Featured Wines of the Pawleys Island Wine Gala 2010

Early in life John made a decision to follow his dream of becoming a renowned guitarist, pianist, and singer. He made his dream a reality. He has formed bands playing psychedelic music, rhythm and blues, pop and jazz. John’s fingers just seem to glide effortlessly across the guitar strings as his audience watch in amazement.

John has spent his life traveling where his music leads him. He has performed at many concerts and major blues festivals throughout the United States and abroad, including the Savannah Music Festival, Lincoln Center Out-Of-Doors, Lucerne Blues Festival, and Switzerland’s Blues to Bop Festival, Australia’s Byron Bay Blues Festival, and many other festivals throughout the world.

John is very versatile. You never know what he’s going to play next. He seamlessly combines styles of gospel, blues, funk, country, jazz, and rhythm and blues. He has been active on tent revival circuits, played with LaFace Records of Atlanta, GA, and collaborated with several well-known artists throughout the world, including Taj Mahal, Kenny Wayne Shepard, BB King, Beverly Guitar Watkins, and the Stylistics. He has provided sound tracks for countless events. John was honored by Living Blues Magazine for two consecutive years as “Most Outstanding Guitarist.”

Taj Mahal has said that “Cool John Ferguson is among the five greatest guitarists in the world. He is a force to be reckoned with in the music industry. He is with the ranks of Jimi Hendrix, Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhart.”

John, a recording artist, has his own record label “Cool John Ferguson Records” and recently released a new CD entitled: “With These Hands.”

A native of California, Judy Carmichael moved to New York in the early 80’s and has maintained a busy concert schedule throughout the world ever since. She has toured for the United States Information Agency throughout India, Portugal, Brazil and Singapore. In 1992, Ms. Carmichael was the first jazz musician sponsored by the United States Government to tour China.

The musician that critics have referred to as “astounding, flawless and captivating” (The New York Times) has played in a variety of venues from Carnegie Hall, to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice (the first concert ever presented by the museum) to programs with Joel Grey, Michael Feinstein, Steve Ross and the Smothers Brothers. In addition, Ms. Carmichael has done comic skits and performed her music on radio and TV and performed private recitals for everyone from Rod Stewart and Robert Redford to President Clinton and Gianni Agnelli.

Judy Carmichael is one of a handful of musicians who approach jazz from a perspective of its entire history. Choosing to study jazz piano from its early roots on, she explores the music deeply, infusing it with a “fresh, dynamic interpretation of her own” (Washington Post ). The National Endowment for the Arts rewarded Carmichael’s knowledge of jazz piano with a major grant to present early jazz greats on film and to discuss the history and development of jazz piano with college students across the country.

Judy Carmichael’s Grammy-nominated recording “Two Handed Stride” teamed her with four giants of jazz from the Count Basie Orchestra, Red Callendar, Harold Jones, Freddie Green and Marshall Royal. She has written two books on stride piano and numerous articles on the subject of jazz. She has served on a variety of music panels at the National Endowment for the Arts and is one of the few jazz pianists honored as a Steinway Artist. She has been included in a number of jazz anthologies and at one point, to her utter surprise, turned up in the Simon and Schuster murder mystery Murder Times Two as “the stride pianist Judy Carmichael,” the main suspect’s favorite piano player.

Ms. Carmichael is included in “Who’s Who in the East,” “Who’s Who in Finance and Industry in America,” “Who’s Who in American Woman,” “American Women in Jazz,” “Who’s Who in the World” as well as the “Encyclopedia of Jazz.”

Ms. Carmichael has appeared frequently on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and has been featured on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Entertainment Tonight and CBS’ Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt and recently with Charles Osgood. She is celebrating her 15th year producing and hosting her Public Radio Show Judy Carmichael’s Jazz Inspired, broadcast on over 170 stations throughout North America and abroad and on NPR NOW Channel 34 on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio.