Judy Whitmore says she always wanted to go into music. She had an audition when she was 18-years-old, in fact, but her mother made an executive decision.
“I was in my first year of college,” Whitmore says. “I was auditioning for a group of singers, and I was so excited. I thought I had done really well and was living at home with my parents. I asked my mom if they called, and she said they did and I didn’t get it. I was so sad. I didn’t find out until many years later when I had two little children––my mother told me that I did get the audition, but she didn’t want me to do it so she told me no.”
So it’s fair to say that Whitmore’s parents were not supportive, and she ended up taking her life in another direction entirely. But the whole time, she missed singing.
“I was in New York with a friend of mine and we had been taking singing lessons together,” she says. “We put on a show and, after we did, we gave a couple of recitals. We were walking down the street in New York and she said that we could rent Carnegie Hall. I asked her who would come, and she said tourists like to come to Carnegie Hall. People came, we were shocked. We started singing in clubs, and I was ecstatic that we were doing the thing I wanted to do all my life.”
“We had a great time,” she says. “About two years ago we said it’d be interesting to see if we could go off and do something on our own. I wanted to do an act by myself.”
Whitmore is now a solo artist, occasionally performing with her brother. Her debut solo album, Can’t We Be Friends, was released on Nov. 18 along with the “New York Medley” single.
“I really loved singing as a group,” Whitmore says. “You get to do tight harmonies that you obviously can’t get on stage by yourself. I miss that. But I love being by myself. I sort of tell the story of my life, and all the different careers I’ve had, the different places I’ve lived, and interweave it with music. I feel like I have control of the stage, and I like that. I go at my own pace, and I get to choose all the songs myself.”
Visit judywhitmore.com for all the info.
