CARROLL, Barbara

Barbara Carroll, born Barbara Carole Coppersmith, was an American jazz pianist, singer, composer and arranger. She was born on 25 January 1925 in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began playing the piano at the age of five, received classical training and studied at the New England Conservatory of Music. While still young, however, she turned towards jazz, drawing inspiration from musicians such as Nat “King” Cole, Bud Powell and Charlie Parker.

Carroll began her professional career in the 1940s and became one of the earliest women to gain recognition as a bebop pianist. She led her own trio on New York’s 52nd Street and briefly performed with Benny Goodman. Her playing combined elements of bebop and swing with the clarity and refinement of her classical training. Over the following decades she recorded more than thirty albums and established herself as an important figure in New York’s jazz and cabaret scene.

Although remembered primarily as a pianist and interpreter of jazz standards and the Great American Songbook, Carroll also composed and arranged music. Her best-documented original composition is Too Soon, a gentle jazz waltz that she performed and recorded on several occasions. Composer credits also appear on a number of her albums, but the available sources do not provide a comprehensive catalogue of her original works. For this reason, composition should be presented as one aspect of her wider career rather than as her principal activity.

Among her albums are Lullabies in Rhythm (1955), Have You Met Miss Carroll? (1956), At the Piano (1981), Live at the Carlyle (1991), One Morning in May (2002), Live at Birdland (2005) and Barbara Carroll Plays at Birdland (2016). She continued performing almost until the end of her life.

In 2003, Carroll received the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Award from the Kennedy Center in recognition of her contribution to jazz. She died in Manhattan on 12 February 2017, aged ninety-two.