Bennett Lester Carter was born on August 8, 1907, and died on July 12, 2003. He was an American musician who played the saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, and wrote music. He also led bands and created musical arrangements. Carter worked with Johnny Hodges to help make the alto saxophone popular. Starting in the 1920s, he wrote music arrangements for Fletcher Henderson’s big band, which influenced the development of the swing style. His career lasted for many decades, continuing into the 1990s. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was nominated for eight Grammy Awards, including receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Career

Benny Carter was born in New York City in 1907. His mother and other people in his neighborhood taught him how to play the piano. He also played the trumpet and tried the C melody saxophone briefly before choosing the alto saxophone. In the 1920s, he performed with musicians like June Clark, Billy Paige, and Earl Hines. He later joined the Wilberforce Collegians, a group led by Horace Henderson. In 1927, he made his first recordings as part of the Paradise Ten, a group led by Charlie Johnson. He returned to the Collegians and became their leader until 1929, including a performance at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City.

In his early 20s, Carter worked as an arranger for Fletcher Henderson after Don Redman left that job. He did not have formal schooling in arranging but learned by studying existing music charts and writing parts for the trumpet and saxophone first. He later left Henderson to lead McKinney's Cotton Pickers in Detroit. In 1932, he formed a band in New York City that included musicians like Chu Berry, Sid Catlett, and Teddy Wilson. His arrangements were complex, and some of his most important works were "Keep a Song in Your Soul" (1930), "Lonesome Nights," and "Symphony in Riffs" (1933). These pieces showed his skill in writing for saxophones.

By the early 1930s, Carter and Johnny Hodges were considered the top alto saxophonists in jazz. He also became a leading trumpet soloist, rediscovering the instrument. He recorded many trumpet performances in the 1930s. His short-lived orchestra played at the Harlem Club in New York but only recorded a few songs for Columbia, OKeh, and Vocalion records. The OKeh recordings were released under the name The Chocolate Dandies.

In 1933, Carter worked with British musician Spike Hughes, who visited New York to record with African American musicians. These recordings, along with four by Carter’s big band, were initially released only in England. The musicians included Red Allen, Dicky Wells, and Chu Berry.

Carter moved to London and worked as an arranger for the BBC Big Band. In England, France, and Scandinavia, he recorded with local musicians and took his band to the Netherlands. He played trumpet, clarinet, piano, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, and occasionally sang. In 1938, he recorded in Paris with Django Reinhardt on "I'm Coming Virginia" and "Farewell Blues." He returned to the United States that year and led his band at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem until 1941. The band included musicians like Shad Collins and Dizzy Gillespie. After this, he led a seven-piece band with Eddie Barefield and Kenny Clarke.

In the mid-1940s, Carter moved to Los Angeles and formed another big band that sometimes included J.J. Johnson, Max Roach, and Miles Davis. These were his last big bands. He stopped touring as a bandleader but continued working in studios. He wrote music for films, such as Stormy Weather (1943). In 1954, he recorded with Art Tatum and drummer Louis Bellson. During the 1950s and 1960s, he arranged songs for vocalists like Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, and Ella Fitzgerald. In the 1970s, he returned to playing saxophone and toured the Middle East with the U.S. State Department. He also visited Europe and Japan regularly.

In 1969, Carter visited Princeton University at the invitation of sociology professor Morroe Berger, who wrote about jazz. This led to teaching opportunities. He visited Princeton five times over nine years, including a semester in 1973. In 1974, Princeton gave him an honorary doctorate. He also taught at other universities and gave a lecture at Harvard in 1987. Berger wrote a two-volume book about Carter’s career titled Benny Carter – A Life in American Music (1982).

Carter’s abilities did not decline with age. In the 1980s, he composed Central City Sketches, performed by the American Jazz Orchestra at Cooper Union. He also wrote Glasgow Suite, performed in Scotland. Lincoln Center commissioned him to write "Good Vibes" in 1990. The National Endowment for the Arts funded his Tales of the Rising Sun Suite and Harlem Renaissance Suite, which were performed in 1992 when he was 85 years old.

Carter had a very long career. He is one of the few musicians to have recorded in eight different decades. He was also very versatile, playing many instruments, arranging music, and composing. He helped shape the sound of the alto saxophone and played other instruments like soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and piano. He influenced arranging as early as 1930 with his work on "Keep a Song in Your Soul" for Fletcher Henderson’s big band. His compositions include "Cow-Cow Boogie," recorded by Ella Mae Morse, and Central City Sketches, written when he was 80 and recorded with the American Jazz Orchestra.

Death

Carter passed away on July 12, 2003, in Los Angeles at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 95 years old when he died due to problems caused by bronchitis.

Awards and honors

He was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1977. In 1978, he was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. In 1980, he received the Golden Score award from the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers. A radio station in New York celebrated his 75th birthday by playing his music nonstop for more than a week. The National Endowment for the Arts gave him the NEA Jazz Masters Award in 1986.

He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. In 1994, he won a Grammy Award for his solo on "Prelude to a Kiss" and got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 1989, Lincoln Center celebrated Carter's 82nd birthday with a performance of his songs by Ernestine Anderson and Sylvia Syms. In 1990, he was named Jazz Artist of the Year in the DownBeat and JazzTimes polls. He was a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1996 and received honorary doctorates from Princeton in 1974, Rutgers in 1991, Harvard in 1994, and the New England Conservatory of Music in 1998. In 2016, the National Museum of American History made Carter the subject of its Jazz Appreciation Month poster.

In 2000, he was given the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton.

Wins: 3
Nominations: 9

Discography

Information from AllMusic.com

• Skin Deep (Norgran, 1953)
• Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Song Book (Verve, 1961)
• The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (Bluebird, 1937–1949, [1995])

With Jazz at the Philharmonic
• The Drum Battle (Verve, 1952 [1960])
• Blues Cross Country (Capitol, 1962) – includes some arrangements
• I Remember John Kirby (Capitol, 1961)
• The Sound of Nancy Wilson (Capitol, 1968)
• Nancy (Capitol, 1969)

• "Blues in My Heart" (1931) with Irving Mills
• "When Lights Are Low" (1936) with Spencer Williams
• "Cow-Cow Boogie (Cuma-Ti-Yi-Yi-Ay)" (1942) with Don Raye and Gene De Paul
• "King Size Papa" with Paul Vandervoort II (1947)
• "Key Largo" (1948) with Karl Suessdorf, Leah Worth
• "Rock Me to Sleep" (1950) with Paul Vandervoort II
• "A Kiss from You" (1964) with Johnny Mercer
• "Only Trust Your Heart" (1964) with Sammy Cahn

Film and video

• Thousands Cheer (1943)
• An American in Paris (1951)
• Clash by Night (1952)
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)
• Buck and the Preacher (1972)
• Jazz at the Smithsonian: Benny Carter (1982)
• Benny Carter in Japan (1986)
• Wolf Trap Salutes Dizzy Gillespie (1988)
• Benny Carter: Symphony in Riffs (1989)