Vocalist Patti Littlefield has crisscrossed the country following her muse—touring in theatrical productions, performing as a singer/songwriter in San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square, working in a puppet theater in Chicago, singing with Luther Vandross in LA, hanging with Joni Mitchell, and making demos in New York City for legendary songwriter Doc Pomus. Fate deposited her in Albuquerque, where she has made a name for herself as a vocalist comfortable in an array of genres, from blues to new music. This coming Tuesday at Kosmos, as part of the New Mexico Jazz Workshop’s Jazz Stories 3.0 series, she’ll be paying homage to Carmen McRae, a vocalist close to her heart, with help from Sid Fendley (piano) and Rob “Milo” Jaramillo (bass). Rumor has it that a well-loved reed man by the name of Arlen Asher could also make an appearance.

Patti and I recently had a chat about her connection to McRae, and the upcoming concert.

MS: How did this gig come to happen?

PL: Markus [Gottschlich, executive director of NMJW] texted me and asked me if I wanted to do a jazz story. And then, I thought the perfect person to do it with was Sid Fendley, because we used to work together a lot, and just started working again. It’s been really good. And then, Milo.

MS: Did Markus give you any instructions about what you could do or not do?

PL: No, it was pretty open. I do a lot of Carmen McRae songs anyway. They appeal to me, and she’s in a similar range vocally. I just thought it would be really fun to do some of her tunes. Some of her tunes are very well known, and some of them are not. I like that. What turned me on to her was an album she did in the late ’80s, I think, Carmen Sings Monk. I found that album, and it just knocked me out. I learned a whole bunch of the Monk tunes off of that album and started doing them regularly around town. I was playing with [bassist] David Parlato, and he made some charts for me from that album in my key.

MS: Oh, nice.

PL: Which is really a gift. He’s really generous that way. So that turned me on to her, and so we’ll be doing some Monk tunes for sure, and some songs that are not necessarily associated with her, but come to find out, they really are.

MS: How do you mean?

PL: Well, “Feeling Good.” Everybody associates Nina Simone with that song, but Carmen McRae sang it, too. It was a big hit for her. When she was 17, she met [pianist] Teddy Wilson and his wife, who was a songwriter [Irene Kitchings], and Carmen wrote this song [“Dream of Life”], and they gave it to Billie Holiday to do. Billie Holiday sang this song and kind of mentored Carmen. She learned to play piano at an early age and was playing piano in all kinds of bars. For a while, she was pretty derivative, and then she found her own style.

MS: How was she “derivative”?

PL: When I read up on her, in her early career, she sounded a lot like Billie Holiday. As I got into her, I realized that she was different. She wasn’t Sarah Vaughan, and she wasn’t Ella Fitzgerald or Billie. She was Carmen. In her own right, she became a singer’s singer, a jazz great, but she’s someone you don’t hear in the same breath as Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald.

MS: What was it that attracted you to her and her music?

PL: The Monk album for sure, but her register was similar to mine—we both sing low. A lot of her songs really told a story that I could have told, myself personally, and that was what she was into, too. So I just connected with a lot of her stuff, and her arrangements are pretty interesting. She’s really bluesy, a lot bluesier than the divas, and I like that. She’s just hip. She talks a bit, and so do I. It’s a relationship with the audience that I really got from her. Lyrics are important to her, and they’re important to me.

MS: I have to confess that I’m not very familiar with her.

PL: A lot of people aren’t, and it’s kind of remarkable. I mean she’s not a hotdog, but she’s very earnest, and you can feel the real with her. . . . She’s pretty down-homey. . . . I’m not into the technical overload stuff. That’s why I like Sheila Jordan, too. She’s real. She sings how she feels.

MS: What do you mean by “technical overload stuff”?

PL: Take Ella Fitzgerald, for instance. She was technically brilliant. She was like—and Sarah Vaughan was, too—they were both like horns. They were both technically absolutely impeccable, but I don’t get a whole lot of feeling from them. I do a little more with Sarah Vaughan, but her voice was overwhelming for me. It was really like some kind of brass instrument. It was like a head-over-heart kind of thing. . . . A lot of times when you [sing from your heart], you miss a note here and there, or you’re way ahead of the band or you’re way behind the band, or you come in wrong. It happens a lot with Carmen.

MS: OK.

PL: She was in the pocket in a way that was just Carmen’s way. Some bass players are just in the pocket, and they don’t do it the way other bass players do it. It’s their thing.

MS: Like Milo.

PL: Yeah, like Milo. Exactly. That’s why he’s perfect for this.

MS: So can you tell us a few of the tunes you’ll be doing?

PL: Sure. I’m doing “In Walked Bud,” “Good Morning Heartache,” “I’m Gonna Lock My Heart and Throw Away the Key.” I’ve chosen a lot of tunes, and we’re going to pick from them.

MS: That’s enough to whet the appetite. Have fun next Tuesday. See you there.

Jazz Stories 3.0
Patti Littlefield
The Book of Carmen McRae
Tuesday, August 27, 7:00 p.m. (Doors, 6:00 p.m.)
Kosmos Astropub
1517 5th St. NW, Albuquerque
Tickets: $15 general/$10 NMJW members
Available here

© 2019 Mel Minter