Vocalist Patti Littlefield has been a popular mainstay on the Albuquerque–Santa Fe scene for many years, but she’s been out of sight for several years thanks to a variety of personal circumstances that sapped her energy. On November 2, at the Outpost, newly energized, she’ll be fronting a band of local all-stars for the first time in almost five years, and you will want to hear what she’s been cooking up.

Vocalist Patti Littlefield has crisscrossed the country following her vocalizing muse—touring in theatrical productions, busking in San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square, working in a puppet theater in Chicago, singing with Luther Vandross in LA, and making demos in New York City for legendary songwriter Doc Pomus.

“I’ve always been a singer,” she says, and it started with the sound of Dinah Washington on her mother’s radio. “I remember thinking—as a three-year-old or whatever, I was very very young—that I wanted to be a singer, because of her vibrato, the way her voice was.”

Her first gig, at age 6, was a wedding, for which she was paid a brand-new piggybank, but it was the response she got when, at age 16, she sang “Cry Me a River” at Shakee’s Pizza in Oklahoma City that convinced her to pursue a career on the stage.

Here in New Mexico, Littlefield gravitated to jazz and blues. The jazz duo Resonance, with Mark Weaver (tuba and didgeridoo), explored fresh arrangements of tunes you thought you knew well, and Littlefield sang often in a more mainstream vein with the late legendary reedman Arlen Asher (“Darlin’ Arlen” to Littlefield). She could (and can still) also belt the blues out of the park as her alter ego Suga Jones.

These days, though, she focuses primarily on jazz, and after the five-year absence, Littlefield edged her way back into the scene by sitting in at the jams at Kaktus Brewing and at QBar. “I started to go to the QBar because somebody told me that they were allowing singers to sit in,” she says. “Although I didn’t want to go that route—I did it when I first moved here—I decided, ‘Well, I have to get back in it somehow. Nobody knows me.’ ”

At QBar, she met three relative newcomers to Albuquerque pianist John Funkhouser, saxophonist Alex Murzyn, and bassist Terry Burns, who were holding down Friday nights. The first time she sat in with them, she called Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints.” The guys were a little skeptical—it’s not an easy standard from the Great American Songbook—but Littlefield nailed it, and a musical connection was forged.

Murzyn and Burns will join her at the Outpost, along with Paul Gonzales on trumpet, Bert Dalton on piano, and Arnaldo Acosta on drums, and “Footprints” is on the set list. For the concert, Dalton has spruced up the charts on tunes in Littlefield’s repertoire, and she’ll be taking “Maiden Voyage” out on a maiden voyage.

Littlefield is deeply grateful for the opportunity to get back on stage—and with the support of such stellar colleagues. “That’s my church,” she says. Congregants at the Outpost can expect the musical blessings of humor, compassion, and soulfulness to flow generously all night.

Patti Littlefield
with Bert Dalton, Paul Gonzales,
Terry Burns, and Arnaldo Acosta
Weil Hall
Outpost Performance Space
210 Yale Blvd. SE, Albuquerque
Thursday, November 2, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets ($25/$20 members and students) available here

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© 2023 Mel Minter