When she was 16, Betty left Homestead for New York City, enrolling at the
Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) while living with her aunt. She soaked up the
Greenwich Village culture and
folk music of the early 1960s. She associated herself with frequenters of the Cellar, a hip uptown club where young and stylish people congregated. It was a multiracial, artsy crowd of models, design students, actors, and singers. At the Cellar she played records and chatted people up. She was a friend and early muse to fashion designer
Stephen Burrows, who also studied at the FIT at the time. She also worked as a model, appearing in photo spreads in
Seventeen,
Ebony and
Glamour. In New York, she met musicians including
Jimi Hendrix and
Sly Stone. The seeds of her musical career were planted through her friendship with soul singer
Lou Courtney, who reputedly produced her first single, "The Cellar", though the existence of that record has been questioned. She secured a contract with
Don Costa, who had written arrangements for
Frank Sinatra. Her first professional gig came after she wrote "Uptown (to Harlem)" for
The Chambers Brothers. Their 1967 album was a major success, but Mabry focused on her modeling career. She was successful as a model but felt bored by the work—"I didn't like modeling because you didn't need brains to do it. It's only going to last as long as you look good." In 1968, when she was in a relationship with
Hugh Masekela, she recorded several songs for
Columbia Records, with Masekela doing the arrangements. Two of them were released as a single: "Live, Love, Learn" b/w "It's My Life". Her relationship with Miles Davis began soon after her breakup from Masekela. She featured on the cover of Miles Davis's 1968 album
Filles de Kilimanjaro, which included his tribute to her, "Mademoiselle Mabry", and she introduced him to
psychedelic rock and the flamboyant clothing styles of the era.
in Billboard'' After the end of her marriage with Miles, Betty moved to London, probably around 1971, to pursue her modeling career. She wrote music while in the UK and, after about a year, returned to the US with the intention of recording songs with
Santana. Instead, she recorded her own songs with a group of West Coast funk musicians including
Larry Graham,
Greg Errico, the
Pointer Sisters, and members of
Tower of Power. and her major label debut on Island Records
Nasty Gal (1975). None of the three albums were a commercial success, Davis remained a cult figure as a singer, due in part to her unabashedly sexual lyrics and performance style, which were both controversial for the time. She had success in Europe, but in the U.S. she was barred from performing on television because of her sexually aggressive stage persona. Some of her shows were boycotted, and her songs were not played on the radio due to pressure by religious groups and the
NAACP.
Carlos Santana recalled Betty as "indomitable – she couldn't be tamed. Musically, philosophically and physically, she was extreme and attractive." ==Retirement==