Carla Bley

Pianist, songwriter and bandleader Carla (Borg) Bley had a long career in jazz music, particularly the jazz fusion and modern jazz genres. It began when she moved to New York at the age of 17 from her home of Oakland, California. Once she got to Manhattan, she took a job as a cigarette girl at the legendary jazz club Birdland. It was while she was working there that she met her first husband, Canadian jazz pianist Paul Bley, whom she married in 1957. She developed her interest in jazz through him and though they divorced a decade later, Bley held on to his last name for professional reasons. During that time frame, she began composing songs; a number of artists, including her ex-husband Paul Bley, George Russell, and Jimmy Giuffre. Vibraphonist Gary Burton released an entire album of Bley's compositions, A Genuine Tong Funeral, in 1968. Her most well-known work as a bandleader was Escalator Over The Hill (1971), a triple-LP concept album that matched Bley's music with lyrics by Canadian poet Paul Haines. Never a jazz purist, Bley worked with titans of the progressive rock scene like Jack Bruce and Robert Wyatt. In 1981, Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason released a solo album called Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports; in fact, it was a Carla Bley album in all but name, with Bley composing all the music and lyrics and Mason merely playing the drums. Later in the 1980s, she performed on two albums with the indie rock supergroup The Golden Palominos, led by drummer Anton Fier. Carla Bley often collaborated with her husbands, including multi-instrumentalist Michael Mantler and bassist Steve Swallow, and also worked regularly with bassist Charlie Haden on his Liberation Music Orchestra project. Bley and Mantler's daughter Karen Mantler--who shared her mother's distinctive frizzy blunt-cut bobbed hairstyle--also became a piano player and frequent collaborator. Carla Bley died on October 17, 2023 in Willow, NY at the age of 87.