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Benny Carter was born Bennett Lester Carter on August 8, 1907 in New York City. He received his first piano lessons from his mother but was largely self-taught. Growing up in Harlem under the influence of trumpeter Bubber Miley and was inspired to buy his own. Unable to play like Miley, he switched to saxophone.

By age fifteen he was sitting in at Harlem night spots and from 1924 to 1928, Carter gained valuable professional experience as a sideman in some of New York’s top bands. For the next two years he played with such jazz greats as cornetist Rex Stewart, Sidney Bechet, Earl Hines, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Duke Ellington and others.

His first recordings of a prolific catalogue were made in 1928 with the Charlie Johnson’s Orchestra and he formed his first big band the following year. In the early 30s he played with Fletcher Henderson, led the McKinney’s Cotton Pickers in Detroit, then returned to New York to once again lead his own band. He would work with Sid Catlett, Chu Berry, Teddy Wilson and Dicky Wells.

Benny’s name first appeared on records with a 1932 Crown label, then on Columbia, Okeh and Vocalion. In 1935 he moved to Europe to play trumpet with Willie Lewis’s orchestra, became staff arranger for the BBC dance orchestra, made several records, returned home in 1938, formed another orchestra and spent much of 1939 and 1940 at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom.  He relocated to Los Angeles in 1943, moved increasingly into studio work and arrange for dozens of feature films and television productions, influencing and mentoring Quincy Jones, as well as arranging for Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, Pearl Bailey, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, Lou Rawls, Louis Armstrong and Mel Torme among others over the course of his career.

Carter has been honored as a jazz master by the National Endowment for the Arts, received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton, was a Kennedy Center honoree, was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, won six Grammy Awards, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was inducted into the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame.

Alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger and bandleader Benny Carter, who was a major figure known as “King” in the jazz community and the only musician to record in eight different decades, passed away on July 12, 2003 in Los Angeles, California at age 95.

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