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Patty Waters - YOU THRILL ME (Water)


JSngry

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My god, does singing get any more honest than this?

A collection of material from Waters' own personal collection, this set includes a 1964 Jax Beer jingle (w/Joe Newman!), a 1963 demo session for Columbia (produced by Tom Wilson, whose between-take chatter is priceless, a 1960 cut recirded in San Diego (when Waters was still singing, quite well, too, in a "traditional" "torch song" style, and, the real news, pieces recorded in 1970, 1971, 1972, and 1979, years which Waters was allegedly "lost" a la Henry Grimes.

The material is a collection of standards and originals. The latter are very, VERY personal in their lyrics. Some might even call them obsessive. They focus on lonlieness and love for somebody who's not there any more (possibly Clifford Jarvis?), and they are at once compelling and disturbing, although Waters' delivery is very, VERY low-key. There's also a long solo piano piece that is simply beautiful. Nothing at all "difficult" about it, but the timing and the sensitivity of the playing makes it difficult not to get pulled in/wrapped up in it.

Highlight of the disc for me is a version of "For All We Know" from 1979 - just a vocal-piano duet (all the vocal numbers save for the Jax thing, are piano (either Waters herself or somebody else) and vocal only). This song has a pretty intense lyric anyway, but Waters sings it with a mixture of resignation, sadness, loss, and quiet (VERY quiet) desperation that is the definitive reading of it, at least that I've heard.

There's none of the groundbreaking extended vocal techniques of the ESP albums, btw. This is just a collection of songs by a woman who sounds like she's been there and back, and if she hasn't yet begin to find all the piecesto put back together yet, she definitely knows what it'll be like when she does. IF she does (and reports are that she has, thank God).

Certainly not for everybody in these less-than-vocalist-friendly parts, but those inclined to get into singers and songs that are totally devoid of artifice and cut straight to the bone of what's going on inside are advised to check it out. It's frighteningly intimate and vulnerable, at times maybe even "unhealthily" so, but I can handle that.

BTW - There's a nude photo from 1970 inside the booklet. But it's not nearly as naked as the singing.

Edited by JSngry
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  • 11 months later...

UP!

Any more comments - should I pick up the following ESP disc (College Tour) as well? :) :)

NO, wait a couple months and the COMPLETE ESP RECORDINGS (two albums) will be issued on a new single disc.

In the meantime she has a new album just out called HAPPINESS IS A THING CALLED JOE recorded live in San Francisco.

:tup Thanks very much!

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Yeah, FE are a pain. Did get that Waters disc, but it was harrowing.

November 15 was the last I heard for the Complete ESP-Disk Recordings, so that should be what, next week? Also, look for the liners penned by yours truly...

Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe - great, great disc. The suite containing "You've Changed" is a mind-melter, for sure.

:tup

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