With a singing style that falls between jazz and cabaret,
Sandy Stewart has on occasion gained bits of fame in the music world, though her fame mainly rests with being the mother of pianist
Bill Charlap and the wife of the songwriter Moose Charlap.
Stewart sang when she was 14 on a local television show in Philadelphia. She lied about her age and became the Gretz Beer Golden Girl, even though she was way too young to legally drink beer. When she was 16, she sang jazz regularly on NBC Radio, quite frequently with a rhythm section comprised of pianist
Dick Hyman, guitarist
Mundell Lowe, bassist
Ed Safranski, and drummer
Don Lamond. She moved to New York in 1954, appearing on the
Ernie Kovacs television show, where she was
Edie Adams' replacement.
For 15 years,
Sandy Stewart was a regular on television, making numerous appearances on variety shows including the
Johnny Carson and
Ed Sullivan shows. She acted in the 1959
Alan Freed film Go, Johnny, Go! and worked along the way with
Bing Crosby,
Perry Como,
Steve Allen, and
Benny Goodman. She had a surprise hit in 1962 with her recording of "My Coloring Book." By the late '60s she had a much lower profile, raising four children. Since then,
Sandy Stewart has occasionally emerged in music, recording special projects including a program of
Jerome Kern songs with
Dick Hyman in 1985, an album with her family, and, in 2005, a set of ballads with
Bill Charlap (Love Is Here to Stay) for Blue Note, one of the very few mother-son duet albums. ~ Scott Yanow