer Sisters singing backup and Sly and the Family Stone's rhythm section backing her. You don't get that type of backing band on your debut record without a lot of respect. I mean Muhammad Ali and Richard Pryor were fans and would turn up at her shows. Also I don't believe she ever saw herself as even part of the Rock and Roll world, she was straight up Funk.

Modern day search engines still aren't it seems, I tried looking her up yesterday and kept getting results for Bette Davis instead for her until I turned off all safe search features. And what I saw did not at all warrant filtering her out for sexual content IMO.

How so maligned? Because of her marriage to and influence on Miles Davis (similar to Yoko Ono and John Lennon)?

Agree she was under rated.

Probably the GP was just asking if she was maligned for similar reasons as Yoko. (The answer is no.)

I was simply asking a question- not insinuating anything.

Chaka Khan, Mavis Staples, Bernadette Cooper etc would disagree.

Betty predates Chaka and Bernadette (and Chaka admits to influence from Betty), and Mavis was considerably prudish compared to the stage antics of Betty.

Betty's gravity on Miles alone would be enough to guarantee her iconic status, but her overall body of work is significant for its overall influence.

If you haven't heard her incredible music before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpuDoR_L0M0

Edit: that link works for me but if not, maybe this one will work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IhCCtcEEFU

"video unavailable" (both those links)

They Say I'm Different https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWPynScqgw

Nasty Gal album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5HthdWlMfw

If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2B0FBdzGis

26 second video of her & band doing that song live https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvRo1AUeAfM

Her 4th album, Is it Love or Desire?, recorded 1976, released 2009 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfV9ZO_CFyA

The 2017 documentary about her (54 mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4HYfDDd_lA

When you listen Prince, you can always hear the influence of Betty Davis.

Damn it seems there's a gaping hole in my culture.

You are in for a treat.

Someone has put up the 2017 documentary about her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4HYfDDd_lA

Boy did I get confused when Google gave me Bette Davis and I saw her death as having happened in 1989...

Worth noting for those who don't click through to read the article that this is funk artist Betty Davis, not actress Bette Davis.

Very sad to see her go.

Mike Judge's (of King of the Hill and Idiocracy fame) Tales From the Tour Bus episode on her was excellent.

Mike Judge knows how to portray culture.

Every thing he creates, including his satire, is so accurate.

As someone growing up in a small Texas town, KOTH is right on the money.

As someone in the software industry, Silicon Valley is right on the money.

..and don't forget Office Space. He has savant-like abilities to observe and reflect personalities and society. True genius, and much under-appreciated.

I, too, grew up in Texas (in the 'metroplex') and really love his portrayal of it all. His insights and satire aren't hateful or spiteful; but rather more playful. KOTH made me more proud and happy to be a Texan, in fact.

Regarding Texas, this sounds kind of like the better work of Larry McMurtry. I loved 'Leaving Cheyenne.'

Tales From the Tour Bus is a delight, and I keep hoping for a season 3.

He also did Silicon Valley.

I read this as Betty White and was so confused. I guess I don't know of very many people named Betty.

More confusingly, I first thought of Bette Davis who died in 1989.

Yeah, given the original and the cover of the song Bette Davis Eyes, it's not hard to confuse who's who.

It's (at least mostly) a diminutive for Elizabeth (or Elisabeth more recently) but Elizabeth has declined a lot in the past few decades. I'd also (very anecdotally) observe that diminutives like Liz have probably become more popular than Betty.

Me too and I was confused why the news just made it here, thought this must be a great Rolling Stones article to be trending on HN 5-6 weeks after she passed. Then, oh, nope, that’s not Betty white…

This is unrelated on so many levels but I was today years old when I learned that it wasn't Rod Stewart that sung "Betty Davis Eyes"

Though I was aware the song was about actress Ruth "Betty" Davis, not singer Betty (Mabry) Davis

And the song is actually titled "Bette Davis Eyes".

I'm sure a plausible argument could be made, but nothing in HN's guidelines requires it.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

You may be under a misimpression of what's on topic here. Nothing has changed. HN has always been for posts that gratify intellectual curiosity, on literally any topic. Betty Davis is interesting because of her music, her story, and her historical significance.

Of course, no post gratifies everyone's curiosity—the front page is an amalgam of a lot of people's different tastes. If this topic isn't to yours, there are plenty of others to look at. If you'd please do that instead and refrain from posting unsubstantive comments, we'd appreciate it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Note that word probably (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426). Betty Davis is hardly the epitome of a TV news story.

Perhaps not. But my quote illustrates an exception to your statement that “HN has always been for posts that gratify intellectual curiosity, on literally any topic.”. There has to be some limitation on what is considered interesting, or else HN will simply always contain the top news headlines. I think that HN too often does not follow the quoted guideline, and instead appears to simply follow the rule that “people on HN are interested in this, therefore it belongs here”, and I think that this reasoning, unchecked, will lead HN to be a simple general news commentary site, and not a site limited to specific topics. If this happens, I fear that HN will attract people who will want to comment on those general news issues, and then it’ll be all over.

That guideline about TV news is there precisely because most such stories are not intellectually interesting. If HN were going to become a general news site, this would have happened already 10+ years ago. Things have been stable in this respect, at least, for a long long time, and a thread about Betty Davis represents zero threat to the quality of HN. On the contrary, it enhances it.

I realize different people would make borderline calls differently. I'm making that call on this one; if you disagree, fair enough. But on a level of the principle involved, there's no change here.

Yeah, OK. As long as you’re aware of the issue, then I have no problem with you drawing the line slightly differently. I was just worried that you weren’t aware of it, since in my opinion, HN has seemed to contain too much mainstream news, with every questioning immediately shot down with “it’s interesting!”, and then your comment seemed to imply that no restrictions whatsoever were to be applied. But if you’re aware that one actually has to make a judgement on it, then I have no real problem with it; good work overall.

while i do appreciate the stand made here for a black woman, note that a different call was made for kobe bryant's death for unexplained reasons. not meant as a personal attack, but there does seem to be some capriciousness in these decisions. perhaps all death notices should be unflaggable (and let them rise or fall on their merits), or they should all be out of scope for hn.

i personally find death notices (and especially the in-/out-moderation of them) to carry more cultural propaganda than genuine curiosity, so i'd be totally fine with the latter approach.

Kobe Bryant, whose death made news for weeks, is your comparison point?

teddyh, do realize the person you are responding to is the moderator of HN?

As it happens, no. I almost never look at usernames, as the design of HN discourages from doing so, by making user names hard to read. And even if I had, is moderatorial infallibility a dogma? Put another way, does any conversation improve by “do you know who I am?”? What is the purpose of your comment? To make me retract my comment because I didn’t know who I was disagreeing with?

The OP may have not necessarily been doing something along the lines of appeal to authority.

They could have just been informing you.

We are supposed to take good faith assumptions, right?

OTOH, I feel you with what you wrote. In general the things you wrote are unfortunately common.

Your second sentence about never looking at usernames and so on.

People have befriended either for networking purposes or otherwise, others on HN. It doesn’t have to be a cold straight forward only place

> They could have just been informing you.

Possibly, and they are free to tell me that; I did ask them what they meant, after all.

That guideline probably should be revised, all manner of tech news is covered on television these days.