Patty Waters, a jazz singer, is best known for recording free jazz recordings for the ESP Disk label in the 1960s. Although she has not recorded in many years, her influence is growing beyond jazz. Patty Waters has been praised by fellow female vocalists Diamanda Galas and Yoko Ono, while Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth, said that she was an admirer. Patty Waters was conceived March 11, 1946 in Iowa. In high school, she began singing semi-professionally. After high school, she was a member of the Jerry Gray Hotel Jazz Band. After her family moved to Denver, Colorado, she began to listen to Billie Holiday’s music. She moved to New York in the 1960s on the advice of her friends. She was invited to sing with Bill Evans at Village Vanguard. She performed with Warren Smith’s big band at a Upper East Side supperclub with George Joyner, Richard Wyands, and George Joyner. Albert Ayler met her at a restaurant and introduced her to Bernard Stollman (owner of experimental jazz label ESP Disk). ESP Disk released her most important albums, Sings (1965), and College Tour (1966). The 1965 debut, Sings, was dominated by self-composed solo piano miniatures. This left listeners somewhat unprepared to the second side which featured her 13-minute rendition of “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.” It is her most well-known performance. She builds into hair-raising screams as well as vocal improvisations. A small jazz trio accompanied the recording. Only a few months later, Waters released a recording from Waters college tour. This was in April 1966. College Tour was the title of the release. The recording contained a completely new set of songs. All Waters originals were included, with the exception of “It Never Entered My Mind”, a Rodgers And Hart song. The recording featured dates and backing from pianist Dave Burrell and fellow ESP Disk artist Giuseppi Logan (flute), Ran Blake (piano), and Burton Greene (piano). She spent the 1960s in Europe, and returned to the music industry in the 1970s to raise her son, who was born in Mill Valley, California. Since then, she has performed with Steve Swallow, Art Lande and Elliott Zigmund only at the Berkeley Museum of Modern Art, as well as at the San Francisco Keystone Korner. Except for a brief appearance on an LP 1968 by The Marzette Watts Ensemble, Waters was not recorded again until 1996, when she released Love Songs, a collection of standards with pianist Jessica Williams. Patty has appeared with Jessica at Jazz Store in Carmel. She has also performed live in concert in Palo Alto and San Francisco. She released a compilation of previously unreleased material in 2004 titled You Thrill Me 1962-1979 on Water. A year later, Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe Live in San Francisco 2002 was released. Esp Disk also published a Downbeat Magazine review in which the 60s- and 70s critics voted her in both the “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition” and “Established Song” categories. She would have been first in Downbeat’s 1967 “International Jazz Critics Poll”. In 1970, “Patty Waters College Tour” won 2nd place in Jazz and Pop Magazine’s vocal recording competition. She was praised in several books on jazz, including “Stormy Weather”, “A century of Jazz Women”, and “Music and Politics”. Her recording of “Black Is the Color ” was used in a French film from 1970. External Links: http://www.pattywaters.com User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.
