Five Things You Should Know About Patti Austin

1. She is a musician’s musician.
   Born in Harlem in 1950, she sang at the Apollo Theater at age 4; her godmother Dinah Washington sparked the performance. At age 9, she sang with Quincy Jones, her godfather, on a European tour.
   Her father was jazz trombonist Gordon Austin, whose resume included stints with Fletcher Henderson, Lucky Millinder, and Billy Eckstine. She grew up surrounded by entertainers: “Sammy Davis Jr. taught me some hoofing,” she once said, “and Ray Bolger taught me time steps.”
   The notion of being an all-around entertainer appealed to her. Less appealing were the pitfalls of stardom that she observed: “I watched the people who passed through our lives function and dysfunction all over the place as I was growing up,” she told the Los Angeles Times, “and I think I just decided that the payoff for having that kind of notoriety really wasn’t worth the price.”
2. A hitmaker and a prized collaborator of George Benson, Michael Jackson, Paul Simon and others, her career encompasses jazz, R&B, and pop.
   As a teenager, she recorded a string of R&B singles, charting in 1969 with “The Family Tree.”
   In the 1970s, she was signed to the CTI jazz label, recording a series of albums; her bands included the likes of Randy and Michael Brecker, Eric Gale, Chuck Rainey and Steve Gadd.
   She also became known as the “Queen” of the New York session scene, singing featured backup on recordings by Simon (“50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”), Cat Stevens, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Roberta Flack, Joe Cocker, James Brown and Luther Vandross.
   In 1979, Jackson chose her as his duet partner for “It’s the Falling in Love,” on Off the Wall. In 1980, Benson picked Austin for a duet that updated the bebop classic “Moody’s Mood for Love” on Give Me the Night. In 1983, “Baby, Come to Me,” her duet with James Ingram, reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100; their work has been credited with putting the smooth jazz movement on the map.
3. Whatever she does, she does authoritatively, whether singing songs by George Gershwin, Bob Dylan, or Bob Marley.
   Her influences are myriad. As a teenager in the 1960s, she attended one of Judy Garland’s last performances. It helped shape her approach to a song: "She ripped my heart out. I wanted to interpret a lyric like that, to present who I was at the moment through the lyric."
4. She is honest and opinionated.
   Here’s Austin on her years of singing TV and advertising jingles: “It was an era that I describe as `Let’s sell a bunch of stuff to people that they don’t really need and make them believe that they need it.’ I’m not cynical. That’s just what happens to you after you’ve worked for 15 years in the ad business singing and writing jingles. You just learn what the motivation is — money!”
5. In recent years, she has focused on the Great American Songbook, with projects devoted to George Gershwin and the repertoire of Ella Fitzgerald.
   The New York Times puts Austin on the “short list” of singers who can authoritatively interpret tunes associated with Fitzgerald, one of her heroes. Austin’s latest album of Fitzgerald covers, For Ella 2, was nominated for a GRAMMY in the 2024 Best Jazz Vocal Album category. In 2003, For Ella, her first foray into Fitzgerald territory, was similarly nominated.
   In 2008, her Avant Gershwin album won a GRAMMY for Best Jazz Vocal Album. As an African-American woman, she explained to National Public Radio, her unorthodox approach to Gershwin is a necessity: “We have a `Porgy and Bess Medley’ and I decided that I would do most of the guy's parts because most of the women's songs in Porgy and Bess are about, Lord, don't leave me, oh, my life is horrible. Don't go away, Oh Lord Jesus, don't take him away. So, it's like, we do that enough in real life. I figured I wanted to play the villain. And so Sportin' Life has all these great villainous, creepy, wonderful lyrics. And so I decided that was the character I wanted to portray more than the suffering woman. So I do `Ain't Necessarily So.’“

Patti Austin will be honored at SFJAZZ Gala 2024 on May 9 with performers including Terence Blanchard, Arthel Neville, Ledisi, PJ Morton, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Siedah Garrett, Jane Monheit, Dumpstaphunk, SFJAZZ Collective, and Kev Choice. Tickets and more information available here. The Gala concert will be broadcast live at sfjazz.org. Watch here. 
Austin will perform concerts at SFJAZZ on May 11 and 12. Tickets and more information available here.

A staff writer at SFJAZZ, Richard Scheinin is a lifelong journalist. He was the San Jose Mercury News' classical music and jazz critic for more than a decade and has profiled scores of public figures, from Ike Turner to Tony La Russa and the Dalai Lama.