Dancing With Jazz Hands Dept. - You’ve Been Granted An Audience With Betty Carter!

Jack Kerouac's Cat with another helping of Jazz Munchies!

OK Kiddos, here it is, one of the greatest jazz recordings most people have never heard. Many only know Betty Carter from her pleasant duet with Ray Charles, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” (a song that gets dragged out by clueless radio programmers every winter) but is atypical of her art. 

Betty loved the improvisational nature of bebop and the vocal stylings of Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan, and combined them into a unique style of her own.

Early in her career she performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Lionel Hampton. Lionel fired her seven times in two and a half years, claiming he just couldn’t dig vocal improvisation, but in truth she was stealing the show. It should be pointed out this band also included Charles Mingus and Wes Montgomery!
Miles Davis introduced her to Ray Charles.

 
In the mid 1960s, influenced by John Coltrane, she was exploiting extremes of range and flexibility of time. After twenty frustrating years as a professional jazz singer, Betty Carter took the difficult and risky step of starting her own label in 1969, Bet-Car Records, which proved serendipitous for her. Once she was in charge of her own recording, she entered the most productive and successful phase of her career.

Taking cues from Miles Davis and Art Blakey, she loved to use young artists, and encouraged both artistic and career development to the likes of John Hicks, Curtis Lundy, Mulgrew Miller, Cyrus Chestnut, Dave Holland, Kenny Washington and Benny Green to name a few.

The National Endowment for the Arts named her a Jazz Master in 1992, and in 1997 she was awarded a National Medal of Arts by Bill Clinton. Monica Lewinsky lobbied for Shirley Horn, but Betty won out. Purportedly, Hillary consoled a defeated Monica, “Close but no cigar, dear.” [Oy vey! - Ed.]

The Audience with Betty Carter was recorded on December 6–8, 1979, at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. In 2012, it was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. The songs are divided between her original compositions like “Sounds (Movin’ On),” her 25-minute tour de force of improvisation and scat singing, and an eclectic mix of standards such as “The Trolley Song” and “My Favorite Things”; and more obscure gems such as Charles Henderson and Rudy Vallee’s “Deep Night.” The almost magical rapport Betty had with her musicians got her recognised as a superlative musician during a lean era for jazz singers. Like, digsville!


Piano -John Hicks

Bass - Curtis Lundy

Drums - Kenny Washington on drums (full disclosure: Kenny is a close friend, and Godfather to my daughter)