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Alma Carroll

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@ Weeksville Heritage Center

Alma Carroll

Description

Alma Carroll, the wife of vocalist Joe Carroll, speaks about her jazz experience. She was born in Ashville, North Carolina but has lived in Brooklyn for 56 years. Carroll came to Brooklyn after leaving Harlem in 1954 and describes her transition. Carroll offers perspectives on the differences between Brooklyn and Manhattan at the time. With respect to jazz culture, Carroll describes how jazz in Brooklyn has a different atmosphere and that sites like Sista’s Place offer a different experience that attracts people from Manhattan. She talks about some of the jazz places people frequented, such as the Baby Grand (both in Brooklyn and Manhattan), Blue Coronet, and the Arlington Inn, and the Tip Top Inn. Carroll also comments on the Bedford-Stuyvesant / Crown Heights sense of community, then and now. Carroll describes how she met her husband Joe, detailing their initial encounters, and how they got married in the 1970s. At the time, he was working with Dizzy Gillespie and Woody Herman. Carroll tells that he could not find a gig in Brooklyn and comments on African-Americans’ relationship to jazz music as something that they do not take ownership of. In fact, she points out that white people can tell her more about Joe Carroll than she knows. She mentions some of the artists who performed at the jazz sites in Brooklyn and Manhattan, such as Wild Bill Davis, Big Maybelle, and the Berry Brothers. Carroll also talks about performers who came from South or North Carolina. Carroll concludes the...
Type:
Oral History
Contributors:
Willard JenkinsJennifer ScottKaitlyn GreenidgeWeeksville Heritage Center
Created Date:
August 23, 2010
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From Collection

Lost Jazz Shrines

Record Contributed By

Weeksville Heritage Center