Eugene Holley Jr. | Hot House Jazz, November 2022

Miami-born, Los Angeles-based vocalist, composer and lyricist Carmen Lundy appears in two shows in her old New York stomping grounds. On Dec. 16, she is going to perform selections from her new Grammy-nominated CD, Fade To Black, at Aaron Davis Hall. The concert, presented through a grant from Chamber Music America, features Carmen backed by pianist/keyboardist Julius Rodriguez, keyboardist/organist Matthew Whitaker, bassists Ben Williams and brother Curtis Lundy, drummer Terreon Gully, and guitarist Andrew Renfroe. On the 17th and 18th, Carmen leads a quartet at The Side Door Jazz Club in Old Lyme, Conn.

All of those musicians, with bassist Kenny Davis instead of Ben, play on Carmen’s recording, along with trumpeters Giveton Gelin and Wallace Roney Jr. and tenor saxophonists Camille Thurman and Morgan Guerin. The CD’s 11 compositions, all by Carmen, reflect what she went through during the pandemic: the dying of loved ones, the isolation of lockdown, police brutality, racial unrest, and the spiritual power of love.

“I could not really ignore the horror of someone being murdered on live TV,” Carmen says. “I couldn’t ignore watching people explode into the streets behind [those atrocities] when we were deep into a pandemic, or having to say goodbye to a young brother who didn’t get the vaccine … having to say goodbye to his sister, having someone dear and close be diagnosed with cancer, or having to address the political social issues. So I decided not to look the other way.”

The selections on Fade To Black – the follow-up to her 2021 Grammy-nominated album Modern Ancestors – are the musical manifestations of what Carmen saw and felt during the pandemic. They range from the elegiac opening number, “Shine a Light,” the bouncy “So Amazing,” and the rhythmically complex “Lonesome Blue Butterfly” to “Daughter of the Universe,” a quiet storm praise song to the power of the sacred feminine. “Ain’t I Human” is a passionate, Coltranesque composition inspired by freedom fighter Sojourner Truth’s suffrage era speech, and the powerful, evocative “Say Her Name” is a mournful dedication to the parents of the children and young adults killed by the police.

Though Carmen’s cool and caressing contralto is the beacon that shines through on this recording, it is her work as a composer that gives her music the extra dimension that is not heard when a singer is merely singing standards. “The compositional part of my expression as a jazz vocalist is the most important part of my narrative right now,” Carmen declares. “I want the jazz audience to ask singers to include music of this time in their repertoire.” Carmen draws compositional inspiration from Mary Lou Williams, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Stevie Wonder.

Carmen started playing piano at age 6. She and her brother sang in church with her mother, who also performed in her family group, The Apostolic Singers. “Curtis and I are eleven months apart,” Carmen remembers. “We benefited from going to church seven days a week, and from having a mother who sang beautifully for her entire life with the same five, six, seven or eight women.”

Carmen originally enrolled in the University of Miami to study opera, but switched to jazz at the urging of pianist Dave Roitstein, who is currently the Jazz Program Director at California Institute of the Arts. Carmen was in school with several future jazz stars including Hiram Bullock, Bobby Watson and Pat Metheny. After years of gigging in Miami, Carmen moved to New York in 1978 (she received her degree in 1981), and worked with a wide variety of musicians including Kenny Barron, Ray Barretto, Walter Bishop Jr. and Ronnie Matthews. She released her debut album, Good Morning Kiss, in 1985 and moved to Los Angeles in 1991.
Carmen’s artistry extends beyond music. She is a videographer, and her documentary, Nothing But The Blood: The True Story Of The Apostolic Singers of Miami, premiered at the DTLA Film Festival in Los Angeles in September. She is also a visual artist. Her artwork graces the album cover of Fade To Black, and her sculptures were shown at the Shifting The Narrative: Jazz and Gender Justice exhibit at Detroit’s Carr Center in October. She sees her artwork as a way for her to renew her music with new vitality.
“I think that over time, I needed to get away from the music,” Carmen confesses. “It’s a part of knowing and learning who you are, and coming back fresh.”

Carmen Lundy performs at Aaron Davis Hall on Dec. 16, and at The Side Door Jazz Club on Dec. 17-18.

Carmen Lundy Does It Her Way

Carmen Lundy, an enduring jazz vocalist, graduated from University of Miami with a music degree and moved to New York at age 24 in 1978. During her Jazz Festival set Saturday evening, she told the audience she started out like most jazz singers, covering classic tunes, and she sang a couple of bars from “My Funny Valentine” to make the point.

But, Lundy added, that’s how you start out. In 1985 she composed her first song, “Good Morning Kiss,” which she performed as her encore. Since then, she has focused almost entirely on performing her own work, with her 15th album, Fade to Black, about to be released.  Unlike most jazz vocal performances, only her dedicated fans could mouth the words to her songs, yet Lundy’s passionate renditions and regal presence commanded the audience’s attention.

Love songs made up most of Lundy’s set list, with titles such as “The Island, the Sea, and You,” “Lonesome Blue Butterfly,” “Meant for Each Other,” “So Amazing,” and “Don’t You Know How I Feel.” She added some Latin influence in “Ola de Color” (Spanish for heatwave), gospel in “Burden Down, Burden Down,” and a call for love and compassion in “Kumbaya” (her own jazz composition, not the familiar hymn by the same name).

Lundy also has not shied away from the political, and the new album has a cut titled “Ain’t I Human?” that goes after those who would take away her right to vote and her right to choose. (“Nothing you can do to keep me down.”)

Ably backed by Julius Rodriguez on piano, Andrew Renfroe on guitar, Kenny Davis on bass and Kendrick Scott on drums, Lundy proved why she has been such a major presence for more than 40 years, even without a funny valentine.

A really majestic album from the great Carmen Lundy – one of our favorite jazz singers of all time, and one of the few who’ve just kept growing and changing as the years move on! As with all her recent records, Lundy put the whole thing together herself – a tremendous effort as a composer and arranger, with a musical vision that’s far greater than the early records that won us over in the first place – as Lundy handles piano and guitar next to her vocals – in a lineup that has additional trumpet, tenor, guitar, and organ – plus bass from brother Curtis Lundy, with whom Carmen first recorded at the start. The scope of Lundy’s songs moves far beyond the usual jazz subject matter – deeply personal, and always very powerful – on titles that include “Say Her Name”, “Ain’t I Human”, “Daughter Of The Universe”, “Rest In Peace”, “Privacy”, “Shine A Light”, and “So Amazing”.

“Carmen Lundy peels away the layers to steal away to speak to and for us all.”

In a climate when the calamitous reversal of Roe v Wade spells global consequences and has chilled the temperature dramatically and the forces of arch prejudice far right conservatism raise their ugly heads once again from under the dankest of stones this exploration of ”the rethinking of our personal values, loss, a woman’s right to vote and choice, the invasive culture of modern technology, commitment” is vital. Carmen Lundy peels away the layers to steal away to speak to and for us all.

Unique among top vocalists in that Lundy’s composed songs count as much as the way the American sings them Lundy lives in the real world and writes about what matters, forgetting the trivial but never becoming sententious. She eschews being a poet but is definitely poetic whether framed as a night club jazz singer, concert hall artist or studio creator. And Lundy is a true vocal improviser soaked in the best traditions of the music whether you see it beginning with Betty Carter, or another Carmen – Carmen McRae – or find echoes flickering in the magical sound of Al Jarreau or the emotion of Jimmy Scott distant there and still so true, splice these explored in recent years with Sister Rosetta, the quiet storm and even like Cherisefinding ways of doing what Anita Baker did in another idiom on the far side of the blue horizon.

With the singer who also plays keys, guitar and percussion on an album blessed with velvety studio audio tones are a largely familiar company of players – bassist Kenny Davis, trumpeter Giveton Gelin, tenorist Morgan Guerin, drummer Tank ”Vertical Vision” Gully, Carmen’s brother bassist Curtis Lundy, guitarist Andrew Renfroe and the trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr (son of the great Geri Allen and iconic trumpeter Wallace Roney). Pianist Julius Rodriguez excellent this year on Let Sound Tell All returns and tenorist Camille Thurman, Matthew Whitaker on organ and keys is also here and particularly appealing on the moving rites and rituals of ‘Rest in Peace.’

Best arrangement here is on ‘Reverence’ where the horns riff and rumble within a clever and grooving blend. The core register of Lundy’s voice is higher than Betty Carter’s and the improvising method her own certainly more decorative than Carter extravagant. She is less Betty bebop and yet the bedrock of some bebop lines flicker so well say when Camille Thurman steals a few moments on the ”everybody’s talking” track ‘Reverence.’

The centrepiece anti-racism, anti-misogny political song ‘Ain’t I Human’ with its fabulous initial intervallic vocal leap is direct but quietly and very elegantly delivered. In that softly spoken aspect Lundy achieves twice the impact that any ranting ideologue can. ‘Lonesome Blue Butterfly’ and ‘Say Her Name’ are easily the best songs lyrically the former where the band start to react more prominently and Gully sizzles. Rodriguez is moved to contribute a sensational solo. ‘Say Her Name’ has an oblique personality to its melody that Carmen conveys so well. ‘Rest in Peace’ is perfect in its enchantment at the end. Who can truly prove that they can take a single however mundane note for a walk and make it not just run but fly Carmen can.

I have rarely come across a Jazz album that feels as instantly entertaining and naturally balanced as Carmen Lundy’s 2014 album ‘Soul to Soul’. There are subtle changes in speed and dynamics from song to song that are just different enough to keep us interested and similar enough to preserve the album’s inner harmony. The music is sparsely instrumented, the recordings are tonally accurate, even delicate, with a soft warmth to them. There is a pervasive sense of natural stage depth and dimension throughout. As I am listening to the album on our newly refurbished Technics SL-1310 turntable with its original Shure M75ED entry-level classic, it is difficult to imagine a better sound.

‘Soul to Soul’ is Carmen Lundy’s twelfth music album and, in typical Lundy fashion, features many original recordings. Born in Miami Florida in November 1954, she decided to become a professional singer after joining her local church choir. She was twelve years old at the time. After receiving her BA in music, Lundy moved to New York where she quickly found engagements alongside contemporary Jazz greats. In a career spanning half a century, Lundy has cut her own career path, composing and publishing more than forty original songs along the way, predominantly Vocal Jazz. ‘Soul to Soul’ is in many ways the culmination of her experience and a definite recommendation for soulful nighttime cruises. Enjoy!

It’s hard not to be impressed by the amount of work Carmen Lundy puts in on Modern Ancestors. Not only did she do all the writing, she sings lead on all the tracks, and provides keyboards, guitars and/or percussion on most. And on the bluesy “Burden Down, Burden Down,” where she plays synth, guitar and tambourine, as well as sings, the combination really smokes, with Lundy bringing the harmonic sophistication of jazz to the immediacy of soul singing.

Unlike the widely praised Code Noir, which found her sticking with a straightahead quartet anchored by the redoubtable Patrice Rushen, Modern Ancestors relies on an assortment of studio players. While that allows her more stylistic range, it leaves the album with a less consistent sound. Immediately following the rhythmically charged Cubano groove of “Ola De Calor” comes “Flowers And Candles,” a socially conscious ballad that blends awkward lyrics with a dreamily meandering melody. One has heat and focus, the other good intentions, but lukewarm sentiment.

The best moments come when Lundy ignores structure and delivers her lyrics with a line that seems less composed than improvised. “Jazz On TV” is a case in point, with a whimsical lyric imagining a world in which jazz is as popular as chat shows. There’s a lovely groove, and her harmonized backing vocals recall the soulful side of Joni Mitchell. But it’s the way her rhythmically fluid, tonally adventurous melody evokes a saxophone solo that makes her dream of popular jazz seem so appealing.

Earlier, singer/songwriter Carmen Lundy made her debut as a leader at The Hollywood Bowl (she’d sung at ‘Playboy’ a few years back as a guest of Terri Lyne Carrington’s “Mosaic Project”). Carmen brought the finest Jazz vocal set of the day, pulling from her 15-album catalog plus three new songs from her October-slated CD, Fade to Black. Of those three selections, the women’s rights meditation “Ain’t I Human” was an attention grabber given the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe vs. Wade just two days prior. Backstage at the Bowl, Lundy shared, “When the pandemic began, I said I wasn’t going to write anything. Then stuff started happening, one thing after the other. I was surprised I was writing about stuff BEFORE it manifested. I wrote ‘Ain’t I Human’ about a year ago inspired by Harriet Tubman’s ‘Ain’t I a Woman’ speech concerning women’s right to vote. I figured when this audience hears what I’m singing, maybe they’ll think I wrote it yesterday for this festival. But I didn’t. Jazz vocals tend to reflect another time. A lot of the repertoire we sing was mostly written by white men of the past. I want to sing about the present that has to do with the future. 16 albums later, it may have taken me longer than one might expect, but I’m very happy with the transition of artist perspective that has happened for me across the years.”

By Dee Dee McNeil
October 1, 2022

Carmen Lundy is one of those productive people who is highly creative, gifted and artistic. Born November 1st in Miami, Florida, it didn’t take little Carmen long to discover music tantalized her ears. From day one, there was music in their house and she had a song in her heart. At Age four, her tiny fingers plucked out melodies on the household upright piano. Carmen’s mother was also full of song and a role model as the lead singer in a gospel group called “The Apostolic Singers.” Her auntie, Emma Teresa Miller, was a pianist for that gospel group, and she inspired Carmen to love the instrument. In fact, Carmen has always found value in lessons from the ancestors.

“My mother is the oldest of fifteen children and I am the oldest of seven siblings. When she wasn’t doing the eight-hour job-thing, my mother would do housekeeping on the side. The lady that she did that for was a classical piano player. That lady offered me piano lessons without having to pay for them. Mrs. Leslie Bloss was my first piano teacher. She also was Curtis’s first teacher,” Carmen referred to her famous brother, jazz bassist Curtis Lundy.

“I took lessons from Mrs. Bloss until I was about eight or nine; maybe ‘til the age of ten. From age twelve to about fourteen I studied piano with Mr. Poznanski. But pianist, Emma Miller, my mother’s sister, was throwing down the gospel stuff from the time I was four or five. That’s probably where I picked up playing piano, from watching her. I never studied with her. I was just amazed at her facility. You know, people always ask me who are your influences? And I have to say, a lot of them are people the world doesn’t know. They were the ones who showed me the music informally. My grandfather played guitar. My grandmother played the organ. An in-law named Joe Louis was somewhere in between B.B. King and George Benson. He had a mellow sound, but he could also ‘rip” on guitar. He would electrify the whole room. We were church going folks, and music was the salvation and expression that got us through another day,” Carmen told me about her musically inspired, youthful years.

After graduating from the University of Miami and moving from Miami to New York City, for nearly eighteen years Carmen Lundy acted as a clinician at the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Program. Betty Carter brought her Jazz Ahead program to the Kennedy Center in 1998. It has helped launch the careers of several of today’s stars, including Cyrus Chestnut, Kendrick Scott, Jason Moran, Jazzmeia Horn, Nate Smith, Arco Iris Sandoval, and Matthew Whitaker, among others.1 I asked Carmen Lundy about that exciting time in her life.

“Well, you know Curtis, my brother, gave that program the name Jazz Ahead while he was working with Betty Carter. She started the program at Brooklyn Academy of Music, up the street from where she lived. Dr. Billy Taylor became the Artistic Advisor of Jazz at the Kennedy Center and this was around the mid to late nineties. So, Dr. Taylor invited Betty Carter to bring her Jazz Ahead Program into the Kennedy Center in April of 1998.2 Betty Carter passed away in September of 1998. She had just gotten her foot in the door of the Kennedy Center, and she was gone. So, my brother, Curtis Lundy, came in and became the helm of Jazz Ahead that year. Curtis recommended me, because I think it made sense that there should be a female representation, since Betty had started it, and it just so happened that I was also a jazz vocalist.”

Of course, it also helped that Carmen Lundy had graduated from the University of Miami where she received her B.M. degree in studio music and jazz. She started out as an opera major but changed direction and became the first jazz vocal major at the University of Miami. Ms. Lundy had also been performing since her college days, first in Miami and then at jazz hot spots all over New York City. She reads music and is accomplished in composing and arranging. Not to mention, at the time of her appointment, she had record releases to her credit. Carmen’s credentials made her the perfect fit as faculty for Betty Carter’s program.

“Dr. Taylor was smart. He knew that the Kennedy Center people needed that credential like he had, so he invited Dr. Nathan Davis from the University of Pittsburgh to oversee the Jazz Ahead Program, along with me, Curtis Fuller and George Cables who were all part of the faculty. Then, the question became, where are we going to get these kids from? Where will we get these musicians? Betty Carter was handpicking everybody, so what do we do? We started a submissions program. Everybody was submitting from all over the world, and they were sending their cassettes with their bios and all that good stuff. We would sit there with boxes of cassettes delivered to our front door. We would have to listen to hours upon hours of submissions. In fact, that’s how I met pianist, Julius Rodriguez who’s on my CD and trumpeter Giveton Gelin and Matthew Whitaker on organ and keyboards,” Carmen credited some of the young musicians from the Jazz Ahead program as being part of her new album. Speaking of her new release, Lundy has composed and arranged all the material on her latest album, “Fade to Black.” She opens with “Shine A Light,” dedicated to the first responders and hospital workers who showed their selfless bravery during a time of the COVID worldwide health crisis. Her opening melody is catchy and has a few challenging intervals thrown-in for good measure. Melodically, these unexpected intervals do indeed shine a light on Ms. Lundy’s composing skills and vocal range. Carmen Lundy has a comfortable way of mixing straight ahead and contemporary jazz. This first song is one of my favorites. “So Amazing” is very contemporary and Lundy’s voice uses its full range to sing her message with joy and competence. “Daughter of the Universe,” has a blues groove and a strong bass line delivered by Curtis Lundy on the introduction. The bass line captures my interest immediately. Inside the song, Kenny Davis plays bass. I enjoy the way Carmen doubles her vocals in specifics places and celebrates her alto voice range. This song and the one that follows, “Ain’t I Human” were inspired by Harriet Tubman’s famous “Ain’t I A Woman” speech that reflected Tubman’s struggle for freedom and equality, not only as an African American, but as a woman in a man-controlled world. The tune “Reverence” is another one of my favorites and is a referendum on privacy. Lundy’s lyrics float like colorful, revolutionary flags above chords that set a groove pattern beneath the flapping cloth of truth. This is music with a message and Carmen Lundy is a woman with a purpose and a strong creative opinion.

Lundy’s latest recording is her sixteenth album release. She admits, getting record deals has been an up-hill struggle. Carmen Lundy shared her personal determination to succeed in the music business.

“It was 1978 when I moved to New York City. All the guys I went to University of Miami with were finishing school and moving to NYC. So, I did the same thing. But my goal was to make records. The first year I got there, I sang every weekend in NY for fifty dollars a night at a club called Jazz Mania. It was a loft thing and a gig for everybody. I met Kenny Barron there, Walter Bishop Jr., and an endless list of players. Day after day, I went to every major record company that was making jazz records. I submitted to every, last one of them and every one of them turned me down. As a matter of fact, the third demo tape I submitted to Columbia Records turned out to be my first record. They gave me a licensing deal. But they originally turned down the same record that they could have put out and helped me to establish myself in the 80’s.”

Carmen explained, “What happened was, Father Peter O’Brien was managing Mary Lou Williams for most of her career. Mary Lou Williams passed in 1981. I saw Mary Lou perform in summer of 1979 and in 1980. Father O’Brien read a Village Voice cover article about me in 1983 and he contacted me. He was doing a concert to honor Mary Lou Williams with Jon Faddis participating and he asked me to sing some of her music. After that, he took a shine to me and became my manager. So, Father O’Brien handled the whole thing with Columbia. He was the one who was smart enough to know what to do when they passed on me as an artist. He was the one who contacted Herb Wong at Black Hawk and that’s how I got that ‘Good Morning Kiss’ record released, through Father O’Brien. It was a distribution deal and stayed on the Billboard chart for weeks.”

With the guidance of Father Peter O’Brien, Carmen Lundy’s career blossomed.

“In part of Mary Lou’s Will, she requested that the legacy of her music be passed on to children. Father O’Brien asked me to teach Mary Lou’s Mass to young people. He was then the Chaplain at Fordham University. I went into the Parochial school in Harlem and hand-picked the voices to teach them Mary Lou’s Mass. I also worked with the Harlem Boys Choir and the New York Boys Choir. I acted as the soloist for anything that required a soloist in Mary Lou’s Mass, and I performed Mary Lou’s Mass for a good twelve to fifteen years. When Father O’Brien hooked up with Geri Allen, then Geri and I started doing the mass together. Before Geri, Marian McPartland was at the piano chair when we did it at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., with David Baker conducting. Mary Lou wrote two pieces based on Martin Luther King speeches. One of them is called, I have a Dream, which we all know. The other one she wrote is called ‘Tell Them Not to Talk Too Long.’ Those two, Father O’Brien commissioned me to write the chorale arrangements. I did, and we performed them in Los Angeles with the Master Chorale.

I asked Carmen Lundy what made her leave New York and relocate to Los Angeles.

“I moved to Los Angeles in the early nineties. I was burned out. The Crack thing, that epidemic, had decimated the New York Community. My manager at the time booked me on the Duke Ellington Broadway “Sophisticated Ladies” show that was Phyllis Hyman’s role. They had a National company and they had a European company. I ended up doing the European tour. That was a great way to know and live Duke Ellington’s music. The first run was twenty-nine shows without a day off. I had a six-month contract. I did make a record for a label called Arabasque. It was an independent label. When the record came out, it was around the same time I had moved to Los Angeles.”

“I came out to L.A. to visit my friends who had made their big hit in Ain’t Misbehavin’ with Nell Carter, Ken Page, Amelia McQueen, Andre DeShields, Charlayne Woodard, all the cast from Ain’t Misbehavin’. They were all coming back and forth, trying to get into film and TV out here. A lot of them did well with film and television. While visiting, I got sent on an audition by my agent in New York for a TV show and I got the part. They gave me a car, they gave me an apartment and a nice piece of change. So, I said, oh – L.A. isn’t so bad after all. Twenty-something years later, I’m still here.”

Although the television pilot Carmen shot never materialized, she settled into West Coast living and has continued to be productive as both a singer, actress and a visual artist. She also produces short films and in September she debuted her film, “Nothing But the Blood – The True Story of the Apostolic Singers of Miami,” at the Regal Theater in downtown Los Angeles. It’s a story of her Miami musical family.

As a visual artist, she has painted and designed several of her album covers, including this recent “Fade to Black” release. Her extraordinary art and multi-media sculptures will be featured as part of the upcoming “Shifting the Narrative: Jazz and Gender Justice” exhibit, opening at Detroit’s Carr Center on October 14, 2022. You can check out an eye-opening gallery of her visual art at her website: www.carmenlundy.com.

As our conversation wound down, Carmen Lundy offered these thoughtful words of wisdom.

“The beautiful thing is the value of a mentor. Having Betty Carter as a mentor, ok?! My mother as a mentor! Once you get here, it’s the result of your standing on somebody’s shoulders. Generations that are moving forward must regard and respect their ancestors for giving them everything that they can. It benefits us and enriches us. I just have to say, the value of what we do is on the shoulders of those who have walked this walk and carved this path for us.”

True to her own counsel, Carmen Lundy is doing the work, creating the art and offering opportunity to youthful talent by example, by teaching, by employing and by believing, as ‘the ancestors’ did, in the evolution and support of our blossoming, new generations.