Patti Austin: Standing the test of time

Jazz singer Patti Austin. Photo / Supplied

She's worked for her godfather Quincy Jones, and sang with Michael Jackson and Luther Vandross. Now Patti Austin's colourful career is bringing her here. She talks to Graham Reid.

For a Grammy-winning singer who has worked with the best male voices of the past few decades - Michael Jackson, Johnny Mathis, George Benson and Luther Vandross among them - Patti Austin seems remarkably down to earth.

She laughs frequently, sounds a world removed from her diva-like peers, makes references to Snoop Dogg and Rod Stewart, and admits her career - now more than five decades long and which has taken her from the dance charts with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to Carnegie Hall - has been rewarding for her. Less so for the music industry which struggles to pigeonhole her.

After seriously damaging the R&B dance charts she stepped sideways with the album The Real Me in 1988 which eased her into a more mature market, necessary because she was in her late 30s and that was where she was living musically. And she'd had enough of doing what record companies wanted.

"At that point I was introducing a genre I had in my back pocket, along with what I call my classical jazz chops which nobody really knew about."

She went to Europe and sang jazz ("no one in America wanted to hear that from me at that point in my career") and reinvented herself. By the time her godfather Quincy Jones invited her in for sessions on Michael Jackson's Off the Wall album (she sings on It's the Falling in Love) she had R&B, dance, ballads and jazz standards in her repertoire.

Patti Austin could do it all, and is still doing it. These days she sings the songbooks of Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles and the Gershwins, loves the touring life ("audiences have different personalities and it's great fun going out there, throwing that pasta to the ceiling and seeing if it sticks") and can reflect on a career that dates back to an RCA Records contract when she was 5.

Her godmother Dinah Washington was instrumental in getting that, but she was too young to be legally employed "so I laid low for six months and came back and lied about my age". She appeared on New York and national television talent shows, and learned her craft while living a normal home life on Long Island at her parents' insistence.

"It was suggested to my parents we move into the city and I go to a Professional Children's School and they said, 'Absolutely not, this kid is going to public school and she's gonna do her chores at home'. I could sing on Saturday nights and during summer holidays though. Their idea was, 'She'll be a regular kid ... or we'll kill her'."

Austin says that grounding, good advice from those godparents, and a willingness to explore personally rewarding new styles has kept her on track in an industry which eats its young.

"Had I not had that kind of background I would probably be just as crazy as everyone else in the business. At this point I'm only half as crazy."

She laughs about the Jam-Lewis team trying to tell her the way to sing ("If I didn't know I was in trouble. I'd been doing it for 30 years") and how so many artists are now getting into jazz standards and classic songs.

"It's kinda become the resting place for older artists. It's like, 'Okay Rod Stewart, it's time for you to sing the Great American Songbook'. In my Ella Fitzgerald show I do a bit where I talk about Snoop Dogg doing his comeback and I rap some Gershwin. Eventually he's going to have to go there."

But though she is comfortably in that world, she doesn't just rest there. She's getting into more production work ("I've watched so many people do it I think I have a good handle on it"), outside music she has been mentored in her private passion of interior design, and laughs again about finally winning a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2008 for her Avant Gershwin record - after eight previous nominations.

"I always felt like, 'It'd be nice but who cares?' And then I won and became crazy like Kanye West. 'Yay, I won!'. That lasted about a day."

Then it was back to work. So, after this remarkable career, is there any unrealised ambition for 61-year-old Patti Austin?

"Oh, about 20... and I'm workin' on 10 of them already."

Lowdown

Who: Jazz and R&B singer Patti Austin
Where: Tauranga Jazz Festival, April 8; Bruce Mason Centre, Takapuna, April 9; Wellington Town Hall, April 11
Trivia: Patti Austin first sang on stage at age 5, had a career as a jingle singer and session musician in the 60s, had top 20 hits on the US dance, top 100, R&B and adult contemporary charts in 80s and today is best known as a jazz singer

-TimeOut