Barbara Carroll

[JSngry]

Found a copy of Ms. Carroll's first 70s BN LP (w/inner sleeve punch-out send-in form to get "Blue Note Hits A New Note" merchandise fully intact, btw. No expiration date, either!), and was decidedly non-plussed. Sounded like Bill Evans with all the Bill Evans removed, or something like that. Yet, I know this woman's playing has a positive reputation in some circles.

So what's the deal? Has she always been one of those players that have an adoring circle of fans but everybody else goes, "So what?" or was she once a player of some substance?

Or - is this a good album that I just don't get?

[bertrand]

Jim,

Please send in the coupon to Tom Evered - I want to see his reaction!

Bertrand.

[JSngry]

Up, b/c nine years later I've still not been able to get with her playing. Any differing opinions here?

[Larry Kart]

Up, b/c nine years later I've still not been able to get with her playing. Any differing opinions here?

Yes. I like her vintage '50s RCA-Victor work, even bought a box set of it; she had an agile mind and fingers. The later stuff, the little I've heard of it, I didn't care for -- cabaret disease.

The box set (but I sure didn't pay that price for it):

http://www.amazon.co...barbara carroll

[JSngry]

Yeah, that's too much the price...but "agile mind" in the Bud Powell sense? That's the word I keep hearing, but having only heard the later stuff, not the music I'm hearing.

[Larry Kart]

No, not in the Bud Powell sense. But more agile, or more to my taste, than say (to pick a name out of my moth-eaten Be-Bop beret) Billy Taylor? I mean, they're both

arguably too clever for their own good at times, but Carroll seems less formulaic

to me. I'll listen again when I get a chance and try to amplify if I can.

Also -- and I don't bring up this name for the obvious reason but just because I

picked up an album of Hickory House-era Marian McPartland a while back--

comparisons to contemporary or a bit later Carroll are much to Carroll's favor IMO. McPartland's boppish gestures are more or less gestures at that point, laid on top of other stuff; Carrol thinks and feels from within the bop sensibility and in a

personal manner. Yes, it's a "light" manner by and large but genuine, intelligent, and again it bears the imprint of her own soul.

[JSngry]

All I've heard is this one, early-70s Blue Note side, and...I really don't like it. Really don't. But the way you describe the RCA stuff sounds like something I might want to hear at least once.

Does she sing on that stuff? Sounds like the type of thing where singing might give the piano playing a more full context?

[Larry Kart]

IIRC she sings on a few things from the RCA period, but only a few.

[CJ Shearn]

Tom would see how still devoted the BN fans are by sending in that coupon!

[Larry Kart]

Listened to some of the RCA material, Jim, and while I much prefer it to the later

Carroll, I doubt it would be for you -- my sense that she's precise and delicate

might be your precious and finicky, and while I too normally would be in your camp

along those lines, I can't quite say so far why Carroll often tickles/interests me.

In part, it's that her touch is so nicely graded that one can't (I can't)tell where,for her, in the mix of touch/dynamics, harmonic vocabulary (somehow, at once

adventurous and chaste), time feel, keyboard layout (this is big for her), etc. one element leaves off and the other begins.

[AllenLowe]

I like her 50s playing a lot - almost Tristano-ish on the stuff with Hasselgarde; also, there's a 1980s LP (maybe Bluenote) in which she just plays, that's quite good.

[JSngry]

Listened to some of the RCA material, Jim, and while I much prefer it to the later

Carroll, I doubt it would be for you -- my sense that she's precise and delicate

might be your precious and finicky, and while I too normally would be in your camp

along those lines, I can't quite say so far why Carroll often tickles/interests me.

In part, it's that her touch is so nicely graded that one can't (I can't)tell where,for her, in the mix of touch/dynamics, harmonic vocabulary (somehow, at once

adventurous and chaste), time feel, keyboard layout (this is big for her), etc. one element leaves off and the other begins.

I'm certainly willing to listen & find out. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to be like that 70s BN album, which to me sounds like Steroid Cocktail Music,,,just not for me at all...take away the Steroid Sensation and maybe it might be?

[Peter Friedman]

I remember owning an RCA LP by Carroll back in the 50's or early 60's. Didn't care for it much and disposed of it.

It had a lite weight quality that reminded me a bit of the early recordings by Marian McPartland.

The few things she did as a sidewoman with bebop players back in the late 40's are, for me, her most interesting

playing.

If I understood Larry correctly, I disagree in regards to comparing Carroll's later playing with that of the later playing

of Marian McPartland. Over time it seemed to me that Carroll's music got further away from her jazz roots in the 40's.

For McPartland it was to my ears the opposite. Marian had no true roots in bebop or "modern jazz" but she learned

and grew as a jazz pianist.

Carroll's later recordings seemed to me very heavily cocktail or caberet type music. McPartland

was not in that category. Marian was a jazz player. No, not among the top tier jazz piano players, but someone who

was serious about playing jazz piano.

[Larry Kart]

I remember owning an RCA LP by Carroll back in the 50's or early 60's. Didn't care for it much and disposed of it.

It had a lite weight quality that reminded me a bit of the early recordings by Marian McPartland.

The few things she did as a sidewoman with bebop players back in the late 40's are, for me, her most interesting

playing.

If I understood Larry correctly, I disagree in regards to comparing Carroll's later playing with that of the later playing

of Marian McPartland. Over time it seemed to me that Carroll's music got further away from her jazz roots in the 40's.

For McPartland it was to my ears the opposite. Marian had no true roots in bebop or "modern jazz" but she learned

and grew as a jazz pianist.

Carroll's later recordings seemed to me very heavily cocktail or caberet type music. McPartland

was not in that category. Marian was a jazz player. No, not among the top tier jazz piano players, but someone who

was serious about playing jazz piano.

Actually, I was comparing early '50s McPartland and early '50s Carroll. I agree with you about later McPartland and later Carroll.

[Gheorghe]

I must admit I´m not too familiar with that name. Could it be the pianist, who plays one track on that 1948 broadcast that I have (a kind of all star event with Benny Harris, J.J.Johnson, Budd Johnson, Lee Konitz, Bud Powell, Max Roach and others ? I think I got one track with a Barbara Carroll replacing Bud for one tune (All the Things you are), with just the rhythm section. Well, maybe she was just starting, it sounds a bit "stiff", you know, the way some piano players sound if the try to play in the bop idiom, but still with that "edge" in it. It´s like Al Haig on the Town Hall stuff with Diz and Bird. Then in that early stage of his career he still got that "edge" in his lines, but later, oh boy he could blow almost like Bud, he learned his stuff.....

[Larry Kart]

Thinking again about my visit yesterday to RCA Carroll, her feel for '30s-'40s standards (e.g. "My Funny Valentine, "Autumn in New York") was exceptional. She improvised on them from the "inside" so to speak, never jazzing them up (this might account in part for Richard Rodgers beingone of her fans) but again really improvising. That approach was especially intriguing on ballads, where her tempos often were quite slow but forward momentum at those tempos was always sustained, melodically and rhythmically, with sotto voce lines often ascending to the upper register and being sustained there for longer than one would think possible; all this having (pardon the imagery) a sort of frost on the windowpanes effect.