Carter, Benny

Carter, Benny

 orig. Bennett Lester Carter

(born Aug. 8, 1907, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died July 12, 2003, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. jazz musician. Known as one of the primary stylists of the alto saxophone, he was also an accomplished arranger, composer, clarinetist, trumpeter, and bandleader. He played in the big bands of Chick Webb and Fletcher Henderson before assuming leadership of McKinney's Cotton Pickers (1931–32). Carter worked in Europe (1935–38) and moved to California in 1945 to write music for film and television. His best-known composition is “When Lights Are Low.” He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2000.

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Carter, (Bennett Lester) Benny (1907–  ) jazz musician; born in New York City. His career spanned eight decades as an outstanding alto saxophonist and freelance arranger. He led his own bands in the U.S.A. and Europe during the 1930s, and settled in Hollywood, Calif., in 1943 where he spent the next 40 years as a composer for movies and television. He remained active in jazz on a periodic basis, appeared as an artist-in-residence at Princeton, Cornell, and other universities in the mid-1970s, and resumed a regular concert and recording schedule as a soloist in the 1980s.