Bennett Lester Carter was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader.
23 Facts About Benny Carter
2.
Benny Carter had an unusually long career that lasted into the 1990s.
3.
Benny Carter was given piano lessons by his mother and others in the neighborhood.
4.
Benny Carter played trumpet and experimented briefly with C-melody saxophone before settling on alto saxophone.
5.
Benny Carter appeared on record for the first time in 1927 as a member of the Paradise Ten led by Charlie Johnson.
6.
Benny Carter returned to the Collegians and became their bandleader through 1929, including a performance at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City.
7.
Benny Carter left Henderson to take Redman's former job as leader of McKinney's Cotton Pickers in Detroit.
8.
Benny Carter became a leading trumpet soloist, having rediscovered the instrument.
9.
Benny Carter moved to London and spent two years as arranger for the BBC Big Band.
10.
Benny Carter found regular work leading his band at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem through 1941.
11.
Benny Carter wrote music and arrangements for films, such as Stormy Weather in 1943.
12.
On something of a comeback in the 1970s, Benny Carter returned to playing saxophone again and toured the Middle East courtesy of the US State Department.
13.
Benny Carter began making annual visits to Europe and Japan.
14.
In 1969, Benny Carter was persuaded to spend a weekend at Princeton University by Morroe Berger, a sociology professor at Princeton who wrote about jazz.
15.
Benny Carter conducted teaching at workshops and seminars at several other universities and was a visiting lecturer at Harvard for a week in 1987.
16.
Benny Carter is one of few musicians to have recorded in eight different decades.
17.
Benny Carter helped define the sound of alto saxophone, but he performed and recorded on soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and piano.
18.
Benny Carter helped establish a foundation for arranging as far back as 1930 when he arranged "Keep a Song in Your Soul" for Fletcher Henderson's big band.
19.
Benny Carter's compositions include the novelty hit "Cow-Cow Boogie" recorded by Ella Mae Morse, and the expansive Central City Sketches, written when he was 80 years old and recorded with the American Jazz Orchestra.
20.
Benny Carter died at the age of 95 in Los Angeles at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on July 12,2003 from complications of bronchitis.
21.
Benny Carter was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1977.
22.
Benny Carter was given a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.
23.
Benny Carter was a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1996 and received honorary doctorates from Princeton, Rutgers, Harvard, and the New England Conservatory of Music.