Patty Waters - You Loved Me (2022)

Finally available on vinyl, "You Loved Me" connects Patty Waters' legendary 1960s ESP-Disk albums and her later, jazzier 1990s recordings. Like a spiritual meeting of vintage folk and avant jazz, these songs sound as if they've been cut straight from the heart. Tip!

"You Loved Me" would have been Waters' third album after 1966's "Sings" and "College Tour". Most of the tracks were recorded during a 1970 session with engineer Steve Atkins, and the album has been filled out with unreleased single 'My One And Only Love' and two tracks from a session at Lone Mountain College in 1974. Waters disappeared for a stretch after it was recorded, so hearing it connects the dots in her catalogue. After the first two ESP-Disk albums displayed Waters' teenage longing, her 1996-released return "Love Songs" was a more mature set of trad and jazz standards. "You Loved Me" is the missing link, an album that's far more joyful than its predecessors but more irreverent than its successor.

Waters' unmistakably smoky voice carries the record, but her piano playing is also in sharp focus here, not least on the 14-minute 'Touched By Rodin In A Paris Museum', that uses avant minimal techniques to evoke an artistic visual landscape. She sounds positively entranced on 'At Last I Found You', breathing words with joy and grace around stark, Cage-influenced piano motifs, while on 'My One And Only Love' she circles folk and dusty jazz, reflecting Billie Holiday and Joan Baez at once. Gorgeous, time-stopping music.