A brilliant trumpeter and classic alto saxophonist, Benny Carter was also an accomplished arranger and one of the first African-American musicians to find acceptance in Hollywood.
Born in New York in 1907, Carter learned piano from his mother. He was initiated into jazz by his cousin, pioneering trumpeter Cuban Bennett. Carter still paid tribute to Bennett decades later: “Cuban was the greatest. You couldn’t believe that anyone could play like that in the 1920s.… They’re doing today what he did then!” On the saxophone, Carter’s ideal was Bix BEIDERBECKE’S collaborator Frank Trumbauer. But it was Doc Cheatham who convinced Carter that it was acceptable to play both trumpet and saxophone.
In the 1920s, Carter sat in with New York’s best African-American big bands, and made his recording debut in 1928 with Charlie Johnson’s Orchestra. He displayed additional talent as an arranger with Fletcher HENDERSON’S Orchestra—his arrangement of “Keep a Song in Your Soul” (1930) remains a classic. In 1928, he formed the first of his own big bands, which over the next 15 or so years would develop such future stars as Miles DAVIS and Max ROACH.
In 1935, Carter played with Willie Lewis’s Orchestra in Paris, France, and was joined in recording sessions by the gypsy guitarist Django REINHARDT. During extended stays in Britain, Belgium, Holland, and Scandinavia he became a key figure in promoting jazz in Europe. In 1936, he was invited to arrange for the BBC by journalist and pianist Leonard Feather (one of jazz’s most famous critics). Carter produced as many as six arrangements a week for the BBC’s dance orchestra, and also found time to write his own pieces, including the popular “When Lights Are Low.” While in Holland, he put together one of the first international, interracial jazz bands.
Carter returned to the U.S. in 1938 to form a big band, and record with the likes of Roy ELDRIDGE and Coleman HAWKINS. However, he found that his elegant, low-key music was out of step with the brasher sound then favoured, and in 1943 he eagerly accepted an invitation from Twentieth Century Fox to contribute to film music and appear in the Lena HORNE movie Stormy Weather (1943). Two years later, he moved permanently to Los Angeles, and for the next 40 years he composed for movies and television, the source of a much higher and steadier income than most jazz musicians at that time were able to hope for. Among his film scores were The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952, with Carter cast in a bit part again), The Five Pennies (about bandleader Red Nichols, 1959), Flower Drum Song(1961), and Buck and the Preacher (1971), while on television, his music was heard on Mod Squad, Ironside, Chrysler Theater, and a host of other shows.
He had little time, though, to enjoy after-hour jam sessions or recordings with the few jazz giants who shared the Hollywood scene, such as Shelly Manne and Quincy JONES. In the mid-1970s, Carter began to spend more of his time with big bands and small ensembles, and to generate yet another abundant collection of beautifully arranged pieces. He was joined by a host of older and younger musician admirers who were glad to see him back with mainstream jazz. The admirers included Dizzy GILLESPIE, Oscar Peterson, Phil Woods, Mel Martin, and Doc Cheatham.
Carter received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, and in 1992 a Grammy for Best Jazz Composition for his “Harlem Renaissance Suite.” In performance, his alto saxophone (he rarely played trumpet in later years) sounded as sweet, strong, and sensuous as it had when he had first matured his style seven decades earlier.
Jeff Kaliss
SEE ALSO:
ARRANGERS; EUROPEAN JAZZ; FILM MUSIC.
FURTHER READING
Berger, Ed, Monroe Berger, and James Patrick. Benny Carter: A Life in American Music (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1982);
Feather, Leonard. The Jazz Years: Earwitness to an Era (New York: Da Capo Press, 1987).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
All of Me; Further Definitions;
Harlem Renaissance; Live and Well in Japan;
Three Great Swing Saxophones.