Open the Door: The Life and Music of Betty Carter By William R. Bauer
Written in painstaking and at times painful detail, this biography of the legendary jazz singer attempts to combine the story of her life with analysis of her unique vocal style, described in Open the Door as “delayed action singing.” Bebop defined Betty Carter and Bauer works hard to explain the ways and means of that style, dissecting the music like Dexter in his laboratory (that's the cartoon character, not the saxophonist). Bauer comes from academia and his plodding writing style seems more appropriate to an academic journal than a consumer biography. Lacking literary style, he resorts to an encyclopedic approach to biography and is simply not an effective storyteller in the short or long form. It's a shame because Carter was an interesting and important figure in modern jazz.
SmoothViews.Com interviews Al Jerreau
by Shannon West, September 2004
"I thought we both shared that exuberance in the live situation and a spontaneity that I recognized in myself when I saw her perform. I saw her at the Jazz Workshop in Boston right after I did the We Got By album and I had seen some TV performances. I hadn't thought about that until I was in Spain playing this festival. I was in the hotel, Freddie Ravel (co-writer) had come downstairs, and we were doing a press conference. Over at the other end of the lobby Mulgrew Miller, who was the piano player for Betty, was rehearsing a trio. We finished, he comes over, and we are chatting, and he says he worked with Betty Carter for 12 years. I'm kinda speechless and “wow!”. I say, "Say 'Hi' to Betty for me, and tell her how much I love her music."
And he said, "you know she passed away," and I about fell on the floor. My eyes went blank, and I stared off, and the music started. It was raining, and the sun was shining at the same time, and there were these big bay windows, and there was the blue in the sky, and the sun on the trees, and it was drizzling. That's where the line came from "I thought I'd drop a line just saying how your songs been playing... A pretty pitter patter it lightly played, the summer rain upon my face." I brought my best literary and writing skills to bear on this song and decided I'm not going to sing a hot burning bebop jazz song. I want to sing one of the most delicate waltzes that people never get to hear. Nobody wants to sing a waltz. The closest they get to it
is a version of My Favorite Things," but nobody sings a waltz anymore." (Read this article)
Betty Carter: Still taking risks
By Seth Rogovoy for the Berkshire Eagle, Williamstown, Mass., Nov. 14, 1997
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Nov. 14, 1997) -- While it has perhaps been a long time in coming, the world has generally caught up with Betty Carter, an artist before her time if there ever was one. But now, with multiple Grammy nominations in her pocket, with props from the White House -- President Clinton awarded her one of 11 National Medals of Art last month -- and with critical recognition ranging the gamut from "the most original jazz singer alive" to "the best jazz singer in the world," how does Carter feel about the view from her vantage point at the pinnacle of jazz? Not good, as it turns out. While Carter, 67, acknowledges that she is enjoying the fruits of her labors after 50 years on the road, it is only through her sheer persistence, she thinks, that she is finally getting her due. "Jazz is not a nice word today," said Carter -- who performs with her trio tonight in Chapin Hall at Williams College at 8 -- in a recent phone interview from her home in Brooklyn. "Because jazz doesn't make money quickly, a lot of people in power are not encouraging young people to really use the word `jazz,'" said Carter, who was awarded an honorary degree at Williams last June. "For a person who's been out here as long as I have, they're pretty much sick of me because I just won't go away," said the always outspoken Carter. "I'm not going away, see, that's what probably bothers a lot of people. "There's a lot of young singers who are coming up, and [record executives] hope that they will replace the idea of jazz being what I have in mind with what THEY have in mind. But until I go away, that's not going to happen, because as long as I'm around, I may be a thorn in some of the business peoples' sides who want to interpret the music another way for them to make money more quickly. ( Continue Here )
Along Came Betty
By Rob Mariani /All About Jazz , April 2001
It's a warm October Saturday, the first year of the new Century. Small leaf storms are rising into the cloudless blue sky. The early autumn peace is broken by the news in the paper that Betty Carter has died in New York City at the age of 69. None of the accounts I read say just where and under what conditions she died. So many jazz musicians seem to have a way of breaking themselves like old 78 glass records, although to me, Betty Carter never seemed like one of the fragile ones.
Quite the opposite. She was another Original, and strong. Betty wasn't just a jazz singer-she was in every sense of the term, a jazz musician. She took a tune apart and put it back together again the way the great jazz musicians do, the song merely a point of departure.
On a smoggy summer day in the mid-1970's, Soul & Jazz Record magazine scheduled my interview with Betty "Be Bop Carter. Even then she was legendary. Lillie Mae Jones, soon to become Betty Carter , grew up traveling between Flint and Detroit chasing scat dreams. Ultimately, Lillie Mae would become the world's Be Bop Queen, donning her crown along with a new name. In her hotel suite that morning, Carter had on a silky, lounge outfit and no make-up
ANY jazz concert that includes the remarkable Betty Carter cannot be a total washout. The singer, who was the fifth and final featured performer in the opening-night program of Lincoln Center's ''Classical Jazz'' series on Monday, brought a flame of enthusiasm and inventiveness to the stage of Alice Tully Hall. It was the brightest spark in a mostly lackluster evening.
Ms. Carter, who led a youthful trio that included Winard Harper, playing drums; Michael Bowie, playing bass, and Steve Scott, pianist, is one of a very few jazz vocalists who can be counted on to approach the familiar from a totally unexpected, sometimes revelatory point of view. In Monday evening's program...
Critic's Choices; Betty Carter At Alice Tully By Jon Pareles Published: March 27, 1992
Critic's Choices; Betty Carter At Alice Tully","description":" Betty Carter belongs on the short list of the great jazz singers. She is a dauntless improviser, someone who learns all of a song's structures in order to remake them on the spot, reinventing a melody line, toying with a rhythm, finding a note that would never seem to fit and then making it crown a chord. With her velvet-and-mahogany voice, she can turn a ballad into a luxurious, leisurely caress, dropping into a breathy low register near the baritone range; she can also scat-sing rings around a tune, bouncing syncopations against every offbeat but the expected one. Through the years, she has also rediscovered songs -- from failed musicals, from obscure movies -- that deserve to be part of the canon of pop standards."
Jazz Festival; Betty Carter Breaks In A New Band By Peter Watrous, Published: July 3, 1988
The singer Betty Carter's young band opened her set at the Bottom Line on Friday night with an uptempo instrumental piece. Suddenly, Ms. Carter's voice, singing ''Everytime We Say Goodbye,'' came piping from the loudspeakers. Bouncing melodies off obbligatos played by her saxophonist, Wes Anderson, Ms.",
The singer Betty Carter's young band opened her set at the Bottom Line on Friday night with an uptempo instrumental piece. Suddenly, Ms. Carter's voice, singing ''Everytime We Say Goodbye,'' came piping from the loudspeakers. Bouncing melodies off obbligatos played by her saxophonist, Wes Anderson, Ms. Carter, who was singing from backstage,
It was 3 p.m. last February, the afternoon before the Grammys, and a typically frigid day in Brooklyn, N.Y. Jazz vocalist Betty Carter restlessly paced her three-story brownstone home.
A number of awards flanked her living room, from a Washington, D.C., salutation declaring a Betty Carter Day to an Indy award naming Bet-Car the nation's best independent label in 1981. The only thing missing was a Grammy, a conspicuously glaring omission for a performer both Carmen McRae and Sarah Vaughan have called the greatest pure jazz singer. But that accolade accompanies Carter's reputation of being difficult, unyielding, just down right bitchy. "The bitch is that I've been Betty Carter, that I'm seeking to be as creative as I can be, standing for what I believe in. If I'm a bitch, I'm a good one." Carter's uncompromising stance for pure jazz has kept record firms at bay. Undaunted, she formed Bet-Car in 1970 and released five albums. Two of Them - The Audience With Betty Carter and Whatever Happened To Love? - received Grammy nominations.
Both lost.
She was readying herself for a third defeat with Look What I've Got!, her first recording in six years and her first with a major label in 2 1/2 decades. Carter signed in 1987 with Polygram's reactivated Verve label, which has been snapping up jazz singers - Marlena Shaw, Nina Simone and Shirley Horn - with a vengeance.
I first saw Betty Carter live in 1975, while reviewing for the Chicago Daily News: she was distinctively beautiful -- with unblinking big eyes and a candid slash of mouth, leonine head bopping on a swan's neck, out-thrust arms and seldom-still legs churning from a serious center of gravity. Her lips, teeth, tongue, throat, cheeks and jowls shaped notes so that her face was perpetually re-forming, and she moved while she sang,
Betty Carter: One of a Kind
by Marty Khan Posted: 03/23/2007
Probably since its inception, people have argued over the definition of Jazz - what it is, what it isn't, what is it and what isn't it – with the same futility and purposelessness of Dark Ages clerics debating over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Even more daunting is the definition of Jazz singing. What separates Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan from Aretha Franklin or gospel diva Shirley Caesar? Or from any other singular and passionate vocalist like Patsy Cline, Oumou Sangare, Virginia Rodriguez or Etta James? And is Etta a Jazz singer when doing “God Bless the Child,” an R&B singer when singing Otis Redding's “I've Been Loving You Too Long” and a blues singer on “Stormy Monday?” As the lines blur, one person remains in crystal clarity as, arguably, the only true Jazz singer, the utterly unparalleled Betty Carter.
BETTY CARTER has held the title as "High Priestess of Bebop" for 35 years. Born in Flint, Michigan in 1930, she began her singing career after winning an amateur singing contest at Detroit's Paradise Theatre. Her "big break" came in 1948 when jazz vibraphonist, Lionel Hampton, invited her to join his band. BETTY CARTER has performed with famous artists like Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis. Jazz is not only a passion from rehearsal to performance for BETTY CARTER. She calls it "the business". Since 1969, she has recorded her music on her own record label, Bet-Car. This interview was recorded on March 26, 1984 in her home-studio-office on St. Felix Street in Brooklyn, New York. I asked Ms. Carter about her early career and how she acquired the nickname, "Betty Bebop".
BC: Early, when I first started in the business years ago - I started with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy and Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk and Art Blakey and all those guys about the late 40s - I was exposed to that Bebop music . And my exposure... turned me on to it. So, I was able to improvise a little bit at a young age. And I got with Lionel Hampton - who really isn't a Bebop band, but - I started out with his band in 1948 and, because I could improvise - or scat - whatever you wanna call it, I was nicknamed, "Betty Bebop" by Lionel Hampton. And I stayed with his band about two and a half years and couldn't get rid of it until I left the band.
BC: I left the band in '51. I started a campaign of trying to get rid of the "Bebop" and just plainly use Betty Carter and it's been slowly getting out of the way. But still a few people remember it and alot of young kids like you don't know... that I don't like it too much . But they still can refer to it - they don't have a feeling about it like I have about it, most of the young kids today. So... I just take it now and don't get too angry when people call me "Betty Bebop". I used to get very angry. Or upset. Because it had a - well it always aligned you with certain musicians who had drug habits and things like that; who hurt themselves physically. You know. And I didn't wanna be in that category. But I couldn't get rid of the word 'Bebop', you see? I wasn't a junkie or anything like that, you know. I just enjoyed the music. And that's the reason why I wanted to get rid of the word 'Bebop' because it meant that you were unreliable, irresponsible, you see. And that wasn't the case in my case.
