When Patti Austin released her 1981 album Every Home Should Have One, which was her commercial breakthrough, the legend at the top of the LP sleeve - "Quincy Jones Presents" - suggested that Quincy Jones had discovered her and that it was her debut album. None of that is the case. Every Home Should Have One was in fact her fourth studio album.
Ms. Austin's first album was End of a Rainbow (the photo above is from the front cover), released in 1976 by CTI, a jazz label. She was always a jazz artist first and a pop singer second, and End of a Rainbow gave her the chance to show her abilities as a jazz stylist, be it with her own self-penned material, such as "You Don't Have To Say You're Sorry," or with a cover of Spiral Staircase's "More Today Than Yesterday." Havana Candy, from 1977, continued the trend of her own songs and the odd cover ("Lost in the Stars").
When she sang the lead vocal on "Razzmatazz" on Quincy Jones' 1981 album The Dude, Jones, impressed with her voice, signed her to his Qwest label, and he produced Every Home Should Have One. Many of the songs on that album were written by former Heatwave member Rod Temperton, who had written and would write hits for another artist Jones worked with at the time . . . Michael Jackson. One of those songs on Ms. Austin's record, "Baby Come To Me," was recorded as a duet with fellow Dude vocalist James Ingram. Released as a single in April 1982, it went nowhere . . . but when "Baby Come To Me" got played a lot on a TV soap opera, the popularity of the song with TV viewers led to its re-release six months after its original issue. It topped the Billboard singles chart for two weeks in February 1983.
Although Ms. Austin never had another pop hit, she became a huge success with her original audience, the jazz crowd. Albums such as The Real Me, Love Is Gonna Getcha and Sound Advice have burnished her already stellar reputation as a jazz vocalist.
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