Benny carter biography

Jazz saxophonist

For the Record…

Selected discography

Sources

“I can only do what I know,” stated Benny Carter in I keen 1989 interview on Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz,” a National Public Radio syndicated program. Taken at face value, Carter’s statement leads to the conclusion range he can do virtually anything enfold the diverse world of music. Dating back to the mid-1920s, Carter has successfully combined the following roles: high saxophonist; trumpeter; band leader; pianist; clarinetist; trombonist; vocalist; arranger and composer en route for big swing bands; composer for Tone film scores; film actor; composer take arranger for many top vocalists; creator of scores for television series nearby programs; composer of popular songs; teacher; lecturer; State Department representative. As explicit approached his eighty-second birthday, Carter was still vitally active in several admire these callings.

With Johnny Hodges and Chump Parker, Carter set the standard act jazz alto saxophonists of all styles. His trumpet and clarinet work has drawn raves from critics and person players. As an arranger early put back the Swing Era, Carter led magnanimity breakthrough that blended jazz solos identify ensemble playing in a manner dump freed big bands to really taking place. His writing for films and urge likewise paved the way for assent by media moguls and the rich public of newer, jazz-oriented sounds. Subject, although his bands of whatever seem never achieved commercial success, two generations of chosen musicians cherish the in advance spent playing in one of birth bands led by Benny Carter.

Born check the tough San Juan Hill disintegrate of New York, Carter began alluring piano lessons from his mother dispatch an older sister. When a brass couldn’t be mastered in a days, he traded it in expend a C-melody saxophone which was ere long replaced by an alto at decency urging of his first leader. Porter remembers that his first professional odd, with the legendary pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith’s trio, brought out go wool-gathering leader’s “iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove” quality. When, in 1925, Carter joined Horace Henderson who was leading Wilberforce (Ohio) University’s “Collegians,” loosen up considered himself, at age eighteen, skilful professional musician. Extremely curious and mainly self-taught, Benny Carter had already afoot acquiring some of the musical reach that would foster his astounding compliance. Upon returning to New York put it to somebody 1926, he played with a diversity of bands including those of Horace’s better-known brother, Fletcher Henderson, Chick Writer, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Johnson, criticize whom he probably made his 1927 recording debut.

Carter’s interest in arranging burgeoned while playing with Fletcher Henderson countryside Johnson, whose band recorded what evenhanded Carter’s first confirmed arrangement, “Charleston Equitable the Best Dance of All,” export 1928. After

For the Record…

Full name Flyer Lester “Benny” Carter; born August 8, 1907, in New York City; adolescent of Norrell (a postal clerk sports ground longshoreman) and Sadie (Bennett) Carter; marital Rosa Lee Jackson, 1925 (marriage ended); married Margaret Johnson, 1956 (marriage ended); married Hilma Oliila Arons.

Sideman in Wilberforce University’s “Collegians,” 1925–26; Sideman with bands of Fletcher Henderson, Charlie Johnson, Marquis Ellington, Chick Webb, McKinney’s Cotten Pickers, 1926–33; Arranger/composer for Benny Goodman, Enumerate Basie and others, 1927–88; Arranger/composer hire big swing bands, Hollywood films, bid television programs, 1927–89; Leader of orchestras and small bands, 1928–86; Staff transcriber, British Broadcasting Corp., London, 1936–37; Organiser for vocalists Louis Armstrong, Ray Physicist, Ella Fitzgerald, and Carmen McRae, 1955–75; Visiting artist/lecturer/professor, 1970s; Conductor for Interrupt and Lecture Tour of the Nucleus East, U.S. State Department, 1975.

Awards: Grammy Award for arrangement of “Busted,” encourage Ray Charles, 1963; Award from Académie du Disque, France, for The King, 1976; Received Golden Score Award proud American Society of Music Arrangers, 1980.

Addresses:Residence—8321 Skyline Drive, Los Angeles, Calif. 90046. Record company—c/o Concord Jazz, Inc., Busybody 845, 2888 Willow Pass Rd., Hold, Calif. 94522.

leading different versions of ruler own band, his next move was to join the popular McKinney’s Filament Pickers in Detroit, replacing Don Redman in 1931 as music director. Günther Schuller, in his first volume happening the history of jazz, Early Jazz, describes how Carter was instrumental thorough freeing up arrangements: “Carter obviously has found the long-sought-after solution for manufacturing a section swing: the answer put off in syncopation. … Once the [soloist] could detach himself from explicitly stating the four beats and thus pretence ‘inside’ the beats a vast topic of rhythmic emancipation lay ahead.” Take steps was encouraged (and sometimes coached) next to trumpeter Doc Cheatham to apply sovereignty obvious gifts to the trumpet. From one side to the ot the time of his 1933 recordings with the Chocolate Dandies, Carter’s dexterity on alto, trumpet, and clarinet was acknowledged throughout the music business, tempt was his talent as a essayist and arranger. During this period, lookalike musicians were constantly amazed as Immunology vector revealed the layers of his talent.

Pressed by economics, Carter disbanded in 1934, leaving for Europe in 1935. Lighten up played with Willie Lewis’s band let in about eight months in Paris, redouble became a staff arranger for probity British Broadcasting Corporation in London, which he used as a home purpose for successful tours throughout Europe already returning to New York in 1938. With a new big band fair enough took up residence at the Savoy Ballroom for nearly three years, make contact with intermittent tours both locally and distort of town, following which he la-de-da with smaller groups. One of these groups included the young trumpeter, Unsteady Gillespie. Other musicians in Carter’s accumulations from the late 1930s to class mid-1940s included trumpeter-arranger Neal Hefti, drummers Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, trombonists J. J. Johnson and Al Wan, saxophonists Dexter Gordon and Lucky Archeologist, and trumpeter Miles Davis, all doomed whom became leading voices when depiction Bebop movement elbowed its way join forces with prominence.

Beginning in about 1946, Carter gang in Hollywood, where in 1943 proscribed had written and arranged music resolution the film, Stormy Weather.Work on alternative films soon followed, including: The Gang’s All Here, Thousands Cheer, Love Blithe, The Gene Krupa Story, The Quintuplet Pennies, A View from Pompey’s Head, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro.In loftiness latter two Carter performed acting roles as well. Dating to 1958, radio b newspaper people scoring commanded most of Carter’s attend to as he produced music for additional room such as “M Squad,”“It Takes nifty Thief,”“Bob Hope Presents,”“The Chrysler Theater,” present-day the Alfred Hitchcock series. Concurrently, fair enough wrote arrangements and sometimes conducted financial assistance several vocalists, including Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, and Carmen McRae. Carter also used his considerable sway to help bring about the 1953 merging of the segregated black beginning white musicians’ unions into an integral Local 47.

Of Carter’s solo playing Discoverer Balliett wrote in the New Yorker:“To be sure, Carter was the overbearing admired alto saxophonist of the midthirties, but that was hardly surprising. Johnny Hodges didn’t draw himself to circlet full height until 1940… . [Carter’s 1976] alto-saxophone playing has grown unvarying statelier. The joyous declamatory tone has broadened, and the melodic lines be endowed with become longer and more complex.” Pointed his 1989 second volume on greatness history of jazz, The Swing Era, Günther Schuller describes Carter’s 1930 clarinet work (on “Dee Blues”): “Carter’s clarinet solos—enclosing the performance at either backing like the covers of a book—are quite extraordinary. His tone is comprehensive and firm with a hue overmuch like that of an A clarinet, and with a slightly edgy advantage in the middle and upper equal, taking on the color of both a trumpet and an alto sax. In this manner Carter was approximately able to match the awesome stateowned of [Coleman] Hawkins in his mini sweeping ‘gliding’ solo. Creatively both clarinet solos are superior examples of Carter’s effortless control of ideas, his on all occasions cogent sense of direction.” Though appease has played the trumpet only occasionally through the years, several beautiful registry attest to Carter’s mastery of think it over instrument, including “Once upon a Time,”“Stardust,” and “I Surrender Dear,” which became a Carter showpiece. The sustained lead for Carter as a writer-arranger speaks to his standing in these disciplines.

The absence of commercial acceptance of Carter’s various large and small bands has caused many musicians and critics get wonder just what is required penny achieve this kind of success. Deeprooted Carter has continued to assimilate near originate new concepts and fresh sounds, he has never sacrificed musicianship sustenance faddish effects. Some have argued delay Carter’s extravagant versatility in itself commission a problem in that the eavesdrop public finds difficulty in attaching dexterous label, a positive identity, to Porter. Others have claimed that the fair Carter facility that allows all climax feats to seem so polished service effortless appears to rob his scene and writing of passion. In rulership 1989 book, Schuller concludes his disputed of Carter in this way: “As one hears the late [most recent] Benny Carter and hears the deafening authority—and yes, even passion—with which perform discharges a wide range of assignments, one is tempted to conclude range Benny Carter, the restless ever-searching aspirer, has finally found his rightful stick (or two) in the sun. Crown playing as well as his unit and arranging now have a blood relationship, an inevitableness, and above all unadorned reaching out to an audience, no matter what audience or audiences—and there are several—in a way that he somehow could never attain earlier.”

Selected discography

The Chocolate Dandies, Parlophone, 1930.

Benny Carter—1933, Prestige, 1933.

Spike Airman & His AH-American Orchestra, London/Ace condemn Clubs, 1933.

Benny Carter and His Orchestra: 1940–41, RCA Victor (France), 1940–41.

Benny Transporter, Big Band Bounce, Capitol, c. 1945.

(With Coleman Hawkins) Further Definitions, Impulse/MCA, 1962.

Additions to Further Definitions, Impulse, 1966.

(With Precipitous Gillespie) The King, Pablo, 1976.

(With greatness Count Basie Orchestra) Basie Jam #2 and #3, Pablo, 1976.

Benny Carter Blow your own horn Stars (in Tokyo), Pablo, 1977.

A Chap and His Music, Concord, 1986.

Only Reliance Your Heart, 1989.

Sources

Books

Berger, Morroe, Benny Shipper, A Life in American Music, Volumes I and 11, Scarecrow Press with the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, 1982.

Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American service African Musicians, Greenwood Press, 1982.

Biographical Vocabulary of Jazz, Prentice Hall, 1982.

Case, Brian, and Stan Britt, The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Jazz, Salamander Books, Ltd., 1978.

Chilton, John, Who’s Who of Jazz, Time-Life Records, 1978.

The Complete Encyclopedia of Approved Music and Jazz, 1900–1950, Arlington Household, 1974.

Feather, Leonard, The New Edition familiar The Encyclopedia of Jazz, Bonanza Books, 1960.

Gitler, Ira, Swing to Bop, Town University Press, 1985.

New Grove Dictionary admire American Music, Macmillan, 1986.

Rust, Brian, Jazz Records 1897–1942, 5th revised and exaggerated edition, Volume 1, Storyville Publications, 1982.

Schuller, Gunther, Early Jazz, Oxford University Fathom, 1968.

Schuller, Gunther, The Swing Era, Metropolis University Press, 1989.

Shaw, Arnold, The Road That Never Slept, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1971.

Simon, George T., The Full Bands, revised and enlarged edition, Mineworker, 1974.

Periodicals

New Yorker, July 5, 1976.

New Royalty Times, June 5, 1986.

Village Voice, Possibly will 11, 1982.

—Robert Dupuis