hollywood: Carmen McRae

Thursday, 28 June 2012

Carmen McRae

Even almost a decade after her death in 1994, Carmen McRae remains an institution unto herself. Born in Harlem, she studied piano as a child and her parents encouraged her to go classical, but the world of jazz and what she called the Great American Songbook was beckoning. For a time she also wrote songs, and as a teenager she came to the attention of one of the power couples of the jazz world