Jazz Singer Betty Carter Dies

Grammy-winning singer Betty Carter, known as the godmother of jazz for nurturing young musical talent, died Saturday of pancreatic cancer at her Brooklyn home. She was 69.

Carter was best known to fans for her signature singing style - daring improvisations and unusual approaches to songs that included scat-singing around every tune and bouncing syncopations against every offbeat but the expected one.

It's the style that helped catapult her 1960 duet with Ray Charles, Baby It's Cold Outside, to a jazz classic.

"The more you do a song, the more you learn about the tune and your concept of the tune. Then I'm free; then I just go any way I want to go and can go with it musically," Carter once said in an Associated Press interview.

A reviewer wrote of a performance by Carter:

"Ms. Carter's method of bending notes downward in long sighing phrases characteristically enhanced the sense of the singer artfully reaching into the depths of her being to find a fullness of emotion tempered with wisdom."

Carter also was known as a nurturing but demanding godmother to successive jazz generations. She once said she tried to teach young musicians to respond to their audience and keep their music original.

"I'm not an instrument teacher," Carter said. "But what I can give young musicians is a concept of knowing how to deal with an audience, and to encourage them to be an individual and not use others to copy from, which is especially important in jazz."

Her graduates included pianists John Hicks and Mulgrew Miller, bassists Buster Williams and Dave Holland, and drummers Jack DeJohnette and Lewis Nash.

In 1993, Carter founded "Jazz Ahead," a music program that brings about 20 young musicians from across the country to New York every year during Spring Break. It is capped by a weekend of concerts.

Carter was born Lillie Mae Jones in Flint, Mich., on May 16, 1929. She grew up in Detroit, where she studied at the Detroit Conservatory of Music.

When she was just 16, Carter was singing in jazz clubs with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Max Roach.

Carter was greatly influenced by bebop, the new jazz form pioneered by Parker. When she started singing professionally with Lionel Hampton's orchestra at age 18, he began calling her Betty Bebop. She hated the name, fearing that it would stereotype her, but eventually adopted the stage name Betty Carter.

She left Hampton in the early 1950s and moved to New York City, playing in small clubs and developing a reputation as one of the most promising young singers on the scene.

"That was a dream time, with clubs everywhere," she said. "I wish we had that time again, really, so the younger musicians could learn faster."

In the late 1960s, she founded her own label, Bet-Car, which produced such classic recordings as the Grammy-nominated The Audience with Betty arter.

As news of Carter's death spread Saturday night, she was remembered by fellow singers and musicians for her style and generosity.

"Lionel talks about her more than any other singer," said Phil Leshin, Lionel Hampton's manager. "Betty came to his 90th birthday at the Blue Note. Every time there was any kind of event for Lionel, Betty was right there by his side. They'd been friends for over 25 years. He loved her singing."

Jazz singer Annie Ross said Carter was one of the last greats from a fading generation.

"God, we'll miss her. ...She was a wonderfully inventive innovative singer. Who's left?," she said.

Eric Harland, 21, one of the last drummers to play with Carter, said no two performances with her were ever the same.

"You never knew what she was going to do. Every night was different, every song she did was different," he said.

During her final tour last summer in Italy, Harland said she became a second mother to the band.

"She was like a mother to us all. She really made sure that not only in music ... but in life ... that we were going to be OK," he said.

The Blue Note and Birdland nightclubs in Manhattan, where she had performed, observed a moment of silence in her memory.

"I can't believe it. She was this beautiful person. She always made time for everybody," said Blue Note manager Duane Snell, adding "And she always packed them in."

Carter supported herself by releasing albums, touring and hitting the college circuit. In 1988, Verve offered her a contract, releasing the Grammy-winning Look What I've Got and reissuing her four earlier Bet-Car albums on CD.

She was invited to perform at the White House by President Clinton in 1994 and was a headlining artist at Verve's 50th anniversary celebration at New York's Carnegie Hall.

She began singing professionally when she was just 16 and won a Best female jazz vocalist Grammy award in 1988. President Clinton gave her a National Medal of Arts award in 1997.

She is survived by two sons, Myles and Kagle Redding.

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