Carol Sloane

Carol Sloane launched her professional singing career at age fourteen. Upon reaching eighteen she joined a musical comedy production that took her across Germany. Between 1958 and 1960 she performed with the Les and Larry Elgart orchestra. After she appeared at a jazz festival in 1960, Jon Hendricks heard her and eventually summoned her to substitute for Annie Ross in Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. She created a strong impact at the 1961 Newport Jazz Festival and soon recorded two albums for Columbia. Her career nonetheless failed to advance, so apart from a live recording from 1964 issued on Honey Dew she remained silent in the studio until 1977, supporting herself as a secretary in North Carolina while performing only occasionally in the area.

By the mid-seventies she resumed regular activity, found a receptive audience in Japan where she began recording often, and at last established a firmer professional base. Her albums on Audiophile, Choice, Progressive, Contemporary, and later Concord display a mature, bop-rooted vocalist who had developed a distinctive personal style. Carol Sloane died on January 23, 2023, at a senior care facility in Stoneham, MA, from complications of a stroke she had suffered two years earlier; she was eighty-five.