Judging by the comments beneath the videos, I'm not alone in thinking that Lillie Mae Jones, aka Betty Carter, aka 'Betty Bebop', a name given to her by Lionel Hampton's indomitable wife Gladys, was perhaps the purest jazz singer of them all. If that sounds contentious in the light of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and other big-hitters, then the estimable chan-toose, Carmen McRae, considered that 'there's really only one jazz singer – only one: Betty Carter.' Whatever, I can at least say that I'm not alone in nominating Betty Carter as my favourite jazz singer.
Even though she was often underrated, overlooked and disregarded, there are innumerable good short videos available on YouTube, most of them recorded on American TV. Such abundance made choosing the best a very close run thing. So close that I still keep changing my mind. If 'best' equals quality of backing band, then the technically incredible version of Coltrane's 'Giant Steps' with an A-list band of pianist Geri Allen, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette would take the Golden Biscuit, but it doesn't really show what she can do with a proper song. 'The Good Life', too, with alto saxophonist David Sanborn would otherwise take some beating if you could only see as well as hear the dark side of this video.
By the time my chosen video was shot, in 1990, Betty Carter's career was on the ascendance once more after her time in the wilderness following a three-year stint touring with Ray Charles. Although mainly known for a repertoire of re-imagined standards, it's significant that both 'Droppin' Things' and its very close contender, 'Tight' – one of her hard-swinging abstract signature songs, filmed on a 1992 edition of The Tonight Show hosted by Jay Leno – are both self-penned numbers. To quote the title of the album that Leno refers to, It's Not About the Melody, both are much more about the serpentine twists and turns she takes around a conventional song (probably why some detractors call her mannered) using her marvellous husky voice like a reed instrument. As 'Themrpiggy6666' so acutely comments, Betty Carter was 'a dynamic swinger taking daring tonal and rhythmic liberties without losing the essential narrative flow.'
You can see it all here in this three-and-a-half minute theatrical performance. The picture quality is maybe not quite so crystal clear as it is on The Tonight Show clip, the outfit's not quite so funky and there's no illustrious saxophonist like Branford Marsalis with whom to trade licks, but this has a little bit of everything: the playfulness and sense of latent drama with which she approaches a song, her mesmerising scat-singing, her rarefied sense of timing, the ease and spontaneity of her improvisational instincts, and above all her ability to swing.
Perhaps my most prized trophy as a lifelong vinyl hunter is a double album, The Audience With Betty Carter, signed by the singer and on her own label before Verve signed her up and re-released her own Bet-Car label's back catalogue, in mint condition for a very competitive price, spotted at a record stall in a covered market in a scruffy suburb of Southampton. I shall bequeath it to the Jazz Nation when it's time to shuffle off to Buffalo – unless my daughter learns to appreciate this remarkable singer's talent in the meantime.
The fact that Betty Carter had to establish her own label, and thus finance the live recording herself back in 1979, in order to do things the way that she wanted to do them, not some commercially minded record company executive who probably knew doodly-squat about the art of jazz singing, is indicative of a fiercely independent personality and artistic spirit. Lionel Hampton, whose rather self-glorifying ghost-written autobiography I've just finished reading, was one of the first to hire the young singer from Detroit (who had already used a forged birth certificate in order to perform under the legal age in bars). During her three-year stay with Hamp, the leader fired her several times for not toeing his musical line.
As befitting the child of parents whose modus operandi was to encourage their children's independence, Betty Carter's immediate family often appeared to be the young musicians she nurtured and mentored. Her piano-based trios were a finishing school for drummers, bassists and keyboard artists like Benny Green, Stephen Scott, Cyrus Chestnut and Mulgrew Miller. The short film, New All The Time, offers an intimate glimpse into the way she worked with and tutored her bands. She comes over as a strong and singular individual, who knew her own mind. As she said elsewhere, 'If you want to hang in there for a long time, then you really have to be an individual, be something that someone will never forget.'
She delivers these words at one of the week-long intensive workshops for promising musicians that she sponsored. There's another revealing short film which shows Betty Carter the teacher at work, CBS Sunday Morning: Betty Carter – Jazz Ahead (1996). Among the pearls of wisdom that dispensed to her youthful hopefuls, she suggests that 'it's OK to make a mistake; it's what you do with that mistake.' If only teachers and theorists from the everyday world of children's education espoused such radical ideas.
Sadly, Michelle Parkerson's film, But then, She's Betty Carter, is not available. I saw it many, many moons ago on a Channel 4's Late Shift, hosted by writer, 'she-punk' and ex-Flying Lizard Vivien Goldman, and the late-lamented writer and DJ, Charlie Gillett. I knew nothing about Ms. Carter up to that point and probably hadn't consciously heard any of her music, but the film hooked me – line and sinker!
So why do I love her like I do? What makes her my favourite? Let me count the ways: she's daring and she takes risks (her version of 'My Favourite Things', for example, makes John Coltrane's sound positively family-friendly); her scat-singing is second only to Ella's; the way she fragments the lyrics and cuts up the rhythm makes me giggle with delight; she improvises like a saxophonist at play; her husky voice and 'smile to die for' make me feel un-nezzisary; she can both turn a ballad inside out and back again and swing like a baaad mother... (Shut your mouth!).
Betty Carter was an artist who remained totally true to herself throughout her career: an abstract artist, perhaps, but more in the mould of Kandinsky than Pollock in so far as she never wanders so far from the melody that you lose sight of the song. Listening to her and watching her perform with the grace of a lynx, it all seems so spontaneous – and by her estimation, 'that's the beauty of jazz.'
