Barbara Carroll

Barbara Carroll, born Barbara Carole Coppersmith on January 25, 1925, in Worcester, Massachusetts, was an American jazz pianist, vocalist, and Broadway performer. She died on February 12, 2017, at the age of 92.

Carroll began studying classical piano at age eight, though by the time she reached high school she had committed to jazz. She enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music but departed after a year, finding that formal study interfered with her work playing in bands. Her early dedication to the form earned notable recognition in 1947, when critic Leonard Feather described her as the first woman ever to play bebop piano.

Her trio during this period featured Chuck Wayne on guitar and Clyde Lombardi on bass, and the group worked briefly with Benny Goodman in 1948. Wayne was later replaced by Charlie Byrd, and Lombardi by Joe Shulman. Following Byrd's departure, Carroll restructured the ensemble as a piano, bass, and drums trio. In the 1950s, Carroll and her trio performed in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway production Me and Juliet, which opened in 1953. The decade ultimately proved difficult for her professionally, as shifting musical tastes and personal circumstances caused her career to slow.

In September 1954, Carroll married Joe Shulman, the bassist from her trio. He died of a heart attack in 1957 at age 33. She later married agent and photographer Bert Block, with whom she had a daughter; Block died of emphysema in 1986. In 2011, she married advertising executive Mark Stroock, a marriage that continued until her death.

Carroll returned to active performing in 1972 following a renewed interest in her work. In 1975, Rita Coolidge invited her to contribute to a recording session for A&M Records, and in 1978 Carroll toured with Coolidge and Kris Kristofferson. Over the following two decades she built a reputation as a cabaret performer. In 2003, she received the Kennedy Center's Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2015 she was recognized as an honoree at The New Jewish Home's Eight Over Eighty Gala.