Carole Creveling is a woman of her word. Just as she promised her sister (see previous post), singer Creveling (not her last name nowadays) called me this morning. And make that "erstwhile singer," for her 1955 LP "Here Comes Carole Creveling vol. 1"---there was never a v.2--- and a 45 from the next year mark just about the only professional entertainment activity for Carole, who was still a teenager when she recorded the album. Along with "Whatever Happened To CC," the other question mark hanging over my head for the past year-or-so is how the making of the disc came to pass, i.e. an unknown singer on a one-off record label emanating from a sleepy Southern California beach resort (she continues to reside in SoCal) that still managed to receive a major and favorable review in the bigtime music mag Down Beat.
Carole explained to me that the album was the brainchild of a couple who owned a music store in Laguna Beach, where Carole lived, and sensed that she not only possessed great potential as a singer but also realized that at age eighteen she was quite ready for a trip into the recording studio. As to exactly what studio it was in L.A. where the album was recorded is lost in the dim recesses of time and Carole's memory. My guess is the historic Radio Recorders. But she was more-or-less aware that the musicians who accompanied her were important studio players, especially Jimmy Wyble and Bill Baker from the album session and Lou Levy, Chuck Flores and Max Bennett on the followup single. She knew, for example, that Levy was an accompanist for major singers in addition to his career as a solo artist.
Meanwhile, she is deeply flattered at all the attention her recording is finally receiving. All in due time, I suppose, is the moral here. One surmises that she still sings around the house, but much like Jo Stafford told me one time, Carole said she wouldn't dream of singing again in public without a great deal of woodshedding (not that she's even contemplating doing so). Stafford also left the business in favor of home and family. In Creveling's case, however, she'd barely got her feet wet in the entertainment profession before walking away from it.
Talking with this very pleasant and charming woman on the phone this morning was just like chatting with someone I've known all my life. She could not have been more charming and accommodating.
---Bill Reed
Listen to "Now We Know" from "Here Comes Carole Creveling" now available on SSJ Records (Japan)
