Ottilie Patterson (31 January 1932 – 20 June 2011) was a Northern Irish blues singer best known for her performances and recordings with the Chris Barber Jazz Band in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She has been called the godmother of British blues and the greatest of all British blues singers, often surprising audiences with her large soulful voice and instinctive feeling for the genre.
Born Anna Ottilie Patterson in Comber, County Down, Northern Ireland, on 31 January 1932, she was the youngest child of four. Her father, Joseph Patterson, was from Northern Ireland, and her mother, Jūlija Jēgers, was from Latvia. They met in southern Russia. Ottilie's name is an Anglicised form of the Latvian name "Ottilja". Both sides of the family were musical, and Ottilie trained as a classical pianist from the age of nine, but never received any formal training as a singer.Aged 11, she wowed American troops at the nearby Clandeboye camp with a rendition of 'Boogie woogie bugle boy'.
After the family moved to Avondale Gardens, Newtownards, County Down, Ottilie was educated locally at the Model Primary School and the Regent House School. She had a talent for drawing, and in 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', Jelly Roll Morton, and Meade Lux Lewis and taught her to play boogie-woogie piano.
In 1951, she began singing with Jimmy Compton's Jazz Band, and in August 1952 she formed the Muskrat Ramblers with Al Watt and Derek Martin. In the summer of 1954, while holidaying in London, Ottilie met Beryl Bryden, who introduced her to the Chris Barber Jazz Band. She joined the Barber band full-time on 28 December 1954, and her first public appearance was at the Royal Festival Hall on January 9, 1955.
Between 1955 and 1962 Ottilie toured extensively with the Chris Barber Jazz Band and issued many recordings: those featuring her on every track include the EPs Blues (1955), That Patterson Girl (1955), That Patterson Girl Volume 2 (1956), Ottilie (1959), and the LP Chris Barber's Blues Book (1961); she also appeared on numerous Chris Barber records. She and Barber were married in 1959.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe & Ottilie
When famous American blues artists toured the UK in this period, it was often the Chris Barber band that would accompany them. Patterson would thus sing with, for example, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. In 1959, when on tour with the band in the USA, Patterson said that the night she sang, with Muddy Waters’ band at Smitty’s Corner, was her proudest moment. After a stunning set, a member of the rapturous African American audience called out: 'Hey lady, you sing real pretty. How come you sing like one of us?'
In 1962, she performed with Barber's band at President Kennedy's Washington Jazz Festival. Touring and performing hundreds of gigs per year however, eventually took its toll on Patterson's health and marriage. In October 1962 had a nervous breakdown and began to suffer throat problems and mental health difficulties and ceased to appear or record regularly with Chris Barber, officially retiring from the band in 1973. During this period she recorded some non-jazz/blues material such as settings of Shakespeare (with Chris Barber) and in 1969 issued a solo LP 3000 years with Ottilie which is now much sought after by collectors. In 1964, she sang the theme tune for the British horror film, Where Has Poor Mickey Gone? starring Warren Mitchell. Patterson and Barber divorced in 1983.
She divorced Chris Barber in 1981 but in early 1983, she and Barber gave a series of concerts around London, which were recorded for the LP, Madame Blues and Doctor Jazz (1984). She sang her last engagement in the spring of 1991. Although another tour was arranged, Ottilie decided to quit as the travelling involved was too exhausting. Erratic health kept her off the scene since that time, living quietly in St Albans. After a fall in 2007, her health declined and she moved in 2008 to the Rozelle Holm Farm Care Home in Ayr, where she spent her final years living in anonymity until her death on 20 June 2011.
Ottilie is buried in Movilla Abbey Cemetery, Newtonards, Northern Ireland in the Patterson family grave. Her gravestone, marked Ottilia Anna Barber, is by the wall adjacent to the car park. In Feb 2012 a plaque marking her birthplace in a terraced house in Comber was unveiled and the same evening a sell-out musical Tribute was performed at the La Mon Hotel, Comber.
(Info
edited from Wikipedia & Dictionary of Irish Biaography)