Patty Waters

Biography

American free-jazz vocalist (1946–2024) whose reputation rests on two #ESP-Disk# albums of 1966, 'Patty Waters Sings' and 'College Tour'. Recommended to the label by *Albert Ayler*, Waters combined fragile, *Billie Holiday*-inflected ballad singing and her own piano miniatures with episodes of extreme extended vocal technique — moans, wails and screams — most famously in her side-long reading of 'Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair'. After three decades away from recording she resumed performing in the 1990s, leaving late live albums before her death in 2024.