Ottilie Patterson

Anna 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.

Biography

Anna Ottilie Patterson was born 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 had met in Georgia while Joseph was serving in the British army in the Caucasus mountains. They were married in 1919. Ottilie's name is an Anglicised form of the Latvian name "". but was captivated by the blues from the age of ten.

In 1949, Patterson went to study art at Belfast Art College where a fellow student introduced her to the music of Bessie Smith, Jelly Roll Morton and Meade Lux Lewis. 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. After graduating, she worked as an art teacher but found it unexciting.

Patterson joined the Barber band full-time on 28 December 1954,

Between 1955-62, she 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 was a key figure in the success of the band. 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. From approximately 1963 she 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.

In early 1980 she began singing with the Chris Barber Band again in a series of lucrative concerts around London,

Personal life

Soon after Patterson joined the Chris Barber Band in 1954, she became intimately involved with Barber, who was married to his first wife Naida Lane. She became pregnant in 1956 and Barber insisted on an abortion, which was then illegal, and that she perform with the band two days later. She had wanted to have children but her injuries prevented this. The trauma from this event had a profound effect on her. Patterson and Barber were married in 1959 and divorced in 1983.