singer
Personal Information
Born on August 10, 1948, in New York, New York; daughter of Gordon and Edna Austin.
Education: attended high school.
Career
Vocalist. Made debut appearance at age four with vocalist Dinah Washington, her godmother; traveled to Europe at age nine with bandleader Quincy Jones; toured with Harry Belafonte; became leading session and advertising-jingle vocalist, early 1970s; recorded debut LP, End of a Rainbow, 1976; recorded four albums for CTI label, late 1970s and early 1980s; signed with Qwest label, 1981; recorded smash Every Home Should Have One, 1981 (included single "Baby Come to Me," a duet with James Ingram); released four albums on Qwest, 1980s; signed with GRP label, 1990; signed with Concord Jazz label, 1998; signed with Intersound label, 1999.
Life's Work
A sophisticated vocalist whose style was steeped in jazz, Patti Austin enjoyed a period of stardom during the heyday of smooth, expertly produced rhythm-and blues music in the 1980s. Both before and after her period in the limelight, Austin was tirelessly active as a musician, challenging herself and her listeners with a series of acclaimed jazz albums on one hand, and achieving vocal ubiquity as a successful singer of television commercial jingles on the other. Austin has been, in short, a professional's professional.
She was born in New York on August 10, 1948, and grew up in the lap of show business. At the tender age of four she made her performing debut, singing a song called "Teach Me Tonight" on the stage of Harlem's famed Apollo Theater during an appearance by vocalist Dinah Washington, who was also Austin's godmother. Something of a child star, she appeared on Sammy Davis, Jr.'s television variety show, worked on stage with such stars as Ray Bolger of The Wizard of Oz, and when she was nine she went to Europe with a group led by bandleader Quincy Jones, who would become an immensely influential figure both on Austin's own career and on the world of black popular music generally.
Toured with Harry Belafonte
Austin's first major series of appearances as a mature singer came when she was 16, when she went on tour with pop vocalist Harry Belafonte, then near the peak of his fame. This tour led to a fresh round of television appearances and to a three-year stint as a lounge singer for various international locations of the posh Intercontinental hotel chain. With this wealth of professional experience under her belt before she could even vote, it was not difficult for Austin to decide on a musical career. Recording executives and producers valued the young singer's know-how, and session-work opportunities began to flow her way.
"The first session I did was for James Brown's hit, 'It's a Man's World,' and when I got a nice juicy check from that," Austin recalled in a biographical sketch released by the Concord Jazz label. "I said, 'Hey let me do some more of this stuff.'" Austin became one of pop music's leading session musicians in the early 1970s, backing both r&b and pop vocalists such as Paul Simon, Roberta Flack, George Benson, and Cat Stevens. With her vocals included on the soundtracks of hundreds of television commercials, Austin became one of America's most heard but least known singers.
That began to change when Austin was signed to the jazz-oriented label CTI in 1976, thanks to contacts with industry veteran Creed Taylor and Belafonte's former musical director Bill Eaton. The four albums Austin recorded for CTI helped to raise her profile in the industry and were widely appreciated by the architects of the "Quiet Storm" turn that black popular music took in the early 1980s. One of the albums, Havana Candy, was reissued in 1997 and favorably reviewed by Down Beat. The magazine pointed to "Austin's appreciation of the jazz legacy as well as her love of various pop styles.
Signed by Quincy Jones
The dawn of the 1980s brought Austin some especially high-profile session assignments: she sang on Gaucho, the rock group Steely Dan's complex exploration of the possibilities of soft rock, and, on a lighter note, appeared on the Blues Brothers album. She also enjoyed a hit single with "Razzmatazz" on Quincy Jones's Grammy-winning 1980 LP The Dude, and in 1981 was signed to Jones's Qwest label. That year, Austin's Qwest debut album, Every Home Should Have One, finally brought her stardom thanks to her chart-topping duet with James Ingram, "Baby Come to Me." The album was produced by Jones and Rod Temperton, the same team that would soon be responsible for Michael Jackson's epochal Off the Wall and Thriller albums.
"Baby Come to Me" was a perfect showcase for Austin's vocals, which had taken on an exquisite silky quality that blended nicely with the smooth instrumental textures of the period. The song drew pop as well as urban listeners in droves, and was adopted as the theme song of the television soap opera General Hospital. Austin and Ingram followed it up in 1983 with another successful duet, "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?"; part of the soundtrack of the film Best Friends, the song was nominated for an Oscar, and Austin and Ingram performed it on the Academy Awards television broadcast.
Austin's next Qwest album, Patti Austin, was released in 1984, but its assemblage of six separate producers failed to bring together a cohesive whole, and Rolling Stone complained that "except on the ballads, Austin's powerful and technically proficient voice lacks distinction." Two more albums for Qwest failed to reach the chart levels of Every Home Should Have One, and Austin's career took a dip. She was also shaken by a house fire that destroyed nearly everything she owned and came within seconds of killing her elderly parents.
Strongly Affected by Fire
The accident made Austin reexamine her priorities in life. Recalling her life atop the charts in the early 1980s in an interview with Essence, Austin said, My main concerns were looking good, the parties I would attend " and the size of the limousine that would take me to them." Her star-studded circle of associates suddenly seemed less attractive: "Yes, they were the 'happening' people--on the charts and in the news--but they were miserable in their persistent bed-hoppings. They were all doing too many drugs and too much booze. They all had lots of stuff but not much soul or heart." Austin scaled back, built a new home in upstate New York, and reconnected with some of her former jazz associates.
Austin recorded a series of albums for the GRP label in the 1990s. One of them, Love Is Gonna Getcha, reunited her with Havana Candy producer and keyboardist Dave Grusin, and included the hit "Through the Test of Time." Austin enjoyed a moderate radio presence through the decade, kept up a steady stream of television appearances, and reveled in praise from such luminaries as opera star Kathleen Battle. In 1998 she recorded the In & Out of Love album for the Concord Jazz label, and the following year moved to Intersound for Street of Dreams, a disc that allowed her to showcase her interpretations of some of her own favorite compositions. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of the music-encyclopedia website allmusic.com called the album "a fine latter-day effort from a fine singer."
Awards
Academy Award nomination, with James Ingram, for "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?," 1983.
Works
Selected discography
- End of a Rainbow, CTI, 1976.
- Havana Candy, CTI, 1977.
- Live at the Bottom Line, Epic, 1979.
- Body Language, CTI, 1980.
- Every Home Should Have One, Qwest, 1981.
- In My Life, CTI, 1983.
- Patti Austin, Qwest, 1984.
- Gettin' Away with Murder, Qwest, 1985.
- The Real Me, Qwest, 1988.
- Love Is Gonna Getcha, GRP, 1990.
- Carry On, GRP, 1991.
- Live, GRP, 1992.
- That Secret Place, GRP, 1994.
- In and Out of Love, Concord Jazz, 1998.
- Street of Dreams, Intersound, 1999.
Further Reading
Books
- Clarke, Donald, ed., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Viking, 1989.
- Graff, Gary, Josh Freedom du Lac, and Jim McFarlin, MusicHound R&B: The Essential Album Guide, Visible Ink, 1998.
- Larkin, Colin, ed., The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Muze UK, 1998.
Periodicals- Billboard, September 26, 1998, p. 25.
- Down Beat, December 1997, p. 94.
- Essence, March 1993, p. 67.
- People, May 7, 1984, p. 30; May 14, 1990, p. 26.
- Rolling Stone, March 29, 1984, p. 74.
Online- www.aent.com/concord/bios/austinbio2.html.
- www.allmusic.com.
— James M. Manheim
