The Sophisticated Elegance
of Benny Carter

By Jim Allen and Vincent F.A. Golphin

He's a softspoken gentleman, shy at 94, but still very polite. "I'd rather not," Benny Carter said over the phone, when asked to give a few quotes for this story. It might have been that he felt he'd said everything that needed to be said in a 75-year career. Or, maybe he thought I might not know the right questions. "Thank you very much," he said as I retreated from the conversation. He acknowledged my respect for his wishes. I admired the gentleman musician's contributions.

Public television scored a win last month with the premiere of Ken Burns's eighteen-hour docu-history, Jazz. Most television and music critics gave the first-time mega-series on the largely unknown musical style high marks. In interviews, even Burns acknowledged that some key figures were overlooked, but the filmmaker sort of shrugged it off saying, he couldn't cover everything. In the end, Jazz might gain most attention for what it missed.

The nation's most prominent jazz artist, Benny Carter, was mentioned. The film placed him in context, but made short work of a career that deserves a closer look. He's been a major contributor for more than 75 years. On December 14, 2000, as then-president and occasional sax man William Jefferson Clinton put it when he presented Carter with the National Medal of Arts award during the ceremony sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, Carter is "a force in the jazz world."

He is not performing as often as he once did, according to Larry Berger, a close associate. Yet, he is still writing music. A quick run down of his 1990s compact disk releases include:

Benny Carter: A Life in American Music, by M. Berger, E. Berger and J. Patrick, a two-volume, 877-page biography/discography published by Scarecrow Press in 1982, is being revised for a scheduled release this fall (800-462-6420). Additional information on his recordings is available at www.bennycarter.com.

In 1998, Carter received the third annual Jazz Lincoln Center Award for Artistic Excellence. At this time, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Orchestra paid tribute to Carter by performing his music. In 1996, he was presented with the Kennedy Center honor for his contributions to American culture through the performing arts. The quintessential professional, Carter is highly esteemed by everyone in the business.

Pianist/composer Andre Previn once said, "Benny Carter is probably the most rounded and sophisticated of all jazz composers." As a musician, the late Dizzy Gillespie once said he wanted to be Carter. Tributes have always flowed his way.

The late Duke Ellington once wrote, "The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he." "You got Duke Ellington, Count Basie and my man the Earl of Hines, right? Well Benny's right up there with them cats," said Louis Armstrong. "Everybody that knows who he is calls him 'King'. He is a King!"

Along with Johnny Hodges and Willie "The Lion" Smith, Carter is hailed as the model for swing era alto saxophonists. According to his publicist, "He is nearly unique in his ability to double on trumpet, which he plays in an equally distinctive style. In addition, he is an accomplished clarinetist, and has recorded proficiently on piano and trombone." His arrangements have charted the course of big band jazz. His compositions, such as "When Lights Are Low" and "Blues In My Heart," are now jazz standards. That does not include the scores he has written for movies such as Buck and the Preacher, and television shows.

A native New Yorker, Carter was born in 1907 and raised in the city's tough San Juan Hill neighborhood (coincidentally a stone's throw from the acreage occupied by the Lincoln Center). His mother started him with piano lessons, but the trumpet quickly seduced Carter. He received encouragement from his cousins, the legendary Cuban Bennett, a well-known trumpeter on the New York jazz scene, and Darnell Howard, a clarinet player who occasionally worked with Joe Oliver. A neighbor, the great Ellington brass man Bubber Miley, also was his idol.

Carter saved for months to buy a horn-his first instrument of choice-but grew frustrated because he couldn't master it over the weekend. He traded the trumpet for a C-melody saxophone. Saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer, who was Lester Young's original idol, became an early inspiration to the young Benny, who was largely self-taught. By age fifteen, Carter was already jamming in Harlem's favorite jazz haunts.

From 1924 to 1928, Carter paid his dues as he developed his artistic and technical skills as an instrumentalist and started to focus his attention on composing and arranging. In New York he gained experience as a sideman with some of the leading big bands of that era, such as Duke Ellington's, Fletcher Henderson's, Chick Webb's, Willie Bryant's and McKinnys' Cotton Pickers. He also traveled to the Midwest to work with the Wilberforce (Ohio) Collegians, and to Pittsburgh for a stint with Earl Hines.

His first recording came in 1928 as a member of Charlie Johnson's Orchestra, whose home was Harlem's Small's Paradise. Two of the arrangements recorded that day were by Carter, who again focused his attention and somehow managed to teach himself the craft of composing and arranging. Later that year, he joined Fletcher Henderson's seminal orchestra. With that, he took over for Don Redman as arranger.

Carter's innovative scores, particularly his writing for the sax section, revitalized the band and, according to jazz scholar Gunther Schuller, "Carter was now the arranger everyone followed."

By 1930, he firmly established himself as one of the most brilliant and sought after composers in modern music. In 1931, Carter became musical director for the Detroit-based McKinney's Cotton Pickers. Already a major force on alto, he now returned to his first love, the trumpet. Within two years, Carter was making trumpet recordings that rivaled his alto classics. Endowed with great perception and acuity, Carter's arrangements were highly innovative and reflected his abilities to translate modern jazz ideas that best represented the personality of a given orchestra. His ability to revitalize and highlight the reed section of an orchestra, in particular, was remarkable.

In 1932, Carter returned to New York. He soon began putting together his own orchestra, which eventually would include swing stars Chu Berry, Teddy Wilson, Sid Catlett and Dicky Wells. As was the case with all Carter-led units, the group was known as a "musicians' band." Unfortunately, high musical standards did not ensure commercial success, especially during the depression, and by late 1934, Carter's group was forced to disband.

A timely invitation brought Carter to Paris in 1935 to play with the Willie Lewis's orchestra. At the suggestion of music critic Leonard Feather, he was invited to England to serve as arranger for the BBC dance orchestra. He was an enormous success and played a pivotal role in spreading jazz-America's music-abroad. Over the next three years, he traveled throughout Europe, playing and recording with the top British, French and Scandinavian jazzmen, as well as with visiting American stars such as his friend Coleman Hawkins. At a Dutch seaside resort in 1937, Carter also assembled and led the first international, interracial band. This was unquestionably the highlight of his European tour.

Returning home in 1938, Carter found the big band sounds, which he had helped shape, sweeping the country. He quickly formed another orchestra that spent much of 1939 and 1940 at Harlem's famed Savoy Ballroom. His arrangements were much in demand and were featured on recordings by Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Gene Krupa and Tommy Dorsey. In 1941, Carter pared down to a sextet, which included bebop pioneers Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Clarke.

In 1942, he brought a reorganized big band to California, where he has lived ever since. In the mid-1940s, the band included important modernists, such as Jonah Jones, Tyree Glenn, Vic Dickson, Jimmy Hamilton, Buddy Rich, as well as Miles Davis, J.J. Johnson, Max Roach and Art Pepper, all of whom have acknowledged their debt to Carter as a teacher. As Miles Davis once said: "Everyone should listen to Benny Carter. He's a whole musical education."

He began to concentrate heavily on writing film scores for Hollywood and television. Some of the best examples of his work are in pictures such as Stormy Weather, The Gene Krupa Story and The Snows of Kilimanjaro. His credits encompass all musical idioms, from feature films such as A Man Called Adam and Buck and the Preacher to television shows, including M Squad and Chrysler Theater. He has provided arrangements for almost every major popular singer including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Lou Rawls, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, Billy Eckstine and Mel Torme.

Also, Carter was a trailblazer in the integration into one body of the black and white musicians union locals in Los Angeles. Quincy Jones, a current bridge-builder remarked, "Benny opened the eyes of a lot of producers and studios, so that they could understand you could go to blacks for other things outside of blues and barbecue. He's a total musician. He was the pioneer, he was the foundation. He made it possible for that doubt to be taken away."

Carter stopped leading a big band in 1946, but he still toured as a soloist and with such all-star groups as Jazz at the Philharmonic. In 1975, he traveled throughout the Middle East on a tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department. He visited Europe often and became a virtual commuter to Japan. Fans there eagerly anticipate his frequent tours of specially assembled all-star orchestras.

In the 1970s, Carter turned his talents toward education. He conducted seminars and workshops at many universities, and spent several semesters at Princeton, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1974. In 1987, Carter spent a week as a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard. Other recent honors include induction into the Black Film Makers Hall of Fame (1978), the coveted Golden Score award of the American Society of Music Arrangers (1980) and appointment to the music advisory panel of the National Endowment of the Arts. In 1978, Carter was a guest at the White House, where he led a group at President Jimmy Carter's celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival. He also led an orchestra for the 1984 inaugural of President Reagan and played at the White House in 1989 as a guest of President Bush.

In 1982, New York radio station WKCR marked Carter's 75th birthday by playing his music non-stop for 177 hours. Carter was also saluted at the 1984 Cincinnati Kool Jazz Festival with a retrospective concert. In 1987, Carter received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. The following year, Congress designated him a National Treasure of Jazz.

His extended work, "Central City Sketches" (recorded in 1987 for MusicMasters with the American Jazz Orchestra) was nominated for a Grammy in 1988. Carter placed first in the 1989 Down Beat International Critics Poll in the arranger's category.

He celebrated his 82nd birthday with a concert in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, and returned a year later to debut a new extended work. In 1990, Carter was named "Jazz Artist of the Year" in both the Down Beat and Jazz Times International Critics' polls. Without a doubt, Benny Carter is one of the most supremely gifted and versatile artists in the jazz pantheon. He plays several instruments with deft grace. His superb compositional and arranging skills are legendary. His songs, "Cow Cow Boogie" and "When Lights Are Low" are classics. This vibrant and creative innovator is still warmly enthusiastic about his art. Perhaps the most enduring legacy is the sophisticated elegance of the man and his music.

One of Carter's most famous statements is, "My good old days are here and now." That is why Clinton said, "His enduring focus on the future and the present, and his enduring extraordinary talents help to explain how he has marvelously, miraculously continued to compose, arrange, teach and perform music that speaks to the human soul. From the day he picked up his first alto sax, the jazz world has never been the same."