In praise of the 'First Lady of Song'
Patti Austin, appearing with the Florida Orchestra, celebrates the life and music of Ella Fitzgerald.
By MARTY CLEAR
Published February 23, 2006
She's an accomplished and well-known singer in her own right, with hit singles and Grammy nominations, hundreds of commercial jingles and uncountable sessions as a backing vocalist to her credit.
But for the past couple of years, Patti Austin has been proud to devote much of her career to singing the praises of another singer. This weekend, she'll be in the Tampa Bay area to perform "For Ella," her tribute to jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald, with the Florida Orchestra.
"Ella was a marvelous technician, and she was one of the great scatters of all time," Austin said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "If you're a young singer and you don't know this music, you need to know about it, because Ella is the reason we're all standing here."
Austin put together her tribute to Fitzgerald two years ago, and she has been touring around the world with it ever since. Her 2002 album by the same name was a critics' favorite.
She'll sometimes perform with jazz groups and often in a symphony orchestra's pops concert, as she'll be doing here.
There's a noticeable difference between the audiences in the United States and those in other countries.
"It's mostly older people," she said. "But then when we play in Europe it's everyone from about 17 and up. In Europe, and in Asia too, people just appreciate all types of music."
"For Ella" focuses mostly on music, and Austin performs many of Fitzgerald's best-loved songs, including How High the Moon, Man I Love, Satin Doll, Honeysuckle Rose, Our Love Is Here to Stay and A-Tisket, A-Tasket.
Austin doesn't try to imitate Fitzgerald, who died in 1996, when she re-creates those songs. But she has the experience and the jazz pedigree to lend her own credibility to the music created by the "First Lady of Song."
Austin's father was a jazz trombonist, and her godparents are Quincy Jones and Dinah Washington.
Her hit records include her best-known song, Baby Come to Me (a duet with James Ingram), and she has performed as a backup singer for Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, Bette Midler, Roberta Flack, Luther Vandross, Diana Ross and many others. She also had a highly successful career in the 1970s singing for television commercials.
But "For Ella" isn't all music.
Between songs, Austin offers information about Fitzgerald's life and music.
"She learned to scat from Dizzy Gillespie," Austin said. "He would improvise a passage on the trumpet and she would sing it back, note for note, after only hearing it once. That was the kind of ear she had. She had an amazing instinct for music, and her voice had a wonderful, warm and lovely tone."