Albums we Love: Benny Carter
On A Gentleman And His Music (Concord Jazz, 1985), alto sax player Benny Carter teams up with trumpeter Joe Wilder and the Concord All-Stars, featuring tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton, guitarist Ed Bickert and pianist Gene Harris.
This excellent and highly recommended album features four standards (Things Ain’t What They Used to Be, Sometimes I’m Happy, Lover Man and Idaho), a terrific slow blues (Blues for George) and a Carter original (A Kiss From You).
Benny Carter was essentially a self-taught musician. He started on clarinet, moved on to trumpet and finally settled on the alto sax. Over an 80-year span, Carter had a remarkable and productive career as a player, arranger, composer and bandleader. Even though his style changed little through the decades, it never became stale or predictable. He’s the only jazz musician to have recorded in eight different decades.
His fellow musicians, including Django Reinhardt and Coleman Hawkins, held him in the highest regard. With the latter, Carter famously collaborated on one of his signature pieces, 1937′s Honeysuckle Rose. Nominated for seven Grammys, he received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1987 and in 1994 won for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo for his recording of Prelude to a Kiss.
-Raoul van Hall, host of “Jazz From The Left” Saturday afternoons, 3-6.
