Patty Waters

All Music Guide:

Largely overlooked during her brief recording career in the mid-'60s, Patty Waters has come to be appreciated as a vocal innovator in not just jazz, but contemporary music as a whole. Much of her repertoire was given over to hushed piano solo ballads, in which her voice could fade to a whisper that was barely audible. What really attracted attention were her avant-garde outings, in which she stretched and mutated her voice with contorted shrieks and wails that could be downright blood-curdling. Producing an unsettling effect that is definitely not for everybody, Waters has to be acknowledged as a vocalist who has tested the limits of what the human voice is capable of, in a similar manner as fellow pioneers Joan LaBarbara and Yoko Ono.

Waters' early influences were the fairly conventional ones of Billie Holiday, Nancy Wilson, and Anita O'Day. After moving to New York in the early '60s, she was heard in a nightclub by Albert Ayler, who recommended her to the renowned experimental jazz label ESP. The first side of her 1965 debut (Sings) was given over entirely to self-composed solo piano miniatures, leaving listeners somewhat unprepared for the second side, which consisted solely of her 13-minute interpretation of "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair." Building into hair-raising screams and vocal improvisations, augmented by a small, free jazz combo, it remains the performance for which she is most noted.

Waters, sadly, only recorded one more album, the live College Tour, just a few months later. A more determinedly avant-garde effort than her debut, it featured entirely different (and mostly self-composed) songs than her debut. Waters often eschewed words altogether for wordless moan-scats and wails, and opted for a fuller band backing, including appearances by pianists Ran Blake and Burton Greene. Aside from a subsequent appearance as a member of the Marzette Watts Ensemble on a 1968 LP, nothing else was heard from Waters on record until 1996. Her mystique was enhanced over the decades by the rarity of her two ESP discs, which have recently been reissued on CD in Germany.

Wikipedia:

Patty Waters (born March 11, 1946) is a jazz vocalist, best known for her free jazz recordings in the 1960s for the ESP-Disk label. Although she has rarely recorded since then, she is more and more recognized as a vocal innovator whose influence extends beyond jazz.

Waters was born in Iowa. She started singing semi-professionally in high school. After school she sang for the Jerry Gray Hotel Jazz Band. Her family moved to Denver where she started listening to Billie Holiday, 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 heard her in a dining club and introduced her to Bernard Stollman, the owner of the experimental jazz label ESP-Disk. Her most influential albums, Sings (1965) and College Tour (1966) were made for this label.

Her best known recording is a nearly 14 minute version of the traditional song "Black is the colour of my true love's hair" (from Sings), which is rendered in an intense, haunting, anguished wail.

In the late 1960s, she spent some time in Europe and then left the music world to bring up 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 at two music festivals in May 2003: Visions Festival in New York and Le Weekend in Stirling.

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 (as The Complete ESP-Disk Recordings) in 2006.

Influence

Diamanda Galás and Patti Smith have both named Patty Waters as an influence.

Rock group Telstar Ponies covered her song "Moon, don't come up tonight" and one of their songs is called "Patty Waters".

Thurston Moore of the band Sonic Youth is also an admirer.