Sandy Carroll Takes a Musical
Journey on New CD, Last Southern Belle, Coming February 19 on Catfood
Records
Produced by Multi-Grammy-Winner
Jim Gaines and Recorded in Tennessee & Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Songs Reflect Carroll’s Experiences as a Southern Woman
EL PASO, TX – Catfood Records announces a February 19, 2016,
release date for Last Southern Belle, the new album from
celebrated singer/songwriting Sandy Carroll. Produced by Sandy’s husband,
multi-Grammy-winner Jim Gaines, Last Southern Belle was recorded
primarily at Bessie Blue Studio in West Tennessee, with additional recording
done at Nutthouse Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The CD includes backing
from a host of all-star musicians, including legendary bassist David Hood,
guitarist Will McFarlane and drummer Steve Potts. Several songs on the new CD were co-written with Mark
Narmore who is in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and has penned several big
hits (“That’s What I Love About Sunday,” “Moon Over Georgia,” “Like There Ain’t
No Yesterday”).
Sandy Carroll will support the release of Last Southern
Belle with a series of shows, including Sunday, February 21, at Huey's
Midtown in Memphis (4-7PM) to kick-off the album’s release, with other dates
expected to be announced in Nashville, Muscle Shoals and the Midwest.
“This is
the music of a journey: from universal pain and loss (‘Headin’ Out on Empty,’
‘The Nothing in Your Eyes’) to hope (‘Driving Toward the Sun’) and laughter
(‘Tattoo That I Can’t Undo’), but mostly this music is about the South,”
Carroll says about the new album’s songs.
“I was a
‘Southern Belle’ in training,” she recalls about her upbringing. “I didn’t know
it at the time, of course. I could only see through the eyes of a child. I
never graduated to full Southern Belle-hood, but those who did were the women
of the ‘50s and early ‘60s - before eyes were opened … before civil rights …
before equal rights for women. It was unhip to be a Southern Belle after
that. There were more important things than matching pearls and beauty
pageants. We were on the front lines.
“I saw
this through the eyes of a young girl-woman - the shame of the South’s
injustice toward an innocent race of people and a nation’s indifference toward
gender equality. Both were simply born that way and it was unfair.”
Sandy
Carroll grew up in West Tennessee, and once she left her childhood home to
pursue the dream of being a musician and songwriter, her perceptions changed.
“For the rest of my life I saw the world through the eyes of a musician,” she
remembers. “I saw no color, no sex, no lifestyle - what mattered is if you were
GOOD … that is, if you could PLAY. I have lived a lot of places, traveled
and toured, learned and accepted the beautiful differences of human
beings. I was always a proud Southerner. I would defend the good things
of the South, the creative, warm, funny traditions (as told in the songs
‘Southland Rules,’ ‘Family Reunion Day’) that are soulful and enlightened.
I had no defense for the bad things; there is none.”
After 30
years away from home, Sandy Carroll returned to her childhood rural area to
live. “I was stunned to find some things were the same and I was delighted to
find that some things were the same,” she says. “The voices of the gospel still
ring loud and clear (‘Hallelujah Hill’) and the nearby Shiloh battlefield of
the Civil War remains untouched and spiritually haunted (‘The Boys of Shiloh’).
However, the dangers of the past lurk underneath the surface (‘Water Run
Deep’). The rest of the world sometime sees the South lumped together
like one of those confederate trenches in Shiloh: ignorant, Bible-thumping,
racist, illiterate people. It is Unfair … Unfair.
“I have
seen prejudice and dishonor all over this earth. It is not specific to a region
south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but the stigma of our past and the myth of the
South lives on … some truth but not all truth.
“The
Last Southern Belle lived in a generation that was insular and circular. The new
Southern Woman (‘Southern Woman’) stands firm in her own power and her own
truth. When I was a little girl, I asked my mother ‘Am I pretty?’ She
would say, ‘you are pretty enough.’ I hope my soul is pretty
enough. I am working on it.”
About
Sandy Carroll
Last
Southern Belle is
Sandy Carroll’s third album for Catfood Records. Her prior releases, Unnaturally
Blonde (2013) and Just as I Am (2011) received
international critical acclaim and substantial radio airplay on blues and
Americana/country radio stations. In
2012, the single “Romeo and Juliet,” off the Just as I Am CD,
stayed on the New Country Indie Chart for three months and reached #5. Also, “Good to be Home” from Unnaturally Blonde
made it to #3 on the Country Indie Chart and stayed on the chart for 14 weeks.
Sandy Carroll returned to her Memphis roots in 1983 and spent a
year headlining at a local club on historic Beale Street, following several
years of performing on the road. Writing and recording the singles, “If
You Got It” and “Memphis in May” in 1984, Sandy partnered with Jim Dickinson,
NARAS Memphis chapter’s seven-time producer of the year. “Memphis in May”
became a regional hit and for several years, the unofficial theme song for the
Memphis in May annual festivities. Sandy performed at the Memphis in
May Festival with the Memphis Horns (and special guest Rufus Thomas) and also
at the first Beale Street Music Festival. She sang the national
anthem and “Memphis in May” in front of 30,000 people at the Memphis Showboats
football game, as well.
A year later, Sandy left for San Francisco to write and
record. After three years on the West Coast and a short stay in the
Midwest, Sandy returned to Memphis. In 1989, the legendary Albert King recorded
Sandy’s, “If You Got It” which appeared on his final studio album, Red
House. She then starting writing songs for her own full-length debut
album, Southern Woman, released in 1993. Following
the release, Sandy was invited on a month long tour of the United Kingdom.
Back in the States, Sandy continued promoting Southern
Woman by performing at various festivals in the South, including
Arts in the Park, Eureka Springs Blues Festival and the Southern Heritage
Festival. She maintained a heavy performing schedule at all of Beale
Street’s most prestigious clubs, and one of Sandy’s more unique gigs was
writing the Memphis Mad Dog football team theme song, “Mad Dog Boogie,”
recorded by Southern-fried soul and blues musician Preston Shannon.
In 1997, the great Luther Allison recorded Sandy’s “Just as I Am”
and “It’s a Blues Thing” on his final album, Reckless, which
was nominated for a Grammy. That same year, Sandy recorded and
released her Memphis Rain CD, which was honored by the
Memphis and Shelby County Film and Music Commission. She went on to
receive a nomination by NARAS’ Memphis chapter for Songwriter of the Year.
Beginning the new millennium with concerts, club and festival
performances, Sandy appeared at Muscle Shoals Songwriters, Beale St. Caravan
National Radio Show at B.B. Kings, W.C. Handy Festival and the (invitation
only) International Songwriters Festival in Orange Beach, Alabama, where she
opened for songwriting legends Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham. In 2001, Sandy was
filmed by Memphis’ PBS station WKNO, along with great songwriters Keith Sykes,
Teenie Hodges, Nancy Apple, Duane Jarvis and Delta Joe Sanders as part of the
“In Their Own Voices” concert. Premiered in 2001, the concert has
been syndicated on PBS affiliates nationwide.
Inside Sounds released a CD entitled Memphis Belles:
Past, Present & Future in 2002 that featured Sandy along with
Ruby Wilson, Cybill Shepherd, Carla Thomas and other Memphis female
artists. In 2007, Sandy released an EP, Rhythm of the Rivers,
with five previously-unpublished songs and a reprise of “Bound for Glory.” The
localized release featured “The Pickwick Song” popularized in Sandy’s home community. Rhythm
of the Rivers showed another side of Sandy’s music and writing,
and the songs reflect her love for home – both her Memphis musical heritage and
her childhood and present home by the Tennessee River at Pickwick. In 2008,
Sandy was awarded her own brass note on Memphis’ historic Beale Street, and in
2010 the note was formally presented and enshrined in front of the Hard Rock
Café.
Sandy Carroll also co-wrote cuts on Catfood Records labelmates
Johnny Rawls’ Soul Survivor CD, Barbara
Carr’s Keep the Fire Burning, James Armstrong’s Blues
at the Border and Daunielle Hill’s self-titled album. Sandy
was one of the first inductees into her hometown’s Music Hall of Fame along
with famous Memphis DJ, Dewey Phillips in 2013. Sandy was also named a “Memphis Music Emissary” in 2015 in
recognition of her contributions to Memphis music.
