Education
Trained as a musician and a music educator, Pitts studied at the Philadelphia Musical Academy, Temple University and Juilliard, as well as other institutions.
Trained as a musician and a music educator, Pitts studied at the Philadelphia Musical Academy, Temple University and Juilliard, as well as other institutions.
She was known primarily for playing the Hammond B3 organization In 1967, the Boston Globe printed a piece calling her a rising star and complimented her drawbar variation, vibrato shadings, and bass pedal work. Her husband, William Theodore Carney II (born 1925), aka "Mr.
C.", often joined her on the drums.
Trudy Pitts eventually went on to play with Ben Webster, Gene Ammons, and Sonny Stitt. She recorded four albums for Prestige Records, appearing with Willis Jackson among others
In 1999, a compilation album of several records was released as Legends of Acid Jazz, Trudy Pitts & Pat Martino. Recent festival appearances include the 11th Annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, District of Columbia, in May 2006.
On September 15, 2006, Pitts was the first jazz artist play a concert on Philadelphia"s Kimmel Center"s 7,000 pipe organ, "taking the medium to a whole new level".
In 2008, she again performed on an exceptional organ, this time the Kennedy Center"s Filene Organization Trudy Pitts died on December 19, 2010, aged 78, from pancreatic cancer.