How far, how deep, but also how dark when staying pure can emotions go ?
May be Patty Waters reached the edge. "May be every woman experienced this somehow or somewhere" my girlfriend said finding it unpleasant to go back that far, into that deep darkness. May be Patty Waters hasn't got a powerful voice for singing you back into the balance of life, something like Billie Holiday or other before her did. But she went down to dig deep and let it all come out from there.
I once made a radio program with the saddest songs, but at that time I didn't hear her yet. In "black is the color of my true love's hair" she repeats at some point the word black over and over again. Her vocal capacities lay not in the uplifting power, but in a technical scill too bring you down into some experience without restriction.
More information, reviewing you can find at the following link :
In her latest product she seems to have lost inner strength of her voice even more. Less dark emotions this time, at first hearing of the MP3 tracks the songs are possibly somewhat beautifull but with less digging into emotions. This recent product "Love Songs" you can find at http://www.canuck.com/jazz/Waters.html and
In 2004 a new release of unreleased tracks has been published, called "You Thrill Me".
Notes from the ESP-reissue of "Patty Waters sings":
"Patty Waters (born March 40's ; exact place and date unknown).
She started as a crooner, singing semi-professional in high school. Later on she became a singer with the Jerry Gray Hotel Jazz Band. Her family moved to Denver, and there she started listening to Billie Holliday, Nancy Wilson and Anita O'Day.
During her stay in Los Angeles, she began extensive voice training. Her singing drew attention by people such as Herbie Hancock and especially Miles Davis. Davis helped her annotate her early compositions*, and Patty still treasures his handwritten score to her own "Moon, don't come up tonight".
The early sixties saw her arriving in New York, where she made guest appearances with Bill Evans, Charles Mingus and Jaki Byard, among many others. After saxophone player Albert Ayler heard her singing in a club, he brought her to his record label, ESP-Disk.
She accompanied herself on piano for side one of her first record, and the Burton Greene Trio accompanied her on the second side. Burton Greene had finished his ESP-Disk just one day before. In Downbeat Burton Green recalls : "I did "Black is the color" with Patty Waters. People still get their blood curled behind that. Patty was like a newspaper. That record put my name on the map ; they knew who I was when I got to Europe."
In 1967, in the Downbeat International Critic's Poll, Patty Waters missed n°1 by one vote, tying Betty Carter for the second spot, also showing in the Talent deserving of wider recognition.
Patty did a second ESP-Disk in 1966,and in 1968 she recorded as a member of the Marzette Watts Ensemble. By the end of the 60's she decided to escape the increasing violence of New York, and resettled in Northern California, where she raised her son (by the late famed drummer Clifford Jarvis). There she earned several college degrees in art, while her son became a championship surfer.
In the music world she appeared only sporadically, working with musicians like Steve Swallow and Art Lande.
Suddenly in 1996, she released a jazz album with pianist Jessica Williams, called 'Love Songs'. According to Patty Waters, it's a no rehearsal one take album. This CD with full of standards was well received, but Patty Waters remained the somewhat obscure legend of the two ESP Disks she made in the sixties.
It's hard to put Patty Water's influence on vocal music in perspective, as she didn't record a large body of work like Billie Holliday or even Yoko Ono, who must have heard Patty's live work in New York in the early 60's. Besides, contempory female singers who did carry on recording, like Jeanne Lee only received a relatively small following of connoisseurs. Jazz audiences and critics suffered under a general loss of appreciation for singers in the last thirty years, and not only in the more progressive regions of jazz.
Still in 1966 at the ime Patty Waters album was release, Downbeat recognised her stature as an iconoclast : "Waters seems interested in eliminating some traditional restrictions to vocal performances for the same reason that Ornette Coleman has done away with certain devices for the instrumentalist. During the process, she is opening the way for exciting possibilities".
In 1998, Patty Waters lived on the memories of strong individualists. Singer Diamanda Galas showed her appreciation in an intensive BBC interview and continued : "She pushes, I think, even further than an instrumentalist can push it, because she's got more flexibility with her voice, and she's the only singer I know who was doing that."
The weight of Water's influence can be approximated by Galas'stating that she only listened to Patty Waters twice : "That's all it took for some grain of inextricable influence".
Fans of Patty Waters don't necessarily come out of the jazz world. Rock group Teenage Fanclub covered her "Moon, don't come up tonight" and one of their songs is called "Patty Waters". Patti Smith is a known admirer, and Thurton Moore of Sonic Youth once called Patty one of his 'heroes'.
Recently Patty took up doing live music again, and she appeared at the 1999 Montery Jazz Festival for two shows, which were received by cheering fans and standing ovations."
Remco Takken, jazz critic for 'De Volkskrant' (with thanks to Will Porter).
Her second album is less emotional, more technical, as if it always came from a technical skill and not from emotional foundation.
I received a request lately from Patty Waters to publish the following :
*AN URGENT NOTE FROM A HAUNTED WATERS.
I'm Writing about an inaccurate statement in the new liner notes of "Patty Waters Sings" which says Miles handwrote a score of "Moon,don't come up tonight" for me. I want to apologize, for I would never tell anyone this, & to let people know that's only true he did correct some notation on it which I will always treasure. I'm very concerned about my integrity. It's all I have,really. My life in music has had tragedy, such as no money received for publishing & royalities, but having an unexpected real joy in being so well appreciated by critics. My gratitude goes to all the critics & writers.
Love & music,
Patty Waters
Webpage in cooperation with Patty Waters :
Contact Patty Waters at PattyWatersSings@hotmail.com
