Betty Carter

For the 1970 album originally titled "Betty Carter", see Betty Carter at the Village Vanguard.

Betty Carter
Betty Carter, Lucerna Hall, Prague, 25 October 1986
Background information
Birth name	Lillie Mae Jones
Born	May 16, 1929(1929-05-16) Flint, Michigan United States
Died	September 26, 1998(1998-09-26) (aged 69)
Genres	Jazz, post-bop
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Vocals
Years active	1948–1998
Labels	Columbia, Peacock, ABC, Atco, United Artists, Roulette, Bet-Car, Verve

Betty Carter (born Lillie Mae Jones, May 16, 1929 – September 26, 1998) was an American jazz singer known for her improvisational technique. Vocalist Carmen McRae once claimed that "there's really only one jazz singer - only one: Betty Carter."

Early life

Betty Carter @ Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA 2/16/1979 (photo: Brian McMillen)

Carter was born in Flint, Michigan and grew up in Detroit, where her father led a church choir. She studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory. She won a talent contest and became a regular on the local club circuit, singing and playing piano. When she was 16, she sang with Charlie Parker, and she later performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles and Miles Davis.

Career

Carter honed her scat singing ability while on tour with Lionel Hampton in the late 1940s. Hampton's wife Gladys gave her the nickname "Betty Bebop", a nickname she reportedly detested. In the 1950s Carter made recordings with King Pleasure and the Ray Bryant Trio. Her first solo LP, Out There, was released on the Peacock label in 1958.

Carter's career was eclipsed somewhat through the 1960s and 1970s, though a series of duets with Ray Charles in 1961, including the R&B-chart-topping "Baby, It's Cold Outside," brought her a measure of popular recognition. In 1963 she toured in Japan with Sonny Rollins. She recorded for various labels during this period, including ABC-Paramount, Atco and United Artists, but was rarely satisfied with the resulting product.

In 1970, a record company A&R man tried to run off with a set of her master recordings; the incident led her to establish her own record label, Bet-Car. Some of her most famous recordings were originally issued on Bet-Car, including the double album The Audience with Betty Carter (1980). In 1980 she was the subject of a documentary film by Michelle Parkerson, But Then, She's Betty Carter.

In the last decade of her life, Carter finally began to receive wider acclaim and recognition. In 1987 she signed with Verve Records, who reissued most of her Bet-Car albums on CD for the first time and made them available to wider audiences. In 1988 she won a Grammy for her album Look What I Got! and sang in a guest appearance on The Cosby Show (episode "How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?"). In 1994 she performed at the White House and was a headliner at Verve's 50th anniversary celebration in Carnegie Hall. She was the subject of a 1994 short film by Dick Fontaine, Betty Carter: New All the Time.

In 1997 she was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. Carter remained active in jazz until her death from pancreatic cancer in 1998, aged 69.

Legacy

Carter often recruited young accompanists for performances and recordings, insisting that she "learned a lot from these young players, because they're raw and they come up with things that I would never think about doing."

In 1993, Carter helped launch the Jazz Ahead program for young musicians at the Kennedy Center. She also devoted much of her time and energy in her last few decades to touring colleges and grade-schools across the country.

Miscellaneous

• Carter is mentioned along with other jazz luminaries in Gang Starr's jazz rap "Jazz Thing."

• In 1999 she was posthumously inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

• She is name-checked in Chapter 22 of Saul Williams's The Dead Emcee Scrolls.

Discography

Columbia

• 1955 Meet Betty Carter and Ray Bryant (with Ray Bryant)
• 1956 Social Call

Peacock

• 1958 Out There

ABC

• 1960 The Modern Sound of Betty Carter
• 1961 Ray Charles and Betty Carter (with Ray Charles)

Atco

• 1963 'Round Midnight

United Artists/Capitol

• 1964 Inside Betty Carter

Roulette

• 1975 Finally, Betty Carter (live)
• 1975 Round Midnight (live)
• 1976 Now It's My Turn

Bet-Car/Verve

• 1970 At the Village Vanguard (original title Betty Carter) (live)
• 1976 The Betty Carter Album
• 1979 The Audience with Betty Carter (live)
• 1982 Whatever Happened to Love? (live)
• 1987 The Carmen McRae – Betty Carter Duets (live, with Carmen McRae)
• 1988 Look What I Got! - Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Female
• 1990 Droppin' Things (live) - nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Female
• 1992 It's Not About the Melody - nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Female
• 1993 Feed the Fire (live)
• 1996 I'm Yours, You're Mine

Compilations

• 1990 Compact Jazz - Polygram - Bet-Car and Verve recordings from 1976 to 1987
• 1992 I Can't Help It - Impulse!/GRP - the Out There and Modern Sound albums on one compact disc
• 1999 Priceless Jazz - Verve Records - ABC-Paramount and Peacock Recordings from 1958 and 1960
• 2003 Betty Carter's Finest Hour - Verve Records - recordings from 1958 to 1992

On multi-artist compilations

• "I'm Wishing" on Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films (1988).

External links

• "Betty Carter: Still taking risks", Interview, 1997, by Seth Rogovoy.
• Official website
• Brief profile of Carter from VH1.com
• Obituary
• Profile of Carter from allaboutjazz.com
• Website about Carter
• Jazz Conversations with Eric Jackson: Betty Carter from WGBH Radio Boston