There is something ultimately redemptive in hearing musicians playing live, where all protective gear in the studio is gone, where there is no mix to fix, where they are just standing in front of an audience, pouring it out, letting it come through them. Too often live recordings are not live at all, as the delicate and sometimes evident flaws that make a performer human are eliminated, erased, and sent into the dustbin of history, thus rendering both the performance inaccurate and the performer somehow less than what she or he is. In other words, the beauty is in the imperfections themselves. Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe by Patty Waters is a true live album. Recorded at a date in San Francisco in 2002, the album is a jazz tribute to Billie Holiday and includes 14 standards. Waters is accompanied by pianist Leonard Thompson and bassist Seward McCain. There is no resemblance to the fiery singer of "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" here. This is the voice of a seasoned interpreter, a singer who despite her somewhat limited range (there's a rasp in the lower end of her voice and a thin, brittle-like quality in its timbre) has an uncanny phrasing ability, singing the lyric of a classic song straight and from the heart and getting at its sinew and marrow. Check "Good Morning Heartache," where the opening line is one of such acceptance that the listener winces at the pain in the grain of her voice. Yet on "Old Devil Moon" she wrings the wry romance with humor and a rough-hewn grace; it's immediate, full of the right kind of anticipatory tension, and a dangerous delight. Waters' respect and honor for the tradition of these songs is evident. Like Holiday, she approaches the songs as if they were secret texts whose truths could be revealed by careful emotive investigation. Her reading of "Willow Weep for Me" is simply breathtaking. It's so frail and vulnerable, and full of a brokenness and desire whose name can only be acknowledged, not spoken let alone touched. She digs deep into the blues vocabulary for the expression necessary and comes up with it, communicating the cracked-heart blues of unrequited love with accuracy, verve, and raw tension. Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe is an accurate, in-your-face recording. It's full of tape flaws, musical imperfections, and even errors. But therein lies its beauty and necessity, not only as a document, but as a high-wire act at full tilt. Waters is a different kind of singer than she used to be. Her power lies in the quiet, shimmering timbres and colors that come from her matter-of-fact delivery. This album is a welcome addition to her catalog.

PATTY WATERS must be acknowledged as a vocalist who has tested the limits of the human voice's capabilities. Since her brief recording career in the mid-'6O's, she has come to be appreciated as a vocal innovator not just in jazz but in contemporary music as a whole. Much of her repertoire was given over to hushed piano solo ballads in which her voice could fade to a whisper that was barely audible, but what really attracted attention were her avant-garde outings in which she stretched and mutated her voice with contorted shrieks and wails that could be downright blood-curdling. She was heard in a nightclub in the early '6O's by Albert Ayler, who recommended her to the ESP label; the first side of her 1965 debut recording (”Sings”) was given over entirely to self-composed solo piano miniatures, leaving listeners somewhat unprepared for the second side, which consisted solely of her 13-minute interpretation of “Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair.” Building into hair-raising screams and vocal improvisations, it remains the performance for which she is most noted. Sadly, she only recorded one more album, the live “College Tour,” just a few months later; a more determinedly avant-garde effort than her debut, it featured entirely different, mostly self-composed songs. Ms. Waters often eschewed words altogether for wordless moan-scats and wails, and opted for a fuller band backing, including appearances by pianists Ran Blake and Burton Greene. Aside from a subsequent appearance with Marzette Watts's ensemble on a 1968 LP, nothing further was heard from her on record until 1996, as she withdrew to Hawaii to raise her son (born in 1969) and sang in public only sporadically for many years. She sang in the Monterey Festival of 1999 and in 2003 at New York City's Vision Festival and the Tolbooth Festival in Scotland, and in 2006 she toured in Belgium and Paris with the great bassist Henry Grimes. Patty's mystique has been enhanced over the decades by the rarity of her two ESP discs, recently reissued on CD in Germany. Diamanda Galas names Patty Waters as her biggest influence, and she is also publicly revered by Christina Carter and Patti Smith. Patty Waters now lives in Santa Cruz, California and very much wants to continue with her music life. Patty Waters can be reached at PattyWatersSings@hotmail.com. [NOTE: This updated biography is based on one written by Richie Unterberger for “All Music Guide.”