Farewell to Carol Sloane, who was a jazz staple at Raleigh’s Frog and Nightgown
On the night of her big comeback, Carol Sloane took the stage in a small Raleigh night club sandwiched between a barber shop and a laundromat — a dark and smoky room where the booze was bring-your-own.
At the peak of her fame, the jazz singer with the breathy voice had played the prestigious festival at Newport, or opened at the famed Village Vanguard in New York.
But this was 1969, and she was a long way from Greenwich Village. After two years of self-imposed retirement, brought on by shuttered jazz clubs and shifting fashions, Sloane found herself playing a gig on Medlin Drive at a newly opened club in a West Raleigh strip center.
The Frog and Nightgown.
At 32, Sloane intended to play there for a week. Instead, she became a Frog regular for the next seven years, following the club from Medlin and Dixie Trail to its more memorable spot underneath what was then called Cameron Village.
And as a cabaret singer in the era of Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker, she accidentally revived her career in Raleigh as the unlikely club drew jazz giants looking for the newest chapter: Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and George Shearing’s entire orchestra.
‘Sophisticated Lady’
Margaret Barbour, better known as Beetle Barbour as the singer for Raleigh’s Hard Times Jazz Band, recalled seeing Sloane while Barbour worked as a waitress, probably before she was even 21.
“I remember being so dazzled because she would show up in a fur coat,” she said. “She was kind of being retro even at the time.”
Sloane died last month in Massachusetts at 85, long gone from Raleigh or her 1980s haunt in Chapel Hill, where she also hosted a WUNC radio show titled “Sophisticated Lady.”
But the Frog and Nightgown stint that so refreshed her career and kept her recording late in life proved pivotal enough for a mention in her New York Times tribute:
”Jazz clubs were closing all over the country in the late 1960s,” wrote Times reporter Penelope Green, “and opening one in 1968 was perhaps overly optimistic, particularly in a town wrestling with segregation — the Frog and Nightgown was often targeted by the Ku Klux Klan — but it thrived for a time, and so did Ms. Sloane.”
In a 1976 N&O profile, Sloane recalled growing up over a barbershop in Providence, R.I., and not being able to read a note of music — which remained true all her life. Her mother moved the family to a country house, and inside a rickety barn, Sloane and her sister found an old piano to bang on.
She married a disc jockey, tired of the housewife existence and divorced her husband, singing in what she called a “Mafia joint” until getting spotted for Larry Elgart’s big band.
‘It’s rich’
She took her musical cues from Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and especially Carmen McRae. And on her first night at the Frog, N&O critic Bill Morrison wrote, “It’s a New York voice, having quality and great emotion. The singer reweaves the complex show tunes into unforgettable torch ballads, and she sings the blues with a sophisticated taste that hushes an audience with bittersweet beauty. ... It’s not a big voice, but it’s rich.”
Morrison described her as suddenly taken with a small Southern college town, tired of New York and a profession that took more than it gave back. Raleigh’s more seasoned fans will recall she frequently played with pianist Paul Montgomery, also known as “Uncle Paul” on his WRAL kids’ show.
And this being Raleigh, she presented a more intimate performer than a New York audience might enjoy, especially for Annette Hoskins, who was a student at Sanderson High School when she got invited to play two songs onstage with Sloane.
Hoskins still recalls that night in 1972, stepping into the dark night club to play “Fly Me to the Moon” alongside someone who was used to playing alongside the likes by Oscar Peterson.
“I was overwhelmed,” she said. “I’d never been in a nightclub before. It was dark. I was nervous. It was such an opportunity.”
Decades later, Barbour still used Sloane to set the song list for her Pandora mix, heartened that her youthful inspiration had kept singing.
“All I want is to someday be remembered for having done my job a little bit better or perhaps a good deal better than a lot of people running around,” Sloane told the N&O in her Frog days. “I want to perpetuate the art of the popular song — and the singer’s job is to sing those lyrics so they can be understood. The problem with the Joni Mitchells today is you can’t understand what the hell they’re singing.’’
For Sloane, who sang with her eyes closed, holding a green handkerchief in her hand, Raleigh kept those lyrics playing through another chorus.
This story was originally published February 12, 2023 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Farewell to Carol Sloane, who was a jazz staple at Raleigh’s Frog and Nightgown."