Patti Austin Nabs GRAMMY Awards Nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album for For Ella 2
Published
January 16, 2024
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Elaine Shock or Meredith Louie
Shock Ink 818-931-0001
Patti Austin Nabs GRAMMY® Awards Nomination
For Best Jazz Vocal Album for For Ella 2
Composer Gordon Goodwin Is Also Nominated
For the Album Track, “April in Paris,”
For Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals
Patti Austin and Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band
To Perform in Los Angeles
At Catalina’s during GRAMMY Week
LOS ANGELES — Sometimes taking a creative chance pays off. When Patti Austin was asked why she wanted to make another Ella Fitzgerald album, the singer/musician waxed poetic with this answer: “I just couldn’t stay out of Ella’s closet of musical gowns. I always equate going through Ms. Ella’s closet of musical gowns with Dracula at the blood bank. It’s an irresistible temptation for me.”
Getting back into that “closet” resulted in Patti Austin featuring Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band’s For Ella 2 (One River) being nominated for Best Jazz Vocal Album at the 66th Annual GRAMMY®Awards, and for the album track, “April in Paris,” nabbing the Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals nomination for Goodwin as well. The GRAMMY® Awards will be held on February 4 at the Cryto.com Arena in Los Angeles and air on television via CBS and stream on Paramount+. Leading into the awards ceremony, Austin will be performing at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood on January 29.
This is Austin’s seventh GRAMMY® nomination, which includes one win for Best Jazz Vocal Album for Avant Gershwin in 2008, and Goodwin’s 25th nomination. For Ella 2, a tribute to the “Queen of Jazz” Ella Fitzgerald, is the follow-up to her 2002 For Ella, which was nominated for Best Jazz Vocal Album at the 45th Annual GRAMMY® Awards.
“Ella’s vast closet filled with haute couture melodies and lyrics called me back like Al Pacino in The Godfather Part III,” explains Austin, a multi-faceted artist who has entertained for decades in a variety of musical styles including jazz, pop, R&B, bebop, and hip-hop. “Now I knew the key to borrowing more drag from the closet was to find a great tailor to fit all of the original gowns to my frame. I lucked out with the brilliant Patrick Williams’ arrangements on For Ella. Now I needed yet another arranger to stitch together my new Ella wardrobe.”
Of her love for Fitzgerald, Austin adds, “I think of this music and Ella Fitzgerald as one of the greatest musical treasures ever to come out of the USA. It is certainly perceived that way by the rest of the world. So, I feel a great responsibility to help keep our musical traditions humming along with a little help from my friends Gordon Goodwin’s The Big Phat Band and Ella and her musical gowns.”
To celebrate their GRAMMY® nominations, Patti Austin and Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band will perform a GRAMMY® Celebration Concert on January 29 at the Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood. Tickets are on sale here. On May 9, SFJAZZ will honor Patti Austin with their Lifetime Achievement Award in San Francisco, California. She will perform three concerts at SFJAZZ on May 11 and 12. For more information on those shows, visit sfjazz.org.
Patti Austin’s keen interest in being a total entertainer likely started when she stepped onto the stage of the world-famous Apollo Theater in Harlem at the age of four at the urging of music legend Dinah Washington. The daughter of jazz trombonist Gordon Austin, Patti was a recording star in her teens, achieving her first chart success in 1969 with “The Family Tree” (a Top 50 R&B single) after a string of 45s that would later become treasured collector’s items among Britain’s Northern soul community.
During the 70s, Austin was the undisputed “Queen” of the New York session scene, her voice was heard behind everyone from Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, James Brown and Joe Cocker to Bette Midler, Roberta Flack, Luther Vandross and Diana Ross and on countless memorable commercial jingles. After a series of much-acclaimed albums for CTI Records, she signed with her godfather Quincy Jones’ Qwest label and began achieving mainstream success on an international level thanks to the GRAMMY®-nominated hit “Baby Come To Me,” her now classic duet with James Ingram and the follow-up duet, the Oscar-nominated “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?” as well as her appearance on albums with Jones on his best-selling Sounds… and Stuff Like That!!, his GRAMMY® winning classic The Dude and later, his From Q With Love Vols. 1& 2.
After more than two decades of touring her take on the classic American Song Book has expanded Patti’s appeal and garnered standing ovations all over the USA and Europe Patti continues her philanthropic work with her mentoring organization, “The Over My Shoulder Foundation” and continues her touring schedule to the delight of fans all around the world.
For more information, visit www.PattiAustin.com.
