Carol Brice

Carol Brice (April 16, 1918 – February 15, 1985) was an American contralto whose Broadway career spanned from 1959 to 1976. Born in Sedalia, North Carolina, she received her early education at Palmer Memorial Institute before enrolling at Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama, where she earned a Bachelor of Music in 1939. That same year she continued her training at the Juilliard School of Music, where she studied through 1943.

Before her Broadway debut, Brice drew significant attention for her participation in a 1939 production of The Hot Mikado at the New York World's Fair, a production in which she worked alongside Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. She gave her formal recital debut in 1943, and that year became the first African American to receive the Walter Naumburg Award. Her concert work frequently featured her brother Jonathan Brice as her piano accompanist. In 1945 she taught briefly at Black Mountain College, and the following year she was the featured contralto on a February 5, 1946 recording of Manuel de Falla's El Amor Brujo, conducted by Fritz Reiner with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and released on Columbia Masterworks.

Brice's Broadway career encompassed four productions across nearly two decades. She originated the role of Kakou in the 1959 musical Saratoga and played Maude in a 1960 revival of Finian's Rainbow. In 1971 she created the role of Catherine Creek in the original stage musical production of The Grass Harp, and in 1976 she appeared as Maria in a revival of Porgy and Bess. Her operatic work included roles in Clarence Cameron White's Ouanga and Marc Blitzstein's Regina.

In 1974 Brice joined the faculty of the University of Oklahoma at Norman. She and her husband, baritone Thomas Carey, subsequently founded the non-profit Cimarron Circuit Opera Company in Oklahoma. Beyond her artistic career, Brice provided financial support to the widow of Isaiah Nixon, a lynching victim killed in 1948. She died of cancer in Norman, Oklahoma, survived by her husband, her brother, two children, and six grandchildren.