Carol Sloane

Jazz singer Carol Sloane – born in Providence, Rhode Island on March 5, 1937 – began her professional singing career at the age of 14. In 1958, she joined Les & Larry Elgart’s orchestra but left two years later in order to pursue a solo career. While performing at a jazz festival, she was discovered by vocalist Jon Hendricks, best known for his work in Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. After briefly filling in for Annie Ross in the trio, she then earned accolades for her 1961 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival and signed with Columbia Records. In 1962, Carol Sloane released two critically successful albums – Live at 30th Street and Out of the Blue – but didn’t achieve commercial success and left the music business. She worked several jobs over the next decade including a stint as a music critic for Downbeat Magazine in the late 1960s and a legal secretary in the 1970s. She returned to the music scene in the second half of the ‘70s and released Sophisticated Lady (1977), a tribute to Duke Ellington, and Spring Is Here (1977). While she remained virtually unknown in the US, she was popular in Japan, where she frequently toured. Carol Sloane continued to release new albums including Carol Sings and Cottontail (1979), Summertime: Carol Sings Again (1983), As Time Goes By (1984) and Three Pearls with Chris Connor and Ernestine Anderson (1984). She remained a prolific artist, issuing albums such as The Songs Carmen Sang (1995), The Songs Sinatra Sang (1996), Romantic Ellington (1999), Something Cool (2001), I Never Went Away (2001), and Whisper Sweet (2003). Carol Sloane’s third Duke Ellington tribute, Dearest Duke, was issued in 2007 and followed by We’ll Meet Again (2010) and Live at Birdland (2022). In 2016, she was inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame. Carol Sloane, who had toured internationally and appeared on some of the world’s most prestigious stages, retired due to poor health. She died at the age of 85 on January 23, 2023, from complications of a stroke she had suffered two years earlier.

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