Benny Carter, legendary sax player, composer and arranger, dies

LOS ANGELES -- Jazz great Benny Carter, a master of melodic invention on the alto saxophone who also was a renowned composer, instrumentalist, orchestra leader and arranger, has died, friends said Sunday. He was 95.

Carter died Saturday, after being hospitalized for about two weeks with bronchitis and other problems, said family friend and publicist Virginia Wicks.

"A big, big person walked out of the room yesterday," said friend and producer Quincy Jones. "A great human being."

Known as a virtuoso alto saxophone and trumpet player, critics praised Carter for his originality and improvisation that helped launch the golden age of big band jazz in the 1930s.

His compositions, which include "When Lights Are Low" (1936) and "Blues in My Heart" (1931), became jazz and big band standards, and many saxophone and trumpet players continue to measure their work against his solos.

But it was his work arranging and composing -- and receiving credit -- for movies and later for television that opened doors for many black musicians and composers.

Carter was largely self-taught as a musician, playing both saxophone and trumpet before becoming a bandleader in the late 1920s.

In a career that spanned more than six decades, he performed with or wrote music for nearly all of jazz's early greats, including Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie.

St. Louis-based trumpeter Clark Terry, another early jazz pioneer, said Carter was truly revered by other musicians.

"We always called him the king because he was probably the most highly respected musician of the whole lot of us," Terry said.

Though he is perhaps best remembered as a saxophonist, Jones said Carter's greatest contributions to the form were his compositions and arrangements.

Carter was a member of a generation of early jazz musicians responsible for changing public attitudes about the style, which grew out of blues and spiritual music and was largely performed by black musicians, Jones said.

"They came out of this thing that was supposed to be the wicked music, and they brought it to life, and it turned into one of our greatest art forms," Jones said.

Born Bennett Lester Carter on Aug. 8, 1907, in New York City, he attended an integrated elementary school. He took piano lessons from his mother when he was 10 years old, and later studied with a private teacher for a year.

Carter picked up the trumpet at age 14. But after failing to master it in a week, he traded it for a saxophone, he once told reporters. Carter mastered the trumpet a year later. By age 15, he was a regular at Harlem night clubs.

In 1928, Carter made his recording and arranging debut as a member of Charlie Johnson's Orchestra. With no formal music education, Carter taught himself to arrange music on two of the orchestra's recordings, "Charleston Is the Best Dance After All" and "Easy Money." Later that year, he joined Fletcher Henderson's orchestra and assumed arrangement duties.

Carter expanded his duties to include composing and in 1932 put together his own orchestra, but the band struggled financially and disbanded in 1934.

But his reputation as an arranger had grown.

"You got Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and my man, the Earl of Hines, right? Well, Benny's right up there with all them cats. Everybody that knows who he is calls him 'King.' He is a king," Louis Armstrong once said.

In 1942, Carter reorganized his band, which included bebop pioneers Gillespie and Kenny Clarke and later modernist Miles Davis. He disbanded it in 1946 in part because of his growing Hollywood career.

In the 1943, Carter arranged music for "Stormy Weather," an all black musical. In 1944, Carter appeared in MGM's "Thousands Cheer" with Lena Horne. He went on to arrange music for "An American in Paris," (1951) "The Guns of Navarone" (1961) and Busby Berkeley's "The Gang's All Here" (1943).

He later composed and arranged music for 20 television series, including "M Squad," (1957-60) "Ironside," (1967-75) "The Name of the Game" (1968-71) and "It Takes a Thief" (1968-70).

His success as one of the first black musicians to break into the lucrative film scoring market and, eventually to be credited for his work, opened the door for others. He also succeeded in using his influence to push successfully to desegregate the Musicians' Union's white and black locals.

While Carter continued to arrange and compose music, he stopped touring in the 1950s and 1960s and began to fade in the jazz scene. In 1969, approached by a sociologist who felt Carter was not receiving recognition as one of the great contributors to jazz, Carter began lecturing at colleges.

In 1976, he returned to performing live at Michael's Pub in New York and later that year recorded "The King," which featured duets with Gillespie.

"I don't look back at the good old days. The good old days are here and now," he once said.

Carter was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987 and the congressional designation as a National Treasure of Jazz in 1988. In 2000, he was presented with the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton.

Jones said he felt after visiting Carter in the hospital that "the king" had simply decided it was time to go.

"He said he had lived, for 95 years, the greatest life he could ask for, and he wanted to leave us like he lived with us, which was in such dignity," Jones said.