Jazz Great Benny Carter Dead at 95

Benny Carter, composer, arranger, bandleader, and multiple instrumentalist best known for work on saxophone:

Benny Carter's career was remarkable for both its length and its consistently high musical achievement, from his first recordings in the 1920's to his youthful-sounding improvisations in the 1990's. His pure-toned, impeccably phrased performances made him one of the two pre-eminent alto saxophonists in jazz, with Johnny Hodges, from the late 1920's until the arrival of Charlie Parker in the mid-1940's. He was also an accomplished soloist on trumpet and clarinet, and on occasion he played piano, trombone and both tenor and baritone saxophones.

He helped to lay the foundation for the swing era of the late 1930's and early 40's with arrangements he had written a decade earlier for his own big band and the orchestras of Fletcher Henderson and Chick Webb, as well as for Benny Goodman before Goodman was acclaimed as the King of Swing. He later contributed arrangements and compositions to Glenn Miller and Count Basie.

From 1929 to 1946, Mr. Carter led big bands sparkling with young talent. His band in the early 1930's included the pianist Teddy Wilson, the saxophonist Chu Berry, the trombonist J. C. Higginbotham and the drummer Sid Catlett. A decade later, his contingent of future jazz stars included the trombonists J. J. Johnson and Al Grey, the trumpeter Miles Davis and the drummer Max Roach.

His compositions included "Blues in My Heart," "When Lights Are Low," "Blue Star," "Lonesome Nights," "Doozy" and "Symphony in Riffs." Beginning in the early 1940's, he composed and orchestrated music for films, and from the late 50's he also composed for television.

In 1962, when Mr. Carter was only 54, the critic Whitney Balliett wrote in The New Yorker that "few of his contemporaries continue to play or arrange or compose as well as he does, and none of them plays as many instruments and arranges and composes with such aplomb."

"Carter, indeed, belongs to that select circle of pure-jazz musicians who tend to represent the best of their times," the piece continued.

His public fame did not always match his accomplishments, and his only major hit of the big band era was "Cow-Cow Boogie," a novelty tune sung by Ella Mae Morse. However, early in his career his fellow musicians nicknamed him simply the King, and among them he was held in universally high regard.

The trumpeter Doc Cheatham recalled that "we broke our backs to get into Benny's band" because musicians learned so much from performing with him. Sy Oliver, whose brilliant arrangements gave the Jimmie Lunceford orchestra of the 1930's and the Tommy Dorsey band of the 1940's their distinctive cachet, said Mr. Carter was "the most complete professional musician I've ever known."

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Article Author: Eric Olsen

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