Benny Carter, whose combination of highly developed talents as composer, arranger, bandleader and soloist on a variety of instruments was unmatched in the jazz world, died Saturday at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 95.
Mr. Carter’s career was remarkable for both its length and its consistently high musical achievement, from his first recordings in the 1920s to his youthful-sounding improvisations in the 1990s. His pure-toned, impeccably phrased performances made him one of the pre-eminent alto saxophonists in jazz from the late 1920s until the arrival of Charlie Parker in the mid-1940s. He also was an accomplished soloist on trumpet and clarinet, and on occasion he played piano, trombone, and both tenor and baritone saxophones.
He helped lay the foundation for the swing era of the late 1930s and early ’40s with arrangements he had written a decade earlier for his own big band and the orchestras of Fletcher Henderson and Chick Webb, as well as for Benny Goodman before Goodman was acclaimed as the King of Swing. He later contributed arrangements and compositions to Glenn Miller and Count Basie.
From 1929 to 1946, Mr. Carter led big bands sparkling with young talent. His band in the early 1930s included pianist Teddy Wilson, saxophonist Chu Berry, trombonist J.C. Higginbotham and drummer Sid Catlett. A decade later, his contingent of future jazz stars included trombonists J.J. Johnson and Al Grey, trumpeter Miles Davis and drummer Max Roach.
His compositions included “Blues in My Heart,” “When Lights Are Low,” “Blue Star,” “Lonesome Nights,” “Doozy” and “Symphony in Riffs.”
Beginning in the early 1940s, he composed and orchestrated music for films, and from the late ’50s he also composed for television.
His public fame did not always match his accomplishments, and his only major hit of the big band era was “Cow-Cow Boogie,” a novelty tune sung by Ella Mae Morse. However, early in his career his fellow musicians nicknamed him simply “The King,” and among them he was held in universally high regard.
John Hammond, the record producer who nurtured the careers of Count Basie, Billie Holiday and Benny Goodman, said Mr. Carter was “one of the great influences in American music, one of its unsung heroes.”
Bennett Lester Carter was born Aug. 8, 1907, the youngest of three children and the only boy. He was reared in a neighborhood called San Juan Hill, then one of the roughest areas in Manhattan, near what is now Lincoln Center.
When he was 13, he bought a trumpet at a pawnshop, but when he was unable to play it after a weekend of effort he traded it in for a saxophone.
By the time he was 15, he was sitting in with bands in Harlem. He got his first full-time job when he was 19, with Charlie Johnson’s band at Smalls’ Paradise in Harlem.
When he made his first records in 1928, with the Johnson band, the session included two of his own arrangements.
In Hollywood, he was one of the first black arrangers to break the color barrier, working on top television series such as “M Squad.” He also arranged music for almost every major singer of the day, including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Lou Rawls, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, Billy Eckstine and Mel Torme.
In 1996, he was one of five recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, and in 2000, he received the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton.
