POWERFUL storytelling has always gripped Dana Masters who switches seamlessly from performer to presenter for a new television programme lifting the lid on the extraordinary life of Northern Ireland's first female blues singer.
My Name is Ottilie tells the little-known story of Comber's Ottilie Patterson – described as 'the Amy Winehouse of her day' – who dazzled for a short time in the late 1950s and early 1960s before quietly disappearing from the global stage to live in Scotland.
She died in a nursing home in Ayr in 2011 aged 79 and has remained largely forgotten in her native Northern Ireland, but Masters is now hoping the new 60-minute film (from DoubleBand Films) will restore her rightful place in the hearts and minds of music fans across Ireland and beyond.
"It has taken two years to complete this exciting project, because of Covid, but it is story worth waiting for," says the soul and jazz artiste, speaking in her still soft Southern drawl from her home in rural Co Down.
"I felt really honoured to be asked to tell Ottilie's story, because, as a black musician from America carving out a musical career in Northern Ireland, it felt a little like here were two parallel stories happening in opposite directions.
"I was also fascinated by what attracted Ottilie to blues music above all other genres. I grew up around the blues in South Carolina and while I sing a little 'blues' every once in a while because of my upbringing, I didn't fall madly in love with that type of singing when I was a kid; I just didn't have the same reaction as Ottilie."
The reason, she speculates, is that Ottilie Patterson also knew what it felt like to be 'other'.
"Most people don't know Ottilie's mother was not from Northern Ireland – she was Latvian – and her father was northern Irish, so she lived as a child in Comber already with an understanding that her family was a little bit different," ventures Masters.
"It doesn't take much for kids to feel 'other' and I think, when you have that, and you encounter an art form that gives you space to express deep emotions, it is quite attractive and so, for whatever reason, blues resonated with her.
"You have to really understand the pain expressed in the blues in order to sing that way. It was a way she could say everything without saying anything at all."
For the "funny little white woman from Comber" – as she describes herself in original tape recordings heard in the film – there was a lot of 'other' going on.
A trained teacher, she left her well paid job and travelled to London and eventually to the United States to do what she felt she was called to do – sing the blues.
A rising star of British jazz and blues music, Patterson became an acclaimed singer with the Chris Barber Band and was at the forefront of the trad jazz scene, packing out jazz clubs around Britain and later performing with American blues legends including Muddy Waters, Ella Fitzgerald and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
But in her personal life, things were unravelling. She became involved in a relationship with Chris Barber while he was still married to someone else, became pregnant with his child, felt she had "no other choice" but to have an abortion and then, when they did marry – and later divorce – she hadn't the family she wanted from the marriage.
Jools Holland, along with blues musician Ronnie Greer, contributes to My Name is Ottilie, saying the divorce badly affected her and the emotional strain was "terrible". Ottilie herself had referred to herself as a "blues melancholic", while in one of her final interviews it is implied "jazz killed her in the end".
"Why was her career cut short?" ponders Masters. "That is one of the main questions we ask in the film and the reality is that there was a perfect storm of reasons.
"There is no one reason and no one villain, as such, but it is an incredibly interesting story. People will watch the film and there will be as many answers to that question as there are the people who ask.
"But, that's life. I think, sometimes, we like to have a super clean-cut answer to something, but the reality is that all of our lives, the eventualities, are the sum of a lot of different parts.
"Everyone we spoke to all said how lovely Ottilie was, how she loved her music and was the type to just get lost in it. She came alive on stage but I think in some ways, particularly when she was younger, she had a beautiful naivety, actually, about the world and the industry."
With society's culturally-conscious sensitivities today, she might be accused of cultural appropriation but Masters stresses that Ottilie Patterson "was not imitating a black person" but, rather, "honouring the people whose music it was".
"This is another thing we bring up in the film," she explains. "What people see as appropriation is a personal thing but, for me, Ottilie was very clear that she felt honoured to be able to sing this music that was not her own.
"The blues community in the US, the black musicians, accepted her and embraced her and encouraged her to keep doing what she was doing.
"For me, personally, appropriation is when someone takes something that isn't theirs while not acknowledging where it came from and imitating it in a way that isn't honouring. Ottilie did none of those things."
While happy to be the "face of the programme", Masters gives due credit to the whole production team as well as co-authors of the book, How Belfast Got the Blues – Joanna Braniff and Noel McLaughlin – who first uncovered the intriguing story of Ottilie Patterson.
"Joanna and Noel were convinced this story needs to be told in film and they, along with a number of other people, have been trying to make sure this Northern Ireland blues legend isn't forgotten and is included in the wider music story here," says the musician.
What would the late Comber crooner make of it all, today? "I hope she would think we did her proud," concludes Masters, who, after performing at the Four Corners Festival in Belfast earlier this month, was heading to Dublin for a gig at Arthur's Blues and Jazz Club (February 18).
"This wasn't about exposing anybody's story; I think the whole team thought we were working alongside Ottilie, to give her a chance to tell her own story – in her own voice recordings. It was really important not to put a twist on anything or try to drive it to our own conclusions. It was about partnering with her, to tell her story in a way that she was never able to do when she was alive."
My Name Is Ottilie is part of BBC Northern Ireland's new Season Of Arts and is available on BBC iPlayer.
