Carrie Smith
b. 25 August 1941, Fort Gaines, Georgia, USA. Smith appeared at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival as a member of a New Jersey church choir, but her solo professional career did not take off until the early '70s. An appearance with Dick Hyman and the New York Jazz Repertory Orchestraat Carnegie Hall in 1974 should have alerted audiences to her exceptional qualities, but for the rest of the decade she was much better received in Europe than in the USA. Her tours of festivals and concert halls were sometimes as a single, but also in company with NYJRO, Tyree Glenn, the World's Greatest Jazz Band and others. Smith's style is rooted in the blues and gospel but her repertoire is wide, encompassing many areas of 20th-century popular music. Her voice is deep and powerful and she is especially effective in live performances. Although her reputation has grown throughout the '80s, she still remains far less well-known than her considerable talent warrants.