Austin was born in
Harlem, New York, to Gordon Austin, a
jazz trombonist. She was raised in
Bay Shore, New York on Long Island.
Quincy Jones and
Dinah Washington referred to themselves as her godparents. Her father was black and her mother's parents were from
Barbados and
Sweden. When Austin was four years old, she performed at the
Apollo Theater. As a teenager she recorded commercial jingles and worked as a session singer in soul and R&B. She had an R&B hit in 1969 with "Family Tree". The jazz label
CTI released her debut album,
End of a Rainbow, in 1976. She sang backing vocals on the track "Everybody has a Dream" for
Billy Joel's hit album
The Stranger (album) in 1977. She sang "
The Closer I Get to You" for
Tom Browne's album
Browne Sugar,
a duet with Michael Jackson for his album
Off the Wall, and a duet with
George Benson on "Moody's Mood for Love". In 2003, she collaborated with
Frances Yip on
Papillon III in the rotunda of
San Francisco City Hall to help the
Jade Ribbon Campaign of Stanford University. A companion CD/DVD was released with Austin and Yip singing duets in Mandarin. A performance in 2000 with the Germany-based
WDR Big Band For Ella (2002) was a tribute to
Ella Fitzgerald. During a 2007 interview, Austin spoke of reluctantly attending as a teenager one of
Judy Garland's last concerts and how the experience helped focus her career. "She ripped my heart out. I wanted to interpret a lyric like that, to present who I was at the moment through the lyric." In 2011,
Sound Advice was released containing cover versions of
Bob Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody",
Brenda Russell's "A Little Bit of Love", the Jackson Five's "Give It Up", Bill Withers' "Lean on Me", and
Don McLean's "Vincent". The album also included "The Grace of God", a song Austin wrote after watching an episode of the
Oprah Winfrey Show which included a woman with scarred face. Austin appeared in the Oscar-winning documentary film
20 Feet from Stardom, which premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival and was released on June 21, 2013. In 2015, Austin appeared on Patrick Williams'
Home Suite Home large jazz ensemble album, as vocalist for Williams' composition "52nd & Broadway," which won a Grammy for Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals. ==Awards and honors==