THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
987) Ottilie Patterson — “Spring Song”
Ottilie, “the world’s only Irish blues singer”, wrote this totally unexpected and magical ’69 B-side and album track — “jazzy, laid-back pop that flirted carelessly with psychedelia in the genre’s dying days” and was produced by Giorgio Gomelsky. (liner notes to the CD comp Piccadilly Sunshine: A Compendium of Rare Pop Curios from the British Psychedelic Era, Volumes 1-10)
As to Ottilie, Garth Cartwright writes that:
County Down-born Patterson surely is the finest blues vocalist hailing from these damp isles. She was also an excellent jazz and folk singer, and her mellifluous voice can even be heard singing Shakespeare sonnets and baroque late-60s psychedelia. She blazed a trail that everyone from Dusty Springfield to Amy Winehouse has since followed; the Rolling Stones, Patterson said, “didn’t come out of a vacuum – we paved the way”.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/19/ottilie-patterson-the-forgotten-first-lady-of-british-blues
As to the album, 3000 Years with Ottilie, she “explored outside of her more familiar jazz and blues surroundings in the late 1960’s with Giorgio Gomelsky’s Marmalade label.” (liner notes to Piccadilly Sunshine: A Compendium of Rare Pop Curios from the British Psychedelic Era, Volumes 1-10) and “drew on her eclectic musical and literary interests to record . . . an ambitious solo album with strong folk and psychedelic influences, writing several of its fourteen tracks, including songs about her unhappiness”. (James Quinn, https://www.dib.ie/biography/patterson-ottilie-anna-a9903) Cartwright adds that:
[Ottilie] finally recorded without [Chris] Barber and band for the first time, singing her own songs alongside poems and sonnets. Richard Hill orchestrates proceedings and the album has a beautifully late-60s autumnal quality. Its label Marmalade folded in 1970 and a 1971 reissue on Polydor (as Spring Song) achieved little.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/19/ottilie-patterson-the-forgotten-first-lady-of-british-blues
James Quinn gives some background:
[I]n 1949 won a scholarship to study art at Belfast Municipal College of Technology, where a fellow student, Derek Martin, introduced her to Bessie Smith, ‘Empress of the Blues’, and taught her to play boogie-woogie piano. By 1951 she was singing occasionally with Jimmy Compton’s jazz band in Belfast, but, seeking a more bluesy musical outlet, formed The Muskrat Ramblers with Martin and Al Watt in August 1952. After graduating from college, she became an art teacher . . . . Visiting London in summer 1954, she secured an audition with the up-and-coming Chris Barber jazz band, who were immediately impressed by her singing. . . . [S]he joined the band [and] first performed . . . at the Royal Festival Hall on 9 January 1955 and received rave reviews from several newspapers . . . . Audiences and critics were astonished that this small, demure-looking white woman could sing the blues with such power and authenticity. For the next seven years she toured extensively with the Barber band . . . . She . . . became one of the best-known female singers of the day and a key figure in the band’s success. [In] 1959 she and Chris Barber were married in London. When American blues singers such as Big Bill Broonzy, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson toured Britain from the late 1950s with the Barber band, Ottilie performed alongside them and held her own. Visiting artists were impressed – sometimes even astounded – by her singing, and offered encouragement and praise. Ottilie was often compared to Bessie Smith (even by Louis Armstrong) . . . . After a US hit with Sidney Bechet’s ‘Petite fleur’ in 1959, the Barber band toured America regularly. The American press latched onto the novelty of a white Irishwoman singing the blues, the San Francisco Examiner describing her as ‘the world’s only Irish blues singer’. . . . During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ottilie performed regularly on British radio and television. . . . The Barber band played up to 200 dates a year and Ottilie increasingly found their tour schedules gruelling. . . . [A]s the only woman in the band, [she] often felt excluded and ill at ease. Her chatty and gregarious nature masked a troubled and vulnerable personality that was highly sensitive to criticism and prone to anxiety and depression. She both dreaded and loved live performance . . . . She suffered serious bouts of exhaustion . . . and in October 1962 had a nervous breakdown, forcing her to rest for several months. Around this time she began to suffer throat problems, and was sometimes unable to speak. . . . . Taking the opportunity to experiment with her own musical projects, in 1964 she set to jazz and recorded Shakespearean verse . . . . When her health permitted, Ottilie performed occasionally with the Barber band . . . . In 1973 she was diagnosed as suffering from a mild form of epilepsy and retired.
https://www.dib.ie/biography/patterson-ottilie-anna-a9903
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New to me. but then again almost all your posts are but I feel like I should have known about her.
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