Jazz Articles about Betty Carter

Birthday Shout-outs to Betty Carter and Stevie Wonder

by Mary Foster Conklin
June 28, 2019

A two hour broadcast with new releases from bassist Linda May Han Oh and vocalist Elizabeth Tomboulian, plus birthday shout outs to Betty Carter, Stevie Wonder, lyricist Betty Comden, flutist Jan Leder, pianist Brittany Anjou, saxophonists Virginia Mayhew and Grace Kelly and vocalist Miles Griffith, among others. Playlist Jan Leder “Bird of Beauty" from Nonchalant (Challenge) 00:00 Nnenna Freelon “Black Orchid" from Tales of Wonder (Concord) 06:55 Stevie Wonder “You've Got It Bad Girl" from Talking Book (Tamla) ...

Classical Boxes: Harnoncort’s Strauss & Bostridges’ Schubert

by C. Michael Bailey
March 15, 2015

With the traditional music industry in shambles, the larger labels are repackaging their deep catalogs as never before, releasing well-conceived box sets that are modestly priced for the amount of music offered. Here are two from Warner Classics that make me want to yell, “Yeehaw!" (In the southern classical music vernacular, that is.) Nikolaus Harnoncourt Johann Strauss II Warner Classics 2014 When considering Austrian period-performance conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, ...

Betty Carter: Along Came Betty

by Rob Mariani
May 13, 2006

It's a warm October Saturday, the first year of the new Century. Small leaf storms are rising into the cloudless blue sky. The early autumn peace is broken by the news in the paper that Betty Carter has died in New York City at the age of 69. None of the accounts I read say just where and under what conditions she died. So many jazz musicians seem to have a way of breaking themselves like old 78 glass records, ...

Betty Carter Remembered

by Dee Dee McNeil
May 13, 2006

On a smoggy summer day in the mid-1970's, Soul & Jazz Record magazine scheduled my interview with Betty “Be Bop Carter. Even then she was legendary. Lillie Mae Jones, soon to become Betty Carter, grew up traveling between Flint and Detroit chasing scat dreams. Ultimately, Lillie Mae would become the world's Be Bop Queen, donning her crown along with a new name.In her hotel suite that morning, Carter had on a silky, lounge outfit and no make-up. When ...

Open The Door: The Life and Music of Betty Carter

by Craig Jolley
March 4, 2004

Open The Door William R. Bauer Univ of Michigan Press ISBN: 019514838X

Betty Carter came up as a bebop-only singer in the late 40's. She gradually broadened and deepened her music, enduring what she perceived as failed career over the next 25 years. Beginning with an engagement at the Keystone Corner (San Francisco) in 1975 she turned it around. A demanding and stubborn bandleader Carter won the respect (if not the affection) of the ...

Betty Carter: I'm Yours, You're Mine

by Tom Storer
February 1, 1997

Coming up in the shadow of Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter realized early on there was no point competing on that terrain, and slowly but surely eked out one of her own. Carter's vocal world has been one of ferocious scat and luxuriously slow ballads, of relentless swing and angular melodic lines unafraid to dip into dissonance. Her sophisticated approach and the tight, shifting arrangements she works out for her backing trio lend themselves to an interpretation of ...