PATTI AUSTIN
July 21, 2017 - 8:30 pm

Grammy winner Patti Austin crosses all musical genres, has made 17 solo albums, and has performed her award-nominated hit songs on the Grammys and the Oscars. As a performer, songwriter and vocalist she has had a star-studded career that began at the age of four, making her one of the most beloved artists over the world and a mainstay on the Billboard Jazz Albums charts.

BIOGRAPHY

By the late 1960s Austin was a prolific session musician and commercial jingle singer. By the 1980s she was signed to Quincy Jones’s Qwest Records and she began having her own hits. She charted twenty R&B songs between 1969 and 1991 and had success on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart, where she hit number one in 1981 with “Do You Love Me?” / “The Genie.” The album containing that hit, Every Home Should Have One, also produced her biggest mainstream hit. “Baby, Come To Me,” a duet with James Ingram.
Next, Austin released her third album in three years entitled Gettin’ Away With Murder. That same year, Austin released The Real Me, a collection of standards that garnered for her the first of several Top 10 showings on the Jazz Albums chart. The Real Me was produced by David Pack (who was been a part of the Pop group Ambrosia) and Austin served as a co-producer and as Executive Producer on the project.
During this period Austin collaborated with some household names like Michael Jackson (“It’s the Falling in Love”), George Benson (“Moody’s Mood for Love” and “Keep Your Dreams Alive”), and Luther Vandross (“I’m Gonna Miss You In The Morning”). Earlier she’d also recorded featured duets with Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons on “Our Day Will Come” and “Swearin’ To God”.

By 2008, fifty-three years after getting her first record contract, Patti Austin was awarded her first Grammy Award, winning Best Jazz Vocal Album for Avant Gershwin at the 50th annual Grammy Awards. The award came for her ninth nomination in that category.
Three years later in 2011 Austin released a mostly covers album project titled Sound Advice which contained re-works of Bob Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody”, Brenda Russell’s “A Little Bit Of Love”, a lesser known Jacksons tune, “Give It Up,” her tribute to late friend / collaborator Michael Jackson and a cover of Bill Withers, “Lean On Me” which she first sang at a milestone birthday for her Godfather Quincy Jones.

Now celebrating an incredible sixth decade in the music industry she has recently released Ella: Now & Then, her second recorded tribute to the legendary Ella Fitzgerald, following her 2002 Grammy-nominated best-selling album, For Ella. Featuring some of the pioneering vocalist’s classic material, Ella: Now & Then finds Grammy-winner Austin lending her finely-honed craft to treasures from the vast Fitzgerald legacy including songs like “Mack the Knife,” “April in Paris,” “Sing Me A Swing Song” and “Lullaby Of birdland”

Today Austin says “I’m in an interesting place because I’m 66, I’m not a teenager and yet, for some reason, I seem to have an appeal with younger audiences and now we are creating different platforms to help establish my brand, with a weekly radio show, my mentoring organization (Over My Shoulder) and my new Ella record.”

Unquestionably, a 21st century renaissance woman, Patti Austin continues to create milestones in an incredible career; a further testament to her status as a member of that rare breed: a true artist whose creativity knows no limits.