July 29, 2024
Happy Birthday, Patti Scialfa! Summer 2024 not only marks another birthday for her, but also the 40th anniversary of Patti joining the E Street Band, with her first official gig occurring exactly forty years and one month ago on June 29, 1984, the opening night of the Born in the U.S.A. Tour in St. Paul, Minnesota. To celebrate "Red"'s special day and extra-special anniversary this year, we're traveling even further back in time to 1976, to explore Patti's work at her first professional recording sessions, a set of sessions in which she also first happened to intersect with E Street.
The 1980s was, of course, when Patti began performing and recording with rock-and-soul royalty, first with Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes at the beginning of the decade, and then later with David Johansen, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Buster Poindexter (David Johansen's alter ego,) The Rolling Stones, and finally Keith Richards on his 1988 Talk Is Cheap solo album. But back in 1976, her first year of professional recording work, she was singing on records by major figures in another genre: jazz fusion.
So let's set the scene... It's late summer '76 in New York City. Patti's at Atlantic Recording Studios to sing on a track for the debut album by her friend Narada Michael Walden. She first met Walden (who in later decades would collaborate closely with Clarence Clemons on several of his solo projects) in Miami, while she was a student at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music, and he's invited her to provide backing vocals, along with legendary bassist Will Lee (another friend and fellow Frost School of Music alum) and saxophonist/singer Norma Jean Bell of Frank Zappa/P-Funk/Chic fame, on the track "Delightful." Among the other musicians working on the track is a keyboardist by the name of David Sancious, who's quickly become a rising star in the jazz fusion world after his departure from Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band two years earlier.
Click below to listen to "Delightful" from Narada Michael Walden's album Garden of Love Light, with Narada Michael Walden on lead vocal, acoustic piano, and drums; Raymond Gomez on guitar; Will Lee on bass and vocals; David Sancious on Fender Rhodes piano and organ; Norma Jean Bell on saxophone and vocals; Sammy Figueroa on congas; and Patti Scialfa (then credited on the album as "Patty Scalfa") on vocals:
Sancious was so impressed with Scialfa's singing that he invited her to join his jazz fusion band Tone. Patti sang multi-tracked vocals on the opening track of David Sancious and Tone's "lost" 1976 album Dance of the Age of Enlightenment, "Overture - Wake Up (To a Brand New Day of Love)" with Sancious also on vocals, acoustic piano, organ, synthesizer, and guitar; former E Street Band drummer Ernest "Boom" Carter on drums and percussion; and Gerald "Gerry" Carboy on bass. Recorded at Nederland, Colorado's famous Caribou Ranch Recording Studio, the album finally received an official full-scale release just last summer, with a remastering process using the original master tapes (at last played back at proper speed, unlike the oft-bootlegged '76 promo-only release) and supervised by Sancious himself. Click here to order a copy of Dance of the Age of Enlightenment, which is currently available only in the compact-disc (CD) format.
As 1976 drew to a close, Patti Scialfa received another invitation for session-work from her friend Narada Michael Walden. This time around, Walden was producing an album by famous free jazz and world fusion trumpeter Don Cherry (also the stepfather and father, respectively, of musicians Neneh Cherry and Eagle-Eye Cherry,) entitled Hear & Now. Patti sang with Cheryl Alexander and Phoenix Volaitis on the recording of Walden's composition "Surrender Rose." Also featured on the track, recorded in New York at Electric Lady Studios, were some other friends of Patti: Clifford "Cliff" Carter (who later became James Taylor's keyboardist) and Stan Samole from her Frost School of Music days, and her Chelsea/NYC neighbor Steve Jordan, who became a key production collaborator on Patti's 23rd Street Lullaby and Play It As It Lays solo albums in the 2000s, and most recently played drums on tour with The Rolling Stones.
Click below to listen to "Surrender Rose" from Don Cherry's album Hear & Now, with Don Cherry on trumpet; Stan Samole on guitar; Clifford "Cliff" Carter on organ; Narada Michael Walden on acoustic/electric pianos and tom-toms; Steve Jordan on drums; Neil Jason on bass; Raphael Cruz on percussion; Cheryl Alexander, Phoenix Volaitis, and Patti Scialfa (then credited on the album as "Patty Scialfa") on vocals; and Lois Colin on harp:
Finally, we simply can't celebrate both Patti's birthday and the 40th anniversary of her joining the E Street Band without revisiting a major highlight from her first tour with the band: that version of "Cover Me" from the Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live/1975-85 album, featuring Patti's very jazz-like interpolation of Martha Reeves & The Vandellas' classic "Nowhere to Run" as it begins:
Happy Birthday, Ms. Patti Scialfa, and many, many more! And here's hoping that before this special birthday/anniversary year is over, we Scialfa fans finally will get to hear that fourth solo album, as promised onstage by your biggest fan last October:
Bring it on, Birthday Girl!