Maze has just released her sixth album at the age of 107. It's that humor, a sense of optimism and her beloved piano that have buttressed and comforted this centenarian through an often difficult life. She offers me a whiskey or a cognac - along with a hearty laugh as it's 10:30 in the morning. From her flowered balcony, she has a view of the Eiffel Tower. PARIS - Colette Maze welcomes me warmly into her apartment on the 14th floor of a building overlooking the Seine River. Her son first arranged for her performances to be recorded when she was in her 90s. There is a $5 music charge, but no minimum.Colette Maze, now 107, began playing the piano at age 5 and defied the social conventions of her day to embrace it as a profession rather than as a pastime. Miss Carmichael plays at Hanratty's, Second Avenue at 91st Street (289-3200), tonight and tomorrow starting at 9. Her two-week ''gig'' at Hanratty's is one more milestone for Miss Carmichael: it is the first time that she has ever had an engagement in a jazz club longer than two nights. Her record finally came out a few weeks ago, and she decided to take two weeks off from Disneyland to come to New York to promote the record. Miss Carmichael went back to Disneyland, where she plays seven hours a night, five days a week, and does club dates on Fridays and Saturdays. Eldridge listened and concluded, ''You've made your point.'' He phoned Dick Wellstood, who was playing at Hanratty's, and Tommy Flanagan at Bradley's and asked them to let her sit in. She told him she was a stride-piano player. While she was in New York, Miss Carmichael went to Jimmy Ryan's and introduced herself to Roy Eldridge, who was leading the band there. 'Get a group together,' he said, 'and make another album.' '' 'Whom have you played with?' I told him I always played solo.
When he met me, he totally lost interest. I sent it to a producer with a big record label who loved it and told me to come to New York. But I picked the tunes, and I produced the album. ''He seemed refreshed by someone playing what she liked and amazed at someone my age playing stride piano.'' ''I told him 'because I like it,' '' Miss Carmichael recalled. ''Why are you playing this kind of music?'' he asked. Later Harold Jones, who had been Count Basie's drummer for five years, stopped to listen. 'There is no problem.' '' 'Why Are You Playing This?' 'You've got time, you swing, and you play the right changes,' he told me. ''They'd tell me, 'You're just a ragtime player.' But Jackie Coon, a well-known studio musician in Los Angeles, who was playing trumpet in a big band at Disneyland, heard me and asked to play with me. ''Young traditional jazz musicians never encouraged me,'' she said.
#Plaaying piano woman professional#
She moved to Disneyland in 1977 to play on a street outside a cafe, and there she got her first word of encouragement from a professional musician.
I was being influenced by the whole period sound of the 1920's and early 30's.'' People were giving me period records -the Boswell Sisters, the Rhythm Boys. ''I wore out the album, and then I heard records by Bennie Moten's band with Count Basie, early Bing Crosby. Miss Carmichael recalled that she had heard her first Fats Waller album when she was 21. Why don't you see if you can get a job there?''īy 1972 she had three jobs a day (and night) seven days (and nights) a week ''because people had said it was hard to get music jobs, so I took everything that came along.'' A friend, listening to her, said, ''There's this drunk on a boat in Newport Harbor playing piano. And while her contemporaries were listening to the Beatles and the Beach Boys, she was at the piano playing rag. Later, at California State College, she majored first in German, then in psychology. As soon as I'd learned it, I played it for my grandfather, took the $50 and quit taking lessons.'' ''I told my piano teacher that I wanted to learn it, but she refused to teach it to me.
''My grandfather said he'd give $50 to any of his grandchildren who could play 'Maple Leaf Rag,' '' Miss Carmichael said. It began, Miss Carmichael said, when she was 12 years old in Lynwood, Calif., and had been struggling through piano lessons for four years. Where does a woman in her 20's, born and raised in California with no jazz background, get the insight to play with the style and power of the great black Harlem ''ticklers'' of the 1920's? Grandfather the Inspiration That's not the only mystery about Judy Carmichael. ''Where does she get the muscles?'' he repeated.
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