Carole Martin © Howard A. Gitelson

Carole Martin was destined to a career as an entertainer, growing up in Glencoe, MN, in a family of musicians and circus performers. A self-taught singer, she notes that “I was brought up on singers like Tony Bennett, and I loved Nancy Wilson and Irene Kral.” In high school she sang in the choir and, with two sisters, sang “Canadian Sunset” on a Faribault radio station. Married at sixteen and divorced with three children a few years later, she started out singing pop songs at Minneapolis clubs like Mr. Nibs, but was more attracted to the jazz tunes she heard at the adjacent Duffy’s. She worked nights on end in her 20s at Twin Cities clubs such as the White House, Harbor Room, King Solomon's Mines and the Point, receiving her on-the-job training from such local legends as Percy Hughes. Her first recordings, For the First Time (1965) and The Music That Makes Me Dance (1968), were well received at the time, but it would be years before she returned to the studio.

When regular club worked petered out in the 80s, she turned to selling mens’ sportswear. She made a brief return to music in the early 90s, performing on the stages of earlier incarnations of the Artists Quarter and Dakota, but quit a few years later following the death of son Dale. But gradually—and with the memory of Dale’s encouragement ("You've got to sing, Mom”), Carole resumed public appearances, special engagements and finally a return to the recording studio for her first release in 35 years. Pieces of Dreams was an immediate success, described by Jon Bream (Star Tribune) as “the finest jazz-vocal CD from the Twin Cities in many a moon.” [Click here for a Jazz Police review]

Kenny Horst © Andrea Canter

Fortunately Carole did not wait another three decades between recordings, releasing Songs From My Heart last November. [Click here for a Jazz Police review] With the Artists Quarter stage serving as sound studio, this recording has the intimacy of a small bar, a place where you can sit back and listen as the storyteller weaves her tales of love lost and found. Noted New York-based pianist Rick Germanson, an AQ favorite who appears on Songs…, "Carole could definitely work anywhere in the world. What she has that puts her above a lot of singers is that she always tells a story. Some singers I work with don't even hear what they're singing. Carole's honesty comes through in her music, and obviously she knows how to entertain a crowd." Adds the great saxophonist Irv Williams, also on her CD as well as a regular member of her quartet, "Carole has all the tools. She has looks, a great personality, and nobody can sell a song better than she can.”

Now in her mid-60s with six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, Carole Martin sings not because she needs to support her family but because it brings her joy. And the years off stage seem to have only deepened her talent. In a recent interview for the Star Tribune, she noted, “I really found later in life, and maybe it's because of everything I've lived through, that I became the singer that I really wanted to become, and that's one reason I started recording again."

Phil Aaron © Howard A. Gitelson

Young singers today, while often displaying the technical perfections of talent untarnished by time or adversity, typically lack the depth of passion that comes with the experience of life itself, the experience that turns lyric into prose, dreams into memories, the mantle of the wise storyteller. This is a mantle that Carole Martin wears well as she sings Songs From My Heart, tales of loss and regret, stories of hope and determination, and memories that haunt and glow.

And the glow is just a bit brighter in live performance—this is a not-to-be-missed show at the AQ, August 3-4, when Carole will be joined by the most sublime trio of Phil Aaron on piano, Tom Lewis on bass, and Kenny Horst on drums.

The Artists Quarter is located in the lower level of the Hamm Building in downtown St. Paul (at St. Peter and 7^th Place); call (651) 292-1359; www.artistsquarter.com. Pieces of Dreams and Songs From My Heart are available from the AQ or local and online record outlets. Quotes from the Star Tribune (November 2005).