Betty Davis - Betty Davis (1973)

Betty Davis walked out on the music scene never to return before the 1980s had even got under way, fed up with an industry that just didn't know how to deal with such a force of nature.

For all the rip-offs and disappointments along the way, Betty still left a remarkable legacy behind both in terms of the huge effect her short marriage to Miles Davis had in transforming his career and the trio of earthy, incredibly alive funk albums she recorded in the early 1970s.

In his autobiography, Miles put the break-up of their marriage in the late 1960s after only 12 months down to: "Betty was too young and wild for the things I expected from a woman. Betty was a free spirit, she was raunchy and all that kind of shit."

Carlos Santana put it rather better when he described her as "indomitable – she couldn't be tamed. Musically, philosophically and physically, she was extreme and attractive".

She was Betty Mabry when she arrived in New York from Pittsburgh aged just 16 to study fashion, but she was soon DJing in a nightclub called The Cellar and making connections in the music industry.

There's a possibly apochryphal single, also called The Cellar, rumoured to have been recorded under the guidance of soul singer Lou Courtney, which no-one seems to actually own a copy of, before she released Get Ready For Betty in 1964 while still a teenager.

A stomping Spector-esque tune featuring the lyrics "All of you girls, you'd better hide your guys/ Cause I'm a gonna get the first one that catches my eye", it's a fascinating early run through for the kind of outrageous sassy confidence she would later take to extraordinary limits.

Another single followed before she hooked up with Miles in 1967 and, despite being half the jazz legend's age, she set about revamping his wardrobe and turning him on to the likes of her friend Jimi Hendrix and Sly & The Family Stone.

The impact was obvious when her face appeared on the cover of the following year's Filles de Kilimanjaro LP, with the songs Mademoiselle Mabry and Frelon Brun both inspired by Hendrix riffs - The Wind Cries Mary and If 6 Was 9 respectively.

They apparently also recorded an album together in this period, which we can only hope eventually sees the light of day - every scrap Miles ever recorded seems to get released on another boxset eventually nowadays, so fingers crossed.

Betty also wrote the superb Uptown (To Harlem) for the Chambers Brothers' The Time Has Come LP before moving to London to take up modelling again when she split with Miles, who nevertheless continued down the funky jazz fusion road she had opened up to him.

She returned to the States in the early 1970s with the intention of becoming a songwriter. The Commodores recorded several of her songs on a demo that helped them get a deal with Motown but the prospect of a Betty-penned album fell apart when she refused the songwriting deal offered by Berry Gordy.

"I never decided I wanted to be a performer - I wanted to be a writer. But I couldn't work out a writer's deal for financial reasons, so I was left with a lot of songs and that's how I got into the business," is how she explains the circumstances that led to her debut album.

Greg Ericco got involved, having recently quit as Sly Stone's drummer, and pulled together a band of top funk musicians, including Larry Graham on bass, Neal Schon on guitar, the Tower Of Power horn section and the Pointer Sisters and Sylvester providing backing vocals.

Not that there was any danger of Betty feeling overawed in such company, as becomes immediately clear on opener If I'm In Luck I Just Might Get Picked Up. Riding on the back of a monster groove built around Graham's hog-phat bassline, she warns 'I'm crazy/ I'm nasty/ I'm wild' before adding 'All you lady haters don't be cruel me/ Don't you crush my velvet/ Don't you ruffle my feathers neither'.

Any idea that she might be pandering to some kind of male fantasy is blown out of the water by Anti Love Song, which slows down the pace but not the intensity. 'I know you like to be in charge/ But with me you know you couldn't control me/ And I'd make you drop your guard/ Cos I'd have you eaten your ego/ I'd make you pocket your pride/ And just as hard as I'd be loving you, boy/ Well, you know you'd be lovin' me harder/ That's why I don't want to love you'. What wouldn't Madonna give to have written that?

Walkin' Up That Road is one of the songs originally written for the Commodores (that demo would make interesting listening too), with Betty's growled vocals and Schon's squealing funky guitar taking their place.

Your Man, My Man sounds like a female-fronted Funkadelic as Betty tells the story of a 3-way affair. A fearless soul sister she may have been, but Betty seems to be reaching back into the blues for inspiration from the likes of Lucille Bogan and Bessie Smith.

Side two starts with the steadily escalating groove of Ooh Yeah before Steppin In Her I. Miller Shoes tells the tale of Devon Wilson, Betty's friend who died just 5 months after former boyfriend Jimi Hendrix when she fell from an eighth floor window of the Chelsea Hotel.

You can only imagine what the Commodores' version of Game Is My Middle Name sounded like, particularly the idea of Lionel Richie singing 'Do me in, do me in/ You know I could dig it man'.

In The Meantime is the most soulful number on the album, with Hershall Kennedy on the organ, and suddenly it's all over after just over 29 minutes. But then Betty always did know how to leave them wanting more.

Two more albums followed, none of them selling well due to radio stations refusing to play songs they saw as too explicit. Millie Jackson watered down her schtick with some success but acts such as Macy Gray, Angie Stone and Erykah Badu keep Betty's spirit alive long after she disappeared into the suburbs of Pittsburgh to live her life away from the public gaze.

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Diamond Mine (2011)

Anstruther is a long way from most places, perched on the east coast of Scotland, looking out over the North Sea and buffeted by a chilly breeze.

By the time you've got up past Edinburgh and on to the A915, it feels like you've left city living a long way behind. Wrap up warm once you get there and walk down the narrow streets to the habour for a bag of award-winning fish and chips while you watch (and listen to) the boats bobbing about, and the charm of the place starts to impose itself.

This is where Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote, grew up before joining a couple of largely unsuccessful bands and running the local record shop until it went bust. Sneaking a few of his home-recorded CD-Rs into the racks didn't save the business but it did launch the Fence Collective, a gathering of like-minded musical eccentrics for which Anderson serves as a rather bashful figurehead.

He's continued to record albums at the rate of several a year since 1998, some of them receiving major label releases in more recent years. Those early records have an endearing lo-fi, rueful quality borne of a man who is all too familiar with a small town existence and life's little disappointments. Acoustic guitar, accordian, banjo and uncleared samples have all featured heavily on the way, along with Anderson's high yet world-weary voice which may flirt with melancholy but somehow usually ends up sounding slyly life affirming.

Anderson's sound has steadily got bigger for his non-Fence releases, and occasionally you fear the guiding hand of A&R men with Travis/Idlewild-inspired pound signs in their eyes. However, he's just too much of a musical oddball/restless soul to quite deliver easily digestible mainstream pop and his sales have remained stubbornly in the cult bracket.

That stripped-back, lo-fi sound always suited his songs best to my mind, so Diamond Mine came as a pleasant surprise - just as I imagine the album's Mercury Prize nomination probably came as a big surprise to Anderson. Not that it's a return to his early sound as such, just a clearing of the decks to let Anderson deliver 7 of his most bruised and tender songs with minimal instrumentation over the velvety cushion of Jon Hopkins's ambient textures.

The two have worked together on and off for 7 years, with Hopkins originally brought in to give Anderson's major label releases a radio-friendly sheen as he's also provided for Coldplay and David Holmes. But his approach on Diamond Mine, a collection of tracks gathered from throughout those years yet still sounding remarkably cohesive, has much more in common with his work for Brian Eno on the Another Day On Earth and Small Craft On A Milk Sea albums, adding a subtle luminous undertow that's lush without ever overwhelming Anderson's gentle songs.

London-based Hopkins appears to have succumbed to Anstruther's charms, with his field recordings from the area woven into the songs, starting with local folk chatting in a shop (including a discussion of Granny Anderson's allergies) over gentle piano on opening track First Watch.

The sense of location remains on John Taylor's Month Away, which starts with the couplet 'I love to look out at the sea/ From the swing park here at Roome Bay Beach', and tells the story not of the Duran Duran bassist out on the road but a friend spending a month 'on a boat 110 miles east of Aberdeen' as Anderson simple strumming is joined by the slow watery swell of Hopkins's synths and wordless vocals.

Aging has long been one of Anderson's lyrical preoccupations (my favourite being  the blackly humorous Saffy Nool on 2005's Rocket D.I.Y. - 'You're growing old, you're growing tense/ I was past 35 before my face made much sense') and he's at it here again on Bats In The Attic, insisting 'I'm growing silver in my sideburns/ Starting to unravel' in the strange tale of a friend's novel over decaying piano chords and pattering drums.

Running On Fumes starts with drifting traffic before Anderson ruminates with dry humour about a friendship turned sour ('You and I we once looked fine / Until you split your lip against the side of my face') over gently plucked guitar and subtle backing vocals from Lisa Lindley-Jones, the song drifting into near silence before Hopkins creeps in with harmonium and slowly spiralling keyboards.

If side one is subtly marked by Anderson's self-effacing drollery, side two starts with heart firmly on sleeve with Bubble. A promise to a loved one that things will get better in hard times, the lines 'I won't let you fall as low as I've been/ I promise to crawl until I'm back on my feet' sound far more uplifting to the backdrop of banjo from Leo Abrahams (another Eno/Holmes collaborator) and Hopkins's swelling ambience than you might suspect.

Your Own Spell brings up the unlikely scenario of a summer drought in Fife, with Anderson deciding the best option is to let the roses die as Emma Smith plays beautiful violin.

He pays tribute to his daughter in typically tender, sincere and yet self-mocking fashion on Your Young Voice, gently crooning 'It's your young voice that's keeping me holding on/ To my dull life, to my dull life'. Perhaps the humour in these songs is only really apparent if you've seen Anderson play live, with a daft wee smile and a joke never far away, however heartfelt the sentiment.

Anderson has described Diamond Mine as a "soundtrack to a romanticised version of a life lived in a Scottish coastal village" and with Hopkins' assistance, this intimate portrait of his roots manages to use the smallest of gestures to conjure up big emotions.