Benny Carter

Benny Carter was born in New York in 1907. His mother gave him his first piano lessons at age 10. His early jazz influences were Bubber Miley and his cousin, noted trumpeter Cuban Bennett. "As far as I can remember, my first real step in music was when I bought a trumpet and took it home on a weekend . I think I was fourteen years old. Over the weekend I found I couldn't play it! I thought I was going to be an instant Bubber Miley. He was a musician who lived around the corner from us and played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. I admired him very much...By Monday I realized it would take more than two days to play like Bubber Miley. I took the trumpet back, traded it for a saxophone because I had been told, erroneously of course, that saxophone was easier to learn.

"Cuban Bennett was the greatest. He had a big, beautiful tone, no gimmicks, and he was very, very musical. Whatever gift I have I feel I got from him. He certainly inspired me. When I blew trumpet, I always wanted to feel that it related to what he did." In 1925, he attended Wiberforce College in Ohio briefly, then went on the road with Horace Henderson's band. After brief stays with James P. Johnson, Fletcher Henderson, and Duke Ellington, he worked for over a year with Charlie Johnson. After forming his own band for the Arcadia ballroom in New York in 1928, in 1931 he became the musical director for McKinneys Cotton Pickers. During this period, Benny wrote arrangements for Ellington, McKinney's, Henderson, and Benny Goodman.

At the instigation of Leonard Feather, Benny moved to London in 1936 to work as staff arranger for the BBC. "When I first went to Europe, I went to join Willie Lewis' orchestra in Paris where I played in a club with him for nine months...and then I went to London to work for the BBC, thanks to the efforts of Leonard Feather. The job with Henry Hull at the BBC meant that I wrote about three to six arrangements a week...I enjoyed England very much and still do. I liked Europe professionally, musically, and socially.

"My Greatest influence [on trumpet] was Doc Cheatham. He made a trumpet player out of me. He played lead trumpet in my orchestra in 1932. Well, I always wanted to sound like him. I didn't own a trumpet at the time, but he'd given me his and encouraged me and would say, "take this and go up to the microphone and play ." His big sound is what I wanted to get, and with his encouragement and his insistence, I learned to play the trumpet." On saxophone, Benny cites Frankie Trumbauer as his main influence.

Benny returned to the US in 1938, recording with Lionel Hampton and re- forming his own band. Since the mid 1940's, he has spent almost all of his time in Hollywood writing sound tracks for movies and occasionally fronting a small group for club work. Some of his film credits include Stormy Weather, The Snows of Kilamanjaro, The View From Pompeii's Head, The Five Pennies, The Gene Krupa Story, and Martin Scorcese's Too Late Blues . His TV credits include M Squad, the Chrysler Theater, and the Alfred Hitchcock series.

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Benny Carter is featured in the Riverwalk program: