Betty Carter
b. Lillie Mae Jones, 16 May 1930, Flint, Michigan, USA. Growing up in Detroit, Carter sang with touring jazzmen, including Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. In her late teens, she joined Lionel Hampton, using the stage name Lorraine Carter. With Hampton she enjoyed a love-hate relationship; he would regularly fire her only to have his wife and business manager, Gladys Hampton, re-hire her immediately. Carter's predilection for bop earned from Hampton the mildly disparaging nickname of Bebop Betty, by which name she became known thereafter. In the early '50s she worked on the edge of the R&B scene, sharing stages with blues artists of the calibre of Muddy Waters. Throughout the remainder of the '50s and into the '60s she worked mostly in and around New York City, establishing a reputation as a fiercely independent and dedicated jazz singer. She took time out for tours with packages headlined by Ray Charles (with whom she recorded a highly-regarded album of duets), but preferred to concentrate on her own shows and club performances. She also found time for marriage and a family. Her insistence upon certain standards in her recording sessions led eventually to the formation of her own record company, Bet-Car. During the '80s, Carter continued to perform in clubs in New York and London, occasionally working with large orchestras but customarily with a regular trio of piano, bass and drums, the ideal setting for her spectacular improvisations. Taking her inspiration from instrumentalists like Parker and Sonny Rollins rather than from other singers, Carter's technique draws little from the vocal tradition in jazz. Her kinship with the blues is never far from the surface, however complex and contemporary that surface might be. In performance, Carter tends to employ the lower register of her wide range. Always aurally witty and frequently displaying scant regard for the lyrics of the songs she sings, Carter's inventiveness is ably displayed on such performances as Sounds, a vocalese excursion which, in one recorded form, lasts for more than 25 minutes. Despite such extraordinary performances and the breakneck tempos she employs on The Trolley Song and My Favourite Things, she can sing ballads with uncloying tenderness. In concert, Carter dominates the stage, pacing like a tigress from side to side and delivering her material with devastating attack. The authority with which she stamps her performances, especially in vocalese and the boppish side of her repertoire, helps make unchallengable her position as the major jazz singer of the '80s and early '90s. It also helps support her assertion that she sees no one waiting in the wings to challenge her superiority.