LP #6 Patti Austin – The Real Me (1988)

Although I don’t really keep track, I’m pretty sure I don’t buy as many albums as I did 20 or 25 years ago. (While I do buy singles on iTunes, my album purchases are still on CD.) One of the reasons for this decline is the disappearance of physical music stores that have enough of a selection to make browsing through the bins a worthwhile endeavor. One of the best places for browsing, of course, was Tower Records; before they opened a store just down the road from me at Congressional Plaza in Rockville, I would make special trips to their more distant stores, in quest of something that no one else would have to add to my collection.

 

Of course, Tower always had music playing over the store’s sound system. Very little of it made much of an impression on me, but one day while I was in their Foggy Bottom store in DC they put on an album that grabbed me immediately. I had never been a big Patti Austin fan, primarily because the songs of hers I’d heard on the radio always sounded pretty generic, but these songs were classics (admittedly some more of my parents’ time than mine) and the arrangements were wonderful. She even manages to surpass the Platters’ version of “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” (which I didn’t think was possible) with a slightly off-the-beat rendition here.

 

Favorite tracks:

Someone Is Standing Outside

Lazy Afternoon

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

How Long Has This Been Going On?

They Can’t Take That Away From Me