Judy Carmichael
| Judy Carmichael | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Judith Lea Hohenstein |
| Born |
November 27, 1957 Lynwood, California, U.S. |
| Genres | Jazz, ragtime, stride |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, singer |
| Instruments | Piano |
| Years active | 1960s–present |
| Labels | Progressive, C&D |
| Website | www |
Judy Carmichael (born November 27, 1957) is a Grammy-nominated jazz pianist and vocalist who is one of the few jazz pianists honored as a Steinway Artist.
She specializes in a rare form of pre-1950s jazz, stride piano, a highly physical style of playing first made popular by Fats Waller. The music was long associated with big, powerful—mostly black—men, so when Carmichael first emerged on the scene as a young, thin, white, ex-beauty queen, it was a shock. Count Basie was so taken with her playing that he nicknamed her "Stride". With stride piano, the pianist alternates low bass notes on beats one and three with chords on beats two and four with their left hand and plays figures and improvised lines with their right. "What made me unusual when I started doing that was that all the people playing stride were big men, and I was a surfer girl from California," she told The New York Times.
Reviewing her first album Two-Handed Stride in 1980, Scott Yanow wrote: "The recording debut of pianist Judy Carmichael was a major, if somewhat unheralded event. The first important stride pianist to emerge in nearly 30 years, Carmichael has proved to be a consistently creative and exciting performer (rather than imitative) within the genre of classic jazz and swing during the years since her debut. For this set (originally out on Progressive and reissued on CD) Carmichael is joined by altoist Marshall Royal, guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Red Callender, and drummer Harold Jones which gives some of the music a Count Basie feel. However, Carmichael's own musical personality was already nearly fully formed by the date. Highlights of the joyous music include "Christopher Columbus", "Honeysuckle Rose", "A Handful of Keys" and "I Would Do Anything for You."
On radio, Carmichael has been a guest performer on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion, and also made radio appearances on NPR's Morning Edition. She primarily appears on radio as the host of Public Radio's Judy Carmichael's Jazz Inspired, a radio program that interviews creative people from all walks of life who talk about their creative process, and how their interest in jazz has affected that process.
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Wikipedia