Benny Carter’s been a favorite of mine ever since I bought his Jazz Giant album around 1970. Carter’s alto is always bright and affirmative, and after 45 years, I still find him one of the players I’m most often in the mood to hear. I suppose that’s a fitting orientation to the man who composed “I’m in the Mood for Swing.” Here’s Benny, ever faithful to that mood, in a succession of clips spanning a quarter century.
Carter and Coleman Hawkins were stars of a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour that stopped in London in March 1969 (not ’66 as stated). This was filmed only weeks before Hawk’s death on May 19. His and Carter’s paths first crossed in the early thirties when Benny joined the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra that by then had starred Hawkins for over five years. They were in Paris together in 1937 where they recorded a landmark session with Django Reinhardt that’s still among the most honored of the era. Carter’s 1961 masterpiece Further Definitions includes an arrangement of “Body and Soul” that both features Hawkins and is a direct homage to Hawk’s classic 1939 recording of the great ballad. Teddy Wilson, Bob Cranshaw, and Louie Bellson join them here for “Blue Lou,” a tune I first heard on the Jazz Giant session.
The World of John Hammond was produced in Chicago in 1975 by PBS. Hammond and Carter also went back to the early thirties, and Benny was at the helm of an ad hoc group that Hammond put together for a high society gathering in Mouth Kisco, NY in 1932. Hammond seized every moment as a teaching opportunity, and in this case it was to showcase an integrated ensemble of four black and three white musicians. Later in the decade, Hammond recruited Benny to lead a couple of the renowned Chocolate Dandies recording dates. For the fete in ’75, Carter led the band, which includes Benny Morton, Red Norvo, Teddy Wilson, Milt Hinton, Jo Jones, and George Benson, who was one of Hammond’s latter day discoveries.
Tommy Flangan’s trio with Peter Washington and Lewis Nash was widely hailed as the state of the art in the nineties, and while it worked almost exclusively as a trio, they’re heard here with Carter in a 1995 concert filmed in Warsaw, Poland.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMzEfeKe3dw