Barbara Carroll

In the year 2005, Barbara Carroll could boast that she has began playing piano for a grand total of 75 years. Not without a pause to sleep and eat, obviously, but with a determination that might suggest such extremes. Born Barbara Carole Coppersmith, she began the instrument at only five-years-old and went on to classical training three years later, eventually graduating from the New England Conservatory. In terms of professional stagecraft, her initial training ground was a USO tour during the second World War in which she was part of an all-girl trio. This was quickly followed by leading her own trio on New York City's famous lane of jazz, 52nd Street, where she adopted her middle name of Carole as a stage name. The pianist was associated with such fine players as guitarist Chuck Wayne and bassist Clyde Lombardi, but what would develop into an extensive discography began in 1949 with a recording session backing up multi-instrumentalist Eddie Shu for the Rainbow label. Among female piano players, Carroll is known as the first to venture into the progressive bebop style that was especially associated with Bud Powell. Unlike the infamous Billy Tipton, Carroll also did not think it was necessary to hide the fact that she was a woman in jazz -- but this was New York City, not Oklahoma or Washington state. Not that Carroll had an easy time in a genre dominated by men. "People tended to put you down before they ever heard you," she has commented in interviews. "If you were a girl piano player, the tendency was to say: 'Oh, how could she possibly play?' You never even got a chance to present what you could do. But then, if you did prove yourself, it almost became a commercial asset, in a sense; you were regarded as unique." One audience that found Carroll to their liking...