Marlowsphere Blog (#142)
When you get to the end of stride pianist Judy Carmichael’s memoir Swinger—A Jazz Girl’s Adventures from Hollywood to Harlem (C&D Productions, Sag Harbor, NY 2017) you’re sorry the set (of chapters) has concluded. You want to know more about this sui generis performer whose multi-decade career has taken her around the world (to China, for example).
Judy Carmichael is a stride pianist. For the uninitiated, stride piano is a style of jazz piano playing in which the right hand plays the melody while the left hand plays a single bass note or octave on the strong beat and a chord on the weak beat. The style was developed in Harlem during the 1920s, partly from ragtime piano playing. Among the several dozen great well-known stride pianists are James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Art Tatum, Willie “The Lion” Smith. Dick Hyman, Dick Wellstood, Thelonius Monk, Jaki Byard, Marcus Roberts, and Herbie Hancock. Most of the dozens of well-known stride pianists are no longer living, a reason, perhaps, why the style has mostly fallen out of favor among jazz pianists.
Among this group of stride piano virtuosos, however, there are three women, perhaps I should say only three women—Dorothy Donegan (no longer living), Stephanie Trick (very much living), and Judy Carmichael!
Carmichael’s pianistic chops are formidable. I’ve heard her perform (at Tanglewood). Her former saxophonist, Michael Hashim (who also performs in my own quintet), once remarked “Her left hand is so strong she doesn’t need a bass player!” How true. Her group consists of her, a guitarist, and a saxophonist. (As an aside, jazz piano virtuoso Oscar Peterson’s playing was so strong that one of his trios consisted of him, a bass player and a guitarist. No drums!).
Swinger provides dozens of insights into the world of being a musician—not just a jazz musician, but a jazz musician who is a woman in primarily a man’s world. Carmichael also provides a perspective on how non-musicians perceive artists who are musicians. On one of her on-the-road gigs a well-to-do audience member asked Judy why she came all this way for this gig, as if to say “This is a long way to come for your art?” Her reply was “I do it for the money because musicians also need money to live!” She makes clear that even though her well-deserved fame brings her well-paying gigs, she still hustles to get gigs. It’s a never-ending process.
Carmichael’s memoir covers a lot of professional ground, from her early development as a jazz pianist, to her multi-year sojourn at Disneyland, then a 
United States Department of State sponsored tour to China in the early 1990s, to her initiation of “Jazz Inspired” on NPR. And like all memorable autobiographies, her book is full of personal travails, from her difficult relationship with her parents and her brother, to other musicians, to friends and lovers. She also delves unequivocally and unabashedly into her bouts with cancer.
Swinger reads like Judy herself. Full of wit, self-effacement, irony, and verbal virtuosity. Sometimes her narrative is blunt, sometimes subtle, but always direct, compelling, and personal. Her memoir is aptly named. Carmichael—who happens to have been born female—is an artist who has survived several professional and personal challenges, but who has prevailed over time. Her memoir is a testament to focus and tenacity, the kind of characteristics you need to become one of the world’s best stride pianists.
© Eugene Marlow August 7, 2018