Helen Carr born 1922

Helen Carr (1922* –  September 20, 1960) was a jazz vocalist in the 1940’s and 1950’s who performed with Charlie Barnet, Stan Kenton, Buddy Morrow, Charles Mingus, Donn Trenner and many others. 

She was born Helen Maxine Huber in Salt Lake City, Utah. She started singing as a child, and realized there was money in singing for an audience at a very young age. So, even though her first job in high school was as an usherette in a theatre, her dream was always to become a singer. Her family later moved to Illinois, and in 1936, after her father’s death, Helen and her mother started traveling around the country to finally settle in Oakland, California. 

There is much speculation about her artistic beginnings, as there was a possible three other vocalists named Helen Carr. One who performed in an amateur vocal contest at the Gateway Theater in Oakland, another who worked in the Pennsylvania area and another who performed in the Broadway production of Caribbean Queen. All in all, a real source of confusion for music historians. It was not the same Helen though, because our singer took her last name Carr only after marrying Walter Carr in June 1941. 

There is no available information about what Helen Carr did during the first three years of her failed marriage, but it is certain that her life took a turn when she met Donn Trenner in San Francisco, in March 1945, a boy five years younger than her. By then, Helen was 23 years old, already separated, but not yet divorced from her husband, and had a four-year-old son, Gordon Carr, who lived with his father’s sister. Donn Trenner was the pianist for the popular Ted Fio Rito Orchestra, engaged at the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco when he met Helen who was developing her singing career as a nightclub vocalist. 

In the fall of 1946 they were both living in New York and at the end of the year they married in Elkton, Maryland. Donn found some club engagements, but he claimed that he could only play with bands where a spot could also be guaranteed for Helen, or things simply wouldn’t work out due to her behavioral issues. In order to work alongside Helen, Donn organized a trio with guitarist Sammy Herman and bassist Joe Bianco, who under the name The Donn Trio and Helen made some disco appearances and promotional recordings at Nola studio. 

Work was scarce, and Donn disbanded the trio after four months to accept a job with Buddy Morrow, who was reorganizing his orchestra, and happened to be a favorite in musical circles. This new job allowed Helen to be the featured vocalist and sharing the vocal spot with singer Don Casanave. But this was short lived as they both moved to San Fransisco in 1948 to be near her son from her previous marriage. During February 1949 Donn and Helen went to Los Angeles to do a session for Dolphins of Hollywood, with Charles “Baron” Mingus & his Rhythm. Donn was the pianist and Helen was the featured vocalist in Irving Berlin’s ballad “Say It Isn’t So.” 

In May 1950, when Charlie Barnet made the couple an offer to tour the country with his band, which they did until July 7, 1951, touring from coast to coast. This resulted in Helen Carr’s only known filmed performance, a “Snader Telescription,” which also featured Donn Trenner playing piano. Subsequently, she sang with the aggregations of Georgie Auld and Stan Kenton, and in between she sat in with Charlie Parker and Chet Baker at the Tiffany Club. 

In 1954 Helen, gave up the band business to try her luck as a single. She appeared at the Crescendo club and elsewhere in Los Angeles, where she gained some traction, and Red Clyde, the West Coast producer for Bethlehem Records, signed Helen to the label. Her contract resulted in two excellent albums under her own name, as well as two songs she recorded as a guest singer in a Max Bennett date, with all sessions taking place in 1955. 

By 1957 her rocky marriage with Donn was at an end and Helen signed with MGM. She recorded only one single, in October, which included It’s Beautiful, and Love Is a Serious Business. She was backed by an orchestra conducted by LeRoy Holmes, and in an attempt to reach a broader audience the tunes and arrangements had a certain pop flair. The label pushed for promotion in radio shows, contacting DJs, and generally doing everything they could to give Carr a fighting chance and some exposure, but despite their effort, the record did not have the expected success and went largely unnoticed among the bunch MGM new releases. 

In October 1959, Helen Carr traveled West once more, as she was scheduled to appear at the then brand new Greg’s Hi-Life Supper Club in Bakersfield, California. That same year she worked with Charlie Barnet again. “My band activities continued to shrink. There were occasional weekend gigs, and once in a while MCA put together some dates in the East that made it profitable enough to go through the anguish of organizing a big band and enduring all the traveling the dates required.” During a 17-day tour with Barnet, Helen found out that she had cancer. 

Donn Trenner stated that during 1960 he visited Helen in Roosevelt Hospital, New York,  approximately two weeks before she passed away, at age 37. She was buried in an unnamed grave in Linden, New Jersey. On September 20, 2023 a Headstone was created to mark jazz singer’s unmarked grave. Even though she died so young and remained largely unknown outside of the West Coast, Helen left an undeniable mark as a jazz vocalist. Everyone who heard her sing was captivated by her completely natural talent and her individual approach to jazz. 

(Edited from Jordi Pujol album liner notes) (* since posting this bio I have found that she was born sometime in October)