Anna Ottilie Patterson

Ottilie Patterson, who has died aged 79 in a South Ayrshire care home, was the Northern Ireland girl who could sing the blues, helping popularise the form in the UK during the late 1950s and early 1960s as a vocalist with the Chris Barber Jazz Band.

Earlier this year, Barber celebrated his 60-year career with the release of the double CD Memories of My Trip, but while Patterson’s voice can certainly be heard on some of the tracks, her name is notably absent from a cover littered with fellow travellers’ including Eric Clapton, Lonnie Donegan and Van Morrison — symbolic, perhaps, of her relative obscurity following a largely self-imposed withdrawal from the limelight in the 1970s.

Born Anna Ottilie Patterson in Comber, County Down, Northern Ireland, she was the youngest of four children to Joseph Patterson and his Latvian wife Julija Jgers. Both families had strong musical backgrounds, and she received training as a classical pianist from the age of 11. Whether this grounding in instrumental technique informed her later singing career is open to debate, but it is certain that the woman described as “the greatest of all British blues singers” never received any formal vocal training.

Aged 17, she went to study art at Belfast College of Technology in 1949, and was soon introduced to the blues and jazz, including the music of Bessie Smith, Jelly Roll Morton and Meade Lux Lewis. By 1951 she had begun singing with the Belfast-based Jimmy Compton’s Jazz Band; the following year, she formed the Muskrat Ramblers with Al Watt and Derek Martin.

Her singing career moved up a gear while holidaying in London in the summer of 1954, when a mutual friend introduced her to Barber. She joined his Jazz Band full-time on January 1, 1955, making her first public appearance at the Royal Festival Hall eight days later. From the start she stunned critics and public alike with the power of her voice, and in particular her unique ability to sing the blues. As a result, the extensive Barber Band back catalogue includes hundreds of songs recorded with Patterson — not just blues but also jazz standards, Irish ballads and even novelty items and pop songs.

For the next seven years, until 1962, she toured extensively with the Chris Barber Jazz Band and featured on numerous recordings with them. She also recorded, in her own right, EPs including That Patterson Girl (1955), That Patterson Girl Volume 2 (1956), Ottilie (1959), and Chris Barber’s Blues Book (1961).

Sadly, throat problems began to affect her voice from as early as 1963; these increasingly curtailed her appearances and recordings with Barber — who was by then her husband — and she officially retired from the band in 1973. Nevertheless, she still made some recordings during this time, including settings of Shakespeare (with Barber) and a solo LP, 3000 years with Ottilie (1969), which is now a much sought-after collectors’ item.

Her final recording was Madame Blues and Doctor Jazz (1984), which was based on a series of South London concerts she and Barber had given the previous year.

It was around this time that, with her marriage to Barber over, she bought a large house in Ayr’s Barns Crescent. She would spend the rest of her life in the town, living in what would appear to be self-imposed obscurity. In more recent years, however, many of her recordings with Barber have been re-released on CD, including the EP Ottilie Swings The Irish (1962).

She is survived by her former husband, Chris Barber.