Betty Carter

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Betty Carter (1986)
Betty Carter 1979 (Photo: Brian McMillen)

Betty Carter (born May 16, 1929 in Flint / Michigan as Lillie Mae Jones , † September 26, 1998 in New York City ) was an American jazz singer. With her smoky intimate timbre she was considered the "voice of bebop " (Ulfert Goemann).

Live and act

Carter, the daughter of a choir director, came to Detroit with her family as a child , where she studied piano and singing at the Conservatory of Music . In the 1940s she first appeared under the pseudonym Lorraine Carter . From 1948 to 1951 she toured with Lionel Hampton's band , who gave her the nickname Betty Bebop . From 1951 she performed in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC with musicians such as Charlie Parker , Dizzy Gillespie , Miles Davis , Muddy Waters , T-Bone Walker and Thelonious Monk , now under the name Betty Carter.

She began recording under her own name as early as 1953. Between 1960 and 1963 she toured several times with Ray Charles , with whom she recorded a ballad album in 1960; The duet Baby It's Cold Outside included there became famous . Due to the upbringing of her children, she stepped shorter in the following years. She performed with Sonny Rollins in Japan in 1963 and in England in 1964 . The 1964 album Inside Betty Carter with Harold Mabern as a partner received greater attention . In 1970 she founded the record label Bet-Car Records , on which most of her albums were released in the following years. In 1976 she celebrated triumphant successes at the Berlin Jazz Days and the Belgrade Festival. In the next few years she made further concert tours through Europe and performed at Carnegie Hall and several times at the Newport Jazz Festival . In 1979 Betty Carter was one of the stars of the Women In Jazz Festival in Rome; Their 1979 album, recorded in the same year, The Audience With Betty Carter was nominated for a Grammy in 1981.

In addition to her own musical career, Carter earned a reputation as the "godmother of jazz"; The talents she has discovered or promoted include: a. John Hicks , Mulgrew Miller , Cyrus Chestnut , Mark Shim , Benny Green , Stephen Scott, and Kenny Washington . In 1993 she opened the series of events Jazz Ahead , where she worked for a week with twenty young jazz musicians. “I want my music to be interesting for the musicians, too many people fall back on the classic bebop idiom when they scat. I'm moving on with young musicians. "In 1987, she joined together with Carmen McRae on (The Carmen McRae-Betty Carter Duets) , which they called" marked the only jazz singer who only truly improvising ".

For the album Look What I Got from 1988 she received a Grammy Award for best singer. The albums Droppin 'Things (1990) and It's Not About the Melody (1992) were nominated for a Grammy. In 1997, US President Bill Clinton awarded the National Medal of Arts . At the height of her fame, she succumbed to cancer.

Discography

literature

  • William R. Bauer Open the Door - The Life and Music of Betty Carter , University of Michigan Press 2003

Lexigraphic entries

Web links

Commons : Betty Carter  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Some sources give 1930 as the year of birth instead of 1929.
personal data
SURNAME Carter, Betty
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jones, Lilly Mae; Carter, Lorraine; Betty Bebop
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz singer
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1929 or May 16, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Flint , Michigan , United States
DATE OF DEATH September 26, 1998
Place of death New York City , New York , United States