Patti Austin

pop rock

Patti Austin is an American R&B, pop and jazz singer, born August 10, 1950, in Harlem and raised in Bay Shore on Long Island. Her father was a jazz trombonist, and Quincy Jones and Dinah Washington stood as her godparents; she sang at the Apollo Theater at the age of four and spent her teens working as a session and jingle vocalist. Her 1969 single Family Tree was an R&B hit, and she made her album debut for CTI Records in 1976, while continuing to sing behind other artists, including on a Paul Simon number one and on records by Billy Joel, Michael Jackson and George Benson. Jones signed her to his Qwest label and produced Every Home Should Have One in 1981. Its Rod Temperton song Baby, Come to Me, a duet with James Ingram, stalled at number 73 when first issued in April 1982, but ABC's General Hospital adopted it as a love theme, demand from viewers prompted a re-release that October, and it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on February 19, 1983, holding the top spot for two weeks and later reaching number 11 in Britain. Austin and Ingram also recorded How Do You Keep the Music Playing? for the film Best Friends, which was nominated for an Academy Award and which the pair performed on the Oscars broadcast. She turned toward standards with The Real Me on Qwest in 1988, drawing on Ellington, Gershwin and Porter, and later recorded for GRP. Of seven Grammy nominations she has won once, for Avant Gershwin, the 2007 album made with Germany's WDR Big Band. She holds an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music and appeared in the Oscar-winning 2013 documentary 20 Feet from Stardom. She continues to perform, including club dates such as City Winery in St. Louis.

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