![]() But when she enrolled at Belfast College of Technology to study art in 1949, she heard 78s by Jelly Roll Morton, Meade Lux Lewis and, most importantly, Bessie Smith. Born in 1932 to a British father and a Latvian mother, Patterson received classical piano training. It was never on the cards that Anna Ottilie Patterson would rise to international prominence singing jazz and blues. Ottilie Patterson (left) and Sister Rosetta Tharpe rehearsing at the Marquee Club, London in 1960. ![]() Thankfully, 2023 looks to be the year that she finally receives her due, with a new BBC documentary, My Name Is Ottilie, and a Record Store Day reissue of her 1969 album 3000 Years With Ottilie leading the way. Yet Patterson has been almost entirely forgotten, an unheralded pioneer. Her best recordings are exquisite: moody blues with swagger. 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”. 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. ![]() Who?Ĭounty Down-born Patterson surely is the finest blues vocalist hailing from these damp isles. ![]() T he late British jazz singer George Melly used to ask his audiences: “Who is the greatest blues vocalist Britain has ever produced?” He’d tease them, asking, “Mick Jagger? No! Steve Winwood? No! Van Morrison? No!”, before suggesting the greatest of all time was Ottilie Patterson. ![]()
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