For further appreciation of Benny Carter (see the next exhibit), here are links to three video performances of the alto saxophonist among his peers. The first two are from a Copenhagen night club in 1985 with Carter’s contemporary Red Norvo on vibraharp, pianist Horace Parlan, bassist Jesper Lundgaard, and drummer Ed Thigpen. You’ll hear and see them in “Sunny Side of the Street” and then, without Norvo, in Carter’s classic “When Lights Are Low.”
Next, so long that You Tube had to run it in two parts, is “Autumn Leaves” from a Jazz At The Philharmonic concert at the 1975 Montreux Jazz Festival. The players are Carter, Clark Terry, Roy Eldridge, Zoot Sims, Joe Pass, Tommy Flanagan, Keter Betts and Bobby Durham. For both halves of this stirring jam session, go here and then here. Listening to their inspired playing, seeing the interaction, mutual appreciation and love among these guys–all of them but Terry and Durham gone–made me a little moist around the eyes.
Benny Carter, Part Three
Thanks to Terri Hinte for calling my attention to a conversation between Carter and Mel Martin, videotaped during the 1993 San Francisco Jazz Festival. Martin had more success getting Benny to talk about himself than I ever had when writing about him (“I’m not much interested in nostalgia”). He quickly converted Martin’s answers to questions about him into observations about others, and did it with his elegant sense of humor. To see what amounts to a semi-mini-documentary put together by Bret Primack, click here.