Betty Davis: 'Godmother of Funk' dies aged 77

Betty Davis, the pioneering US singer and musician who was dubbed the "Godmother of Funk", has died aged 77.

Davis blazed a trail with her raw brand of funk and sexual lyrics that would go on to influence stars including Prince and Madonna.

News of her death was confirmed on her website by her friend Constance Portis.

Tributes have been paid to Davis by stars including US rocker Lenny Kravitz and the estate of Prince, which wrote about her influence on him.

Prince's estate noted how the late star once referenced Davis's work in an interview, saying "this is what we aim for".

Born and raised as Betty Malry in North Carolina, Davis became a mainstay on the 1960s New York music scene, with tracks like Get Ready for Betty. Her 1967 song Uptown (to Harlem), which she wrote for the Chambers Brothers, recently re-emerged in Questlove's Oscar-nominated recent documentary, Summer of Soul.

She was the second wife of jazz star Miles Davis for just a year, but she's widely credited with helping to turn the trumpeter and bandleader on to the era's rock, introducing him to artists like Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. His subsequent jazz-rock fusion phase brought the classic album, Bitches Brew.

"Every day married to him was a day I earned the name Davis," she said in a documentary, about their turbulent time together.

"I wrote about love, really, and all the levels of love," she told The New York Times in 2018, in a rare interview, after the release of the documentary Betty - They Say I'm Different.

"When I was writing about it, nobody was writing about it. But now everybody's writing about it. It's like a cliché."

Davis shone brightly for a brief period from 1964-1975 and while her music was not commercially successful, she has proved to be incredibly influential for the generations that followed.

Contemporary singer Janelle Monae previously described Davis as "one of the godmothers of redefining how black women in music can be viewed", while another, Erykah Badu once commented: "We just grains of sand in her Bettyness".

As well the likes of Monae and Badu, male rappers including Ice Cube and Talib Kweli have also sampled her work.

The recordings she made with her ex-husband Miles Davis were shelved after they split, but she finally released her self-titled debut album in 1973, before disappearing from the music industry.

After a brief stint living with silent monks in Japan she moved back to the Pittsboro area in Carolina, US, and stayed out the limelight for most of the rest of her life. "When I was told that it was over, I just accepted it," Davis told the New York Times. "And nobody else was knocking at my door."

In a statement on her website, Portis described her as a "a multi-talented music influencer and pioneer rock star, singer, songwriter, and fashion icon".