Patty Waters (born March 11, 1946) is a jazz vocalist best known for her

free jazz Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during ...

recordings in the 1960s for the

ESP-Disk ESP-Disk is a New York-based record company and label founded in 1963 by lawyer Bernard Stollman. History Though it originally existed to release Esperanto-based music, beginning with its second release (Albert Ayler's ''Spiritual Unity''), ESP b ...

label.

Career

Waters was born in Iowa and started singing semi-professionally in high school. After school, she sang for the Jerry Gray Hotel Jazz Band. Her family moved to Denver and she started listening to

Billie Holiday Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop si ...

, whose life and singing had a profound influence on her. In the early 1960s she followed the recommendation of friends to move to New York.

Albert Ayler Albert Ayler (; July 13, 1936 – November 25, 1970) was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer. After early experience playing R&B and bebop, Ayler began recording music during the free jazz era of the 1960s. Howev ...

heard her in a dining club and introduced her to

Bernard Stollman Bernard Stollman (July 19, 1929 – April 19, 2015) was an American lawyer and the founder of the ESP-Disk record label. Biography He was born to a Jewish family in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and grew up in Plattsburgh, upstate New York, where ...

, the owner of the experimental jazz label

. Her most influential albums, ''Sings'' (1965) and ''College Tour'' (1966) were made for this label. Her best known recording is a nearly fourteen minute version of the traditional song " Black Is the Colour (Of My True Love's Hair)" (from ''Sings''), which is rendered in a haunting, anguished wail. In the late 1960s, she spent time in Europe and then left the music world to raise her son (born in 1969) in California. Almost 30 years later she recorded the album ''Love Songs'' in 1996 and began performing in public again. This included reunion concerts with pianist

Burton Greene Burton Greene (June 14, 1937 – June 28, 2021) was an American free jazz pianist born in Chicago, Illinois, though most known for his work in New York City. He explored multiple genres, including avant-garde jazz and the Klezmer medium. Biogra ...

at two music festivals in May 2003: Visions Festival in New York and Le Weekend in

Stirling Stirling (; sco, Stirlin; gd, Sruighlea ) is a city in central Scotland, northeast of Glasgow and north-west of Edinburgh. The market town, surrounded by rich farmland, grew up connecting the royal citadel, the medieval old town with its me ...

. In 2004 she released ''You Thrill Me: A Musical Odyssey,'' a collection of rare and unissued recordings from the years 1962–1979. ESP-Disk reissued ''Sings'' and ''College Tour'' on a single CD (''The Complete ESP-Disk Recordings'') in 2006. She returned in 2019 with the album "Live" ( Blank Forms) recorded at the First Unitarian Congregational Church in Brooklyn. The album was followed in 2020 by another live recording entitled "An Evening In Houston" (Clean Feed). On June 5, 2020 she released an unissued 1970 LP titled "Plays" via her own label.

Discography

* ''Sings'' (ESP-Disk, 1965) * ''College Tour'' (ESP-Disk, 1966) * ''Love Songs'' (Jazz Focus, 1996) * ''You Thrill Me: A Musical Odyssey 1962–1979'' (Water, 2004) * ''Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe: Live in San Francisco 2002'' (DBK Works, 2005) * ''The Complete ESP-Disk Recordings'' (ESP-Disk, 2006) * ''6.12.17'' (Otoroku, 2018) * ''Live'' (Blank Forms Editions, 2019) * ''An Evening In Houston'' (Clean Feed, 2020) * ''Plays'' (Waters Sings, 2020)

References

External links

*
What Is the Color When Black is Burned? A Patty Waters Appreciation
at Perfect Sound Forever {{DEFAULTSORT:Waters, Patty 1946 births Living people American women jazz singers American jazz singers Avant-garde jazz musicians ESP-Disk artists 21st-century American women