A Jazz Girl Turns Author
The renowned stride pianist and vocalist Judy Carmichael will host the launch of “Swinger! A Jazz Girl’s Adventures From Hollywood to Harlem” on Sunday in Sag Harbor.
“Swinger!” is a collection of autobiographical essays that tell the story of “a California surfer girl who dreamed of being a spy” but instead became a jazz musician, with no small number of detours, or adventures, along the way. Beauty queen, actress, pool shark, quarterback — Ms. Carmichael, who lives in Sag Harbor, has been all of these.
“I had been asked by an editor about 20 years ago to write a book,” the musician said last week. “She’d seen me in concert. I tell funny stories, and she said if I can be as funny in print as onstage she’d publish me.”
The idea was planted then, she said, but “Over the years, I started thinking I wanted to write a book that isn’t just funny, but has more meaning to me.” Funny or not — and it often can be — the life of a working musician is a unique experience. “I wanted to give insight into those of us who just keep doing it,” she said, “who aren’t rich and famous but aren’t just a bar band. Jazz is very sophisticated music that’s difficult to play. It takes experience and hard work. There’s a lot of us who are playing at a high level, and we just keep doing it.” The book, she said, “is very funny, but also has serious bits.”
Ms. Carmichael recalls performing for the likes of Richard Gere, Rod Stewart, and Robert Redford; a long lunch with another Long Island pianist — Billy Joel — and hors d’oeuvres with Yoko Ono. “Swinger!” also includes tales of trudging through a Hawaiian rainforest with the late jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, auditions as a rodeo rider, and getting a kiss from Paul Newman. She discusses “Jazz Inspired,” her National Public Radio program and podcast, too.
She admires the work of the travel writer Bill Bryson, who “really writes about culture around the different places he visits. I wanted to give a sense of the culture of jazz that existed when I was coming up,” in the late 1970s and ’80s, “my early years in jazz. What existed and how different it is now. I wanted to give a sense of the culture of California that I grew up in, and how different it was from the New York of that time, when I went there. How that journey informed me and contemporaries of mine.”
The launch party for “Swinger!” will be a first for the artist. “I’ve never done a book reading or party,” she said. “I’ll read a little bit, talk about the book, why I wrote it, what I was hoping to accomplish, and play a tune or two. And we’ll all drink champagne and have hors d’oeuvres.”
Ms. Carmichael said that creating “Swinger!” was great fun, and led to the discovery of a new passion. “A lot of people say it’s a huge catharsis, and they discover all these things about themselves,” she said of new authors. “For me, it was how much I love writing, how I want to continue writing. My place as a woman in the world, and specifically the jazz world, is something I hadn’t thought about as much, because I was looking back on a long career, so far. I was always the only woman. Now, there are many more women playing jazz. That journey, I hope, is interesting for people to read about as well.”
Reservations are required to attend the launch party for “Swinger! A Jazz Girl’s Adventures from Hollywood to Harlem,” Sunday at 4 p.m. at the American Hotel, and can be made by calling 631-725-3535.