Carter, Betty 1930–1998

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Betty Carter 1930–1998

Jazz vocalist

Betty Carter is acclaimed as a giant of modern jazz, a role model who passes along the ideal of artistic integrity to younger jazz artists, and a female trailblazer in a musical genre long dominated by men. Accompanied by a pure small-jazz combo—piano, drums, and bass—Carter evolved a complex but personal vocal style rooted in the classic bebop music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. She is a vocal virtuoso and an utter original.

Betty Carter was born Lillie Mae Jones in the auto-manufacturing city of Flint, Michigan, on May 16, 1930 (some sources give the year as 1929, but the 1930 date seems preferable in view of the fact that Carter as a teenager often lied about her age in order to gain admittance to jazz clubs). Carter’s family endured the devastation that the Great Depression wreaked upon Flint, and moved to Detroit in search of work in munitions factories.

Fascinated by Jazz in High School

While her father became a choir director at the Chapel Hill Baptist Church, Carter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory of Music and became fascinated by jazz while a student at the city’s Northwestern High School. She frequented a soda counter with a jukebox full of 45 RPM records that introduced her to the musicians who created the daring new improvisatory music called bebop. Using the stage name Lorene Carter, she entered talent contests and toured small clubs in Michigan and Ohio, sometimes performing with nationally known bebop ensembles as they toured the area.

These performances attracted the notice of swing bandleader Lionel Hampton, who hired her for regular engagements with his band beginning in 1948. Carter herself preferred the more modern music of bandleader Dizzy Gillespie, and the annoyed Hampton reacted by giving Carter the nickname Betty Bebop, which evolved into Betty Carter. Carter toured with Hampton’s band through 1951, making a well-received appearance at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. However, she was fired as a result of disagreements with the bandleader.

After leaving Hampton’s ensemble, Carter spent most

At a Glance…

Born Lillie Mae Jones, May 16, 1930, in Flint, Ml; Married James Redding, later divorced; children: two sons—Myles and Kagle Redding. Religion: raised Baptist. Died September 26, 1998 in Brooklyn, NY.

Career: Jazz vocalist. Toured with Lionel Hampton’s band, 1948–51; toured and recorded album with Ray Charles, 1960–61; formed own record company, Bet-Car Productions, 1969; appeared in stage show Don’t Call Me Man, 1975; continued performing and recording through 1990s; released critically acclaimed album I’m Yours, You’re Mine, 1997, at age of 66.

Awards: Three Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Album; numerous jazz industry awards.

Addresses: Production company —Bet-Car Productions, 117 St. Felix St., Brooklyn, NY 11217.

of the 1950s building a name for herself, appearing at small jazz clubs up and down the East Coast and carving out an original style as she interacted with such prominent jazz figures of the time as Sarah Vaughan, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis. She recorded an album, Betty Carter, for the Epic label in 1953, and continued to record sporadically over the next few years. By the end of the decade her efforts had paid off to such an extent that she was tabbed to tour with R & B singer and pianist Ray Charles, then in the midst of his jazz phase.

Recorded Duets with Ray Charles

Charles at the time was one of the most popular musicians in the country, and the duet album the two singers recorded, 1961’s Ray Charles and Betty Carter, remains a jazz classic. Carter had no trouble keeping up with her more famous partner. She told Pulse magazine: [W]e didn’t go over anything more than one time, because I was capable of understanding everything he said to me about what to do and how to do it.”

Like those of many other jazz musicians, Carter’s career suffered during the ascendancy of rock music in the 1960s. Pressured to release a commercially oriented album, Carter stuck to her guns and defended the sometimes inaccessible bebop style that she cultivated and loved. She married, but even her husband pressured her to commercialize her style, and the marriage ended in divorce, leaving Carter with two young sons. At the decade’s end, finding herself without recording opportunities, Carter formed her own label, Bet-Car, and began to chart a wholly independent creative course. Her music deepened, and she began to cultivate an uncanny capacity for rhythmic surprises within a tightly controlled framework. She found a ready audience for her musical experimentation on the nation’s college campuses, where young female fans especially admired her.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Betty Carter’s audience continued to grow. Major milestones were a New York stage show, Don’t Call Me Man, in 1975 and appearances at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival in 1977 and 1978. Maintaining control over not only her recording career but her production and booking schedules, Carter became a fixture of jazz nightclub scenes nationwide. In 1988 she was signed to the Verve label, perhaps the premier purveyor of top-quality recorded jazz; her deal with the label included reissues of her earlier Bet-Car releases.

Focused on Jazz Education

Carter has relished her role as a senior figure and standard-bearer of jazz and black culture generally. In recent years her efforts have been geared more and more toward jazz education. Her band has been a proving ground for a long succession of young players; her concerts gain piquancy from the interplay between energetic youth and artistic mastery. Carter has conducted school workshops and crusaded for the inclusion of jazz in college coursework, especially at black institutions. Her influence on jazz of the 1990s has been enormous, with the phenomenally successful vocalist Cassandra Wilson citing her as a major influence. In 1995 Down Beat writer John Ephland pointed to Carter’s “playful and ingenious approaches to lyrics and overall sound” as a basis for Wilson’s style.

Carter’s own recording activities continued to generate critical acclaim in the 1990s. In 1997 Down Beat critic Thomas Conrad, calling Carter “the most instrumentally conceived of jazz vocalists, capable of melodic improvisations as unpredictable as any saxophonist this side of Omette [Coleman],” wrote of Carter’s new album, I’m Yours, You’re Mine, that “[t]he cumulative effect is narcotic.… How many singers can you name who have made one of their strongest recordings in their 66th year?” Conrad likewise pointed to the way Carter could find young players “who always sound exceptional when they play with her.” At century’s end, she was nothing less than the matriarch of jazz. Carter died of pancreatic cancer at home in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York on September 26, 1998. She will be surely missed by her fans.