Bruce Crowther's gone but not forgotten

Qualifications needed for an artist to be remembered here are simple: None will be a major innovator, nor even a mover and shaker, but all will have made a significant contribution to music, either through notable recordings, or concerts, or simply by being there; and all are receiving today far less attention than is their due.

Pete Brown	Don Byas	Ernie Caceres	Paul Gonsalves
Sonny Greer	Pete Johnson	Ike Quebec	Zutty Singleton
Tab Smith	Eddie South	Dave Tough	Cootie Williams

A remarkably gifted multi-instrumentalist, Pete Brown became one of the most distinctive alto saxophonists in jazz and was a foremost member of the small number of swing era musicians to make the transition to bop.

He was born James Ostend Brown, on 9 November 1906 in Baltimore, Maryland, and throughout his teenage years established a solid local reputation as a pianist and violinist and then as an alto and tenor saxophonist. After chafing at the limitations of working in his home-town, where he played in school bands, in theatre pit orchestras and at a local motion picture theatre, he expanded his horizons by playing in Atlantic City. Then, when he was 21, he moved to New York City, making the city his home for the rest of his life. He began playing trumpet but the alto saxophone was the instrument upon which he made his name. Sometimes as leader, other times playing as sideman to others, such as John Kirby and Frankie Newton, his reputation grew throughout the 1930s as a vigorous and inventive player with a quirky and wholly distinctive sound. Indeed, he was far from being wholly suited to the immaculately polished style of the Kirby sextet, of which he was a founder member.

Towards the end of the decade, as driving blues-based jump bands became increasingly popular, Pete's aggressive and inventive style was a perfect match. Already a 52nd Street favourite, as the 1940s began, Pete was on hand as the bop revolution thrust irrevocable changes upon jazz. Unlike the vast majority of Pete's contemporaries, his saturation in swing era music did not inhibit him from taking on board the concepts of bop. Indeed, his clipped phrasing, allied as it was to that aggression and his gritty sound suited certain aspects of the new music. Pete was equally as comfortable in the concurrent milieu of R&B small bands. His rasping solos, filled as they were with wit and invention, provided a model for many alto and tenor saxophonists in that genre, echoes of which persisted through to the R&B and New Swing bands of the 1990s and beyond.

Inevitably, Pete's distinctive playing attracted the attention of other musicians and among those who drew upon his work for some of their own inspiration - and in some cases were tutored by him - were Paul Desmond, Charlie Parker, Cecil Payne and Flip Phillips.

Throughout the 1950s, persistently poor health limited his activities although he did make an appearance at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, fortunately captured on record. Since his death, in New York City on 20 September 1963, Pete Brown has only rarely attracted the attention of record companies engaged in reissue programmes. His 1940s independent label recordings and his 1950s albums for Bethlehem and Verve remain hard-to-find collectors items; his 1954 and 1961 dates under Bernard Addison's nominal leadership appeared on LP (on the Affinity and 77 labels), but do not seem to have been reissued on CD.

Although his playing was rooted in the blues and his name first became prominent in swing bands, Don Byas had a questing mind, ever open to new sounds. Because of this, he was affected by, and had an influence upon, the early years of bebop. This musical searching was matched by a restlessness of spirit that kept him on the move. It might well be that this latter characteristic, which led to his spending many years outside his homeland, has kept from him the attention his talent so clearly deserves. He was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA, on 21 October 1912.

Starting out as an alto saxophonist, he played in the fine territory bands led by men such as Bennie Moten, Terrence Holder and Walter Page. In the early 1930s, however, he switched to tenor saxopone during a spell working on the west coast. He was a member of Lionel Hampton’s band at the Paradise Club in Los Angeles when Hampton joined Benny Goodman, and after this, Byas moved through several bands, including those led by Eddie Barefield, Buck Clayton, Andy Kirk, Don Redman, Benny Carter, and Lucky Millinder. By now well known in the band business, he made his first major impact on audiences when, in 1941 he succeeded Lester Young in the Count Basie band. After leaving Basie in 1943, he spent much of his time in New York, playing in small bands and participating in the vibrant club scene that was witnessing the simultaneous peaking of the swing era jazz soloist and the emerging bebop virtuosos, such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Byas and Parker knew one another before Parker made his move and in later years the older man would claim that he taught the young Bird. For his part, Parker denied this aspect of their realtionship - a denial that resulted in a deep rift in their friendship.

The period during which Byas was playing tenor in big bands and small groups coincided with the dominance on the instrument of Coleman Hawkins. Inevitably, Byas's playing shows hints of Hawkins, although he himself would declare, with considerable justification, that his was an individual style, showing allegience to no other saxophonist or school of saxophonists.

Byas was one of the first American jazz musicians to take up residence in Europe after the end of World War Two. At the end of 1946, following a European visit with Redman's band, he settled in Paris, and thereafter spent many years in Amsterdam and in Copenhagen. During these years, which stretched on through two decades, he found a measure of popularity, especially as a balladeer, that far exceeded any acclaim that had previously been his. He made many records, sometimes with visiting fellow Americans, among them Clayton, Bud Powell and Mary Lou Williams. Byas's work during the late 1940s and early 1950s can be heard on an ECM Records compilation, Don Byas On Blue Star.

Byas's sound, full and rich, which he allied to a harmonically complex playing style, resulted in confirmation that his was a highly individual style. Byas was a significant player in the history of the development of the tenor saxophone and one whose contribution should not be overlooked. Nevertheless, his decision to exile himself in Europe in 1946 effectively ended his influence upon fellow tenor players. His recordings, especially those made during his European period, are brimful of melodic music, invention, and warmth. He died in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on 24 August 1972.

Recommended CD: Autumn Leaves (Ronnie Scott's Jazz House JHAS 613) (Buy this now ...)

A member of a remarkably musical family, Ernesto Caceres was born in Rockport, Texas, on 22 November 1911. Highly skilled on several instruments, he started out as a professional guitarist before turning to reed instruments. His first professional engagements were in Texas, often in company with his brothers, Emilio, violin, and Pinero, trumpet. It was with Emilio's band that he first toured, playing in various parts of the country, including Detroit and New York City.

In 1938, Ernie joined Bobby Hackett's band, then played through the 1940s with big bands led by Jack Teagarden, where he played tenor, Bob Zurke, Glenn Miller, as second alto, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Billy Butterfield. Although he played clarinet, alto and tenor with these bands, it was on baritone saxophone that he became best known. Also during the 1940s and on into the 1950s, he played in numerous small groups, often for recording dates, that were led by Sidney Bechet, Eddie Condon and others. At the start of the 1950s he briefly led his own small group in New York, then began a spell as a studio musician. In the mid-1950s he interspersed his studio sessions with gigs with several bands including Hackett and Butterfield.

Throughout his playing career, Ernie adhered mostly to his musical roots, which were in big band swing and Dixieland. Nevertheless, he was comfortable in almost any company, as can be heard on a 1949 recording date with the Metronome All Stars, on which he backed Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, and Charlie Parker.

In the 1960s Ernie returned to his home state, this time taking up residence in San Antonio. During the last decade of his life he played with various groups, including guesting with Jim Cullum's popular Riverwalk band and recording in 1969 as co-leader with brother Emilio. He remained in San Antonio for the rest of his life, dying there on 10 January 1971.

Ernie's instrumental versatility undoubtedly helped him maintain a steadily productive career, but over the years he rose to being one of the most highly regarded baritone saxophone players in jazz. Although many of the big bands of the swing era included a baritone in the saxophone section, the instrument was generally used as an anchor and most arrangers overlooked the instrument's potential. Only Harry Carney, who was about 18 months Ernie's senior, was well served in this respect, thanks to his lifelong service with Duke Ellington. It was because of this disregard of the baritone's potential that, despite the high regard with which he was held inside the profession, Ernie did not enjoy a high profile. Had his career begun a generation later, when the baritone became a respected solo instrument, thanks to artists such as Gerry Mulligan and Serge Chaloff, Ernie Caceres would almost certainly have enjoyed a far higher profile.

Although his reputation is often hung upon the mighty gallery-rousing performance he gave at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival with Duke Ellington, tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves was at heart an introspective balladeer. He brought to ballads an underlying sense of the bittersweet relationship he had with the world. He was a troubled man, who led a difficult life; but he left behind far more than that startling Newport experience. His true legacy is his recorded collection of love songs.

He was born on 12 July 1920, in Boston, Massachusetts, which is where he had his first professional engagement. He played tenor saxophone with the Sabby Lewis band for several years, a stretch split by military service during World War Two. In 1946, he left the Lewis band to join Count Basie for almost three years, was briefly with Dizzy Gillespie in 1949, and then joined Duke Ellington in 1950. He was to remain with Ellington for the rest of his life. In common with many other tenor players who aspired to play with Ellington, Gonsalves learned Ben Webster's famous 'Cottontail' solo note for note, but it was not long before his own distinctive style thurst aside imitation.

By the time of his sixth year with Ellington, Gonsalves had experienced the ups and downs of playing with a big band. Times were not especially good for Ellington, although they were by no means as bad as some have imagined. Perhaps it was not appropriate for one of the two or three greatest orchestras in the history of jazz to play for an ice show, but at least the band was working. And Gonsalves was building a reputation as a consummate balladeer and also as a crowd pleaser thanks to Ellington's choice of him as the soloist to bridge the opening and closing sections of 'Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue'. He had already done this on some dance dates when Ellington called this number at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. It had been a mixed night; Ellington was irritated by his placing on the bill, the show was a long one and the audience was already drifting homewards, and some of the band had been more than usually tardy in returning to the stand after the interval. Whatever the truth behind the moment, the fact is that Ellington called this number, the band played the opening section, and then Gonsalves stepped forward and began to play. And he played and he played and he played. His storming, 27-chorus bridge dragged the audience back to its seats. The band had already been playing well and everyone was in marvellous form and enjoying the occasion. Now, stoked by Sam Woodyard's drumming and the leader's jabbing chords from the piano, they transcended all that had come before on that night and much of what had transpired in the quarter century of the band's existence.

The astonishing impact on the audience present that night was imparted to the world, thanks to suddenly focussed media attention. This was the start of Ellington's renaissance and neither he nor Gonsalves ever looked back. The down side was, inevitably perhaps, that the saxophonist was obliged to play extended gallery-pleasing, up-tempo solos every night, a fact which overshadowed his great love for ballads.

Nevertheless, ballad performances there were. Gonsalves's relaxed and thoughtful approach to tunes displayed a love for melody and an ability to develop long, clean and logical solo lines. His rhapsodic playing on many Ellington performances all testify to his vulnerable, often tender sound. His playing on records made outside the Ellington aegis is usually of a similarly reflective nature. A 1970 album with Ray Nance is a good example, including a marvellous performance of Don't Blame Me'. Gonsalves surpassed even this on a 1967 album of duets with Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis, where he delivers what might well be the definitive instrumental version of this same song. And there was an Ellington album on which every song was a Gonsalves solo. In such performances, the quality of the playing is a reflection of the man himself: Gonsalves was a sensitive yet fragile human being.

Although he had a 24-year tenure with the band, it was not uninterrupted. There were occasional absences, almost all of them resulting from the depredations to his health caused by his addictive nature. He had succumbed to drug addiction and alcohol dependence early in life and his career was forever dogged by these twin perils. He was in London, England, when his health broke for the last time. He died there on 15 May 1974. At this time, Duke Ellington was himself close to death and was never told that Paul Gonsalves had gone before him.

For all the sadness and personal distress which cloaked much of his private life, Paul Gonsalves's recorded legacy of superb ballad performances is one of the eternal beauties of jazz.

Recommended CDs: Gettin' Together (Original Jazz Classics OJC 203); with Duke Ellington Featuring Paul Gonsalves (Original Jazz Classics OJC 623) (Buy these now ...)

Despite the fact that he was an important member of one of the most famous bands in the history of jazz, and during its finest period, drummer Sonny Greer has not been especially well served by jazz historians.

He was born William Alexander Greer on 13 December, probably in 1895, in Long Branch, New Jersey. It was in his home state that he made his first professional appearances but by 1919 he was playing in Washington, DC. It was there that he first encountered a local musician who was to change not only the drummer's life, but the lives of everyone who played in his band over the coming decades. This was Duke Ellington. In the early 1920s Greer and Ellington played often together in Washington and in New City. The drummer became one of Ellington's closest acquaintances, and was an integral part of the music the bandleader was creating. A subtle player player whose relaxed style sometimes drifted into casualness and poor timekeeping, Greer's style, especially when using brushes, was ideally suited to the band's seemingly effortless swing and he contributed much to the tonal palette that Ellington needed for in order to realize his compositions. The timekeeping lapses were underpinned in the early years by guitarist Freddie Guy and a little later on by bassist Jimmy Blanton but he played his own part in generating the easy, loping swing that the band generated.

Visually, Greer was flamboyant, surrounding himself with a spectacular array of gleaming percussion instruments, including bells, gongs, timpani and xylophone. For all the quantity of instruments, however, Greer's aural contribution was muted; he never thundered, preferring to add colour to the Ellington band's sound and to supply a pulse that was felt rather than heard.

Only rarely during the 1930s and 1940s did Greer work outside the aegis of Ellington. Apart from a few small group sessions led by other Ellingtonians, and an appearance on one of Lionel Hampton's famous Victor recording sessions, on which he was again in Ellingtonian company, his career was spent inside the Ellington orchestra. By the end of the 1940s, however, Greer had oustayed the wlecome of even Ellington, who tolerated more indiscretions from his sidemen than almost any of his fellow bandleaders of the era. Greer never shook off the smooth-talking, sharp-dressing, hard-drinking persona that had been a part of him from the beginning when he had often kept himself in funds by moonlighting as a pool hustler. Most of that persona was not detrimental to his playing, but the drinking was. Gradually, his on-stage behaviour deteriorated and in 1951 Ellington was forced to ask him to leave the band.

Thereafter, Greer freelanced, recording with other ex-Ellingtonians such as Johnny Hodges and Tyree Glenn and also with contemporaries like Henry 'Red' Allen and J.C. Higginbotham. In the late 1960s and 1970s Greer led his own groups, usually a trio, and he also appeared at concerts celebrating Ellington where he consistently proved that he was never more at ease than when playing his old boss's music. Despite the lifestyle he chose, he lived a long life, eventually dying in New York on 23 March 1982.

For all his perceived failings as a drummer, in retrospect it is apparent that Greer was just right for Ellington for the era in which he occupied the drum chair. As the years passed other fine drummers came into Ellington's band, notably Louie Bellson and Sam Woodyard. While the latter was ideal for later Ellington, quite clearly Sonny Greer was the perfect drummer for early Ellington. With anyone else, the band would not have sounded the same and if it had not sounded the same then it would not have been what it was - the greatest jazz orchestra of its time.

Recommended CD: with Duke Ellington Early Ellington 3CD set (GRP 063640-2) (Buy this now ...)

The outstanding blues piano player of his day, Pete Johnson is often spoken of as an adjunct to the mighty Joe Turner. While justifiable - their recordings together are among the most sublime duets in jazz history - this unfairly, and wrongly, suggests that Pete was not entirely his own man.

He was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on 25 March 1904, and as a teenager started out in music as a drummer. He was 22 years old before he gave up the drums for the piano and was soon recognized as a master of the blues. During the late 1920s and early 30s he played at numerous clubs in his home town, then the heated centre of jazz. He accompanied several blues singers, notably Joe Turner, with whom he played at various clubs, in particular the Sunset Café. It was during an engagement here that the duo were heard by John Hammond Jnr., who brought them to New York City in 1936 to play at the Famous Door. Two years later, Hammond brought Pete and Joe back to the city for one of his Spirituals to Swing concerts at Carnegie Hall.

This time, Pete stayed on, forming the Boogie Woogie Trio with Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis for club and record dates. Throughout the short-lived popularity of boogie woogie, Pete played in the trio, in duo with both Ammons and Lewis, and as a solo act; he also continued to perform and record with Joe Turner. During the 1940s, and on into the following decade, Pete continued his career mainly as a soloist but continued to appear with Joe and also worked with Jimmy Rushing. The 1950s were especially good times for Pete. Now resident in Buffalo, New York, he played club engagements, toured nationally and again recorded with Joe, making the classic album, Boss Of The Blues, for Atlantic Records in 1956. Two years later, while Pete was still very much at the height of his powers, fate dealt him a severe blow.

He had begun 1958 well, visiting Europe under the auspices of Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic and then playing at the Newport Jazz Festival. Later in the year, however, he suffered a crippling stroke. He did make a tentative return to recording in 1960 but then dropped out of public sight until 1967.

In that year, a concert was held to celebrate the 30th anniversary of John Hammond's Spirituals To Swing. Pete was helped onstage where he received a huge ovation. He took a bow and was being led off when the band swung into his best-known composition, "Roll 'Em Pete", and his old companion, Joe Turner, prepared to sing. Unexpectedly, as he reached the piano, Johnson sat down alongside Ray Bryant and began picking uncertainly at the keys. Then, with Bryant laying down a solid left hand, Johnson showed that, for all his frailty, the spirit of blues piano still burned inside him. Emotionally, it was a highly-charged moment that became, in retrospect, even more so when, two months later, on 23 March 1967, Pete died in Buffalo.

As a blues and boogie woogie pianist, Pete Johnson was a joy to hear and when teamed with his old friend Joe Turner he helped create some of the most memorable moments in the story of jazz and the blues.

Recommended CDs: Pete Johnson 1938-1939 (Classics 656); with Joe Turner Boss of the Blues (Atlantic SD 1234) (Buy these now ...)

Although he started out in music as a dancer and pianist, Ike Quebec made his name as a tenor saxophonist; this despite the fact that he was in his twenties before taking up the instrument. He was born on 17 August 1918, in Newark, New Jersey, USA. In common with the majority of his fellow jazz musicians of the period, Quebec played in many bands, learning his trade with various bans, including the Barons of Rhythm, and those led by Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, and Cab Calloway among several distinguished leaders. He was with Calloway for a long spell, 1944-51, and was also active in small groups, often as leader. With the small bands, he played with many of the early bop musicians, among them Kenny Clarke, recording several sessions for Blue Note Records. Among his recordings was ‘Blue Harlem’ which sold very well, becoming a jukebox hit. Quebec struck up a close friendship with the label’s co-founder, Alfred Lion, who sought his advice on the emerging bebop scene. It was on Quebec's recommendation that Blue Note recorded many musicians of enormous importance, among them, Dexter Gordon, Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell.

With his playing at its peak and with the security of his work for Blue Note, this should have been a golden time for the saxophonist. Sadly, it was also the time of his struggle against heroin addiction. He was compelled to work at various day jobs, including a stint as a taxi driver. At the end of the 1950s, he returned to the music business and became Blue Note's A&R man. He also began recording for them again and after making several juke-box singles, he started out on a series of albums that showcased his propensity for deeply emotional playing. Soulful ballads and grooving slow blues were his forte, and during these few years at the start of the 1960s he frequently demonstrated his expertise and talents. He was, however, suffering from lung cancer, which not only took its inevitable toll on his playing in these years, but also brought him to an early death, in New York City, on 16 January 1963.

Although Quebec's records reappeared from time to time in the next several years, it was not until the 1980s, when Blue Note issued some previously unreleased sessions, and Mosaic Records produced compilations of his 1940s Blue Note recordings, that Quebec's impressive talent was available for reassessment. Not an innovative player, as were some of his contemporaries, the rich sound of his tenor, allied to deeply emotional readings of the music he performed, made Quebec one of the most soulful of players. Although crammed in to a very short span of years, split by his enforced absence from the jazz world, there is in his recorded legacy a remarkably high proportion of music that is sublime and worthy of the attention of audiences, and musicians, of today.

Zutty Singleton was a master of his art and after Baby Dodds was the finest of the New Orleans drummers. He played with a springy, joyous beat that ultimately gave him more flexibility than his more stately contemporary.

He was born Arthur James Singelton in Bunkie, Louisiana, on 14 May 1898. His nickname was bestowed upon him while he was still a babe-in-arms: the name indicating the happy countenance that he was to retain for the rest of his life.

He played drums from a very early age, working professionally for the first time when he was 17 years old. He served in the army during World War 1 and shortly thereafter worked with numerous bands in New Orleans, including those led by Oscar 'Papa' Celestin, 'Big Eye' Louis Nelson and Luis Russell, before joining the educational hothouse that was Fate Marable's riverboat band. Through the riverboat experience his reputation spread to St. Louis where he played in Charlie Creath's band and married Charlie's sister, the pianist Marge Creath.

After a spell back in New Orleans, Zutty's next port of call was Chicago where he was hired by headlining leaders such as Doc Cooke, Dave Peyton and Jimmie Noone before teaming up with Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines. He also played in a trio with Jelly Roll Morton and Barney Bigard. New York beckoned and there he played with another top flight band, that led by Carroll Dickerson. He freelanced extensively in New York throughout the 1930s, playing on numerous recording sessions, including dates with Sudney Bechet, Roy Eldridge and Lionel Hampton.

In the early 1940s, Zutty continued his varied recording career, frequently leading his own band, and also playing behind disparate frontline artists such as T-Bone Walker and Charlie Parker. He worked in films and on radio; appearing on-screen in Stormy Weather (1943) and New Orleans (1946), and on Orson Welles's radio show. Reportedly, he was deeply distressed when he was not invited to join the all-star band formed to back Armstrong in the mid-40s, but he remained highly active, working with Eddie Condon, Joe Marsala and Wingy Manone, among many. Early in the 1950s, Zutty spent some time in Europe in bands led by Mezz Mezzrow, Bill Coleman, Hot Lips Page and Lillian Armstrong. Once again, several fine recording sessions resulted. During the rest of the 50s and on through the 60s, Zutty worked mostly in New York, which is where he had made his home. During the latter part of this period he made several records on which he was the featured performer, mostly for Fat Cat's Jazz. Towards the end of the 60s, Zutty appeared in the remarkable French documentary film, L'Aventure du Jazz (1969), the soundtrack of which was released on LP, playing unaccompanied drum solos.

For all practical purposes, Zutty's career ended following a stroke in 1970. He lived out his life in New York with Marge and was widely admired and regarded as a father figure to the city's jazz community. He died there on 14 July 1975.

The bouancy Zutty brought to his playing ensured that the session on which he played always swung. His late 20s recordings with Louis Armstrong's Savoy Ballroom small band are among the most important recordings ever made and they remain in print to this day. An early champion of wire brushes and a distinctive user of the sock cymbal, together with other ear-catching effects placed him well ahead of his time as a jazz drummer. The appearance with Charlie Parker was atypical; he happened to be a member of Slim Gaillard's group which backed Bird for what was virtually a one-off appearance. Nevertheless, his flexibility meant that he was able to aquit himself without damage to either the performance or to his reputation.

A gifted soloist, Zutty would sometimes follow the penchant of New Orleans drummers for starting a solo by playing the melodic line of the number before creating rhythmic variations. It is one of several rare skills his generation of drummers possessed which have since, and sadly, fallen into decline. Other solo excursions, such as a memorable unaccompanied "Drum Face" on a Mezzrow date in Paris in 1951, and the Fat Cat's Jazz sessions, including the outstanding album, Zutty and the Clarinet Kings (apparently none of these are as yet on CD) show him to be witty, inventive and always swinging. Like several other drummers of the past, such as Big Sid Catlett and Jo Jones, Zutty offered much to be admired and emulated by later generations of jazz drummers. Unlike them, he seems not to have his champions, which is an unwarranted shame.

Recommended recordings: Mezz Mezzrow And His Orchestra (Jazz Legacy JL 65); Zutty And The Clarinet Kings (Fat Cat's Jazz FCJ 100) (Buy these now ...) (Probably not on CD.)

A stylish and direct alto saxophonist, Tab Smith's playing made him an instantly identifiable jazzman but one whose fame was always less than he deserved.

He was born Talmadge Smith, on 11 January 1909 in Kinston, North Carolina, where he learned to play piano and the C-melody saxophone. He then switched to alto and soprano saxophones and it was on alto that he made his name. Among the first bands in which he worked were those led during the 1930s by Fate Marable, Lucky Millinder and Frankie Newton. Late in the decade, he was hired for Teddy Wilson's big band, a mark of the high regard in which he was held because for all its brief existence, this band was noted as being one of the most musicianly of the swing era. During this time, when Smith also sometimes played tenor saxophone, his reputtation spread and after Wilson folded, he went on to work in various bands and at numerous recording sessions. From 1939 and into the 1940s he recorded with Billie Holiday, Earl 'Fatha' Hines, Charlie Shavers and Coleman Hawkins, and he played with Count Basie and returned briefly to Millinder. He also led his own band but by the end of the 1940s, he was playing only part time.

In the early 50s, however, he made some R&B recordings that proved to be very popular and following on these successes he formed a new band that he was able to keep afloat for some years. Late in the 1950s, however, times were again hard and he abandoned full-time music. From then on he still played, but was now an organist in a restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri, where he had made his home. He died in the city on 17 August 1971.

Smith was a forceful player on both alto and soprano saxophones, his solos having a restless urgency. His sound was attractively burred and possessed a surging intensity that was one of the reasons why he was able to make a success of his transition into R&B. Like so many players who were undervalued in their lifetimes, Smith did not make nearly enough records but those that he did show him to be a musician who is deserving of a reappraisal.

Taught classical violin from early childhood, Eddie South's goal was the concert platform. It was a hopeless quest. America's concert halls were not ready to accept a black artist in the 1920s; indeed, they were barely ready by the time his life was over.

Edward Otha South was born in the town of Louisiana, Missouri, on 27 November 1904, but while he was still a babe-in-arms his family moved to Chicago. In his teens, by which time he had recognized the reality of employment opportunities for a black violinist, Eddie opted instead for work in dance bands. In the early 1920s, he played in several of Chicago's leading bands while simultaneously studying at the city's College of Music. Among these bands were those led by Charlie Elgar, with whom he also studied, Erskine Tate, and Mae Brady. In 1924 he began a long engagement as musical director and front man for Jimmy Wade's band, working not only in Chicago but also in New York City. Towards the end of the decade, he formed a band with Little Mike McKendrick. He then led his own band, the Alabamanians, making records and undertaking a European tour.

Among the cities in which he played was Budapest and it was there that he resumed his studies and formed a lasting attachment to the music played by eastern-European gypsies. By 1931 he was back in Chicago, leading his own band but also touring in vaudeville and working with other leaders. He was not especially successful at this time and in 1937 he returned to Europe. He played at the International Exhibition in Paris and also enjoyed a long engagement at one of the city's clubs. It was durin g this visit that Eddie recorded with Django Reinhardt, the results being especially fine examples of his playing. The following year, he was back in the USA, leading small groups and a short-lived big band for club and radio dates, activities that continued on through the 1940s and 50s in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. He also appeared on television and made a handful of records. Mostly, Eddie led the bands with which he appeared but he also played occasionally with others, including Earl Hines.

While not as totally committed to a jazz sound and style as were Stuff Smith and Joe Venuti, Eddie played with a powerful swing and was the most stylish and melodic of all the jazz violinists. In all his recorded work, Eddie South's classical training is evident, and so too, from the late 1930s, is his love for gypsy music. Billed as the Dark Angel of the Violin, Eddie never achieved the recognition he deserved during his lifetime. Even after his death, which came on 25 April 1962 in Chicago, he suffered unjustifiable neglect by record companies.

During his short and troubled life, Dave Tough showed himself to be a masterful drummer, comfortable in a wide range of settings. He consistently displayed musical, technical and intellectual gifts, that might well have taken him to the top of any artistic pursuit and served him for a generous lifetime. At times, he seemed to have the ambition for this; but he also had disturbing flaws that both circumscribed his career and foreshortened his life.

He was born, David Jarvis Tough, on 26 April 1907, in Oak Park, Illinois. He first played drums while a small child and was still at school in Chicago when he became a member of the Austin High School Gang. This was a loose gathering of white tyro jazzmen who were fascinated with and deeply influenced by the black jazz musicians whose playing set alight the clubs and speakeasies of 1920s Chicago. The Gang formulated what became known as Chicago style jazz and Dave, who early mastered the art of playing subtle and infectiously swinging drums, was a significant member of the group. In that same decade, he visited Europe and also spent time in New York City where he made records under the nominal leadership of other members of the Chicago school, notably Eddie Condon and Red Nichols.

He began the 1930s inauspiciously, spending many months inactive through illness, a portent of the future. Tiny and frail, he was repeatedly struck by illnesses that might have left more robust individuals unscathed; and he gave himself no help by drinking heavily. By 1935, however, he was ready to make a mark in a different area of jazz. Until now, the bulk of his work had been in small groups, but the big bands that would dominate the forthcoming swing era were now on the rise. He played first with Tommy Dorsey, then moved swiftly and often fleetingly through many bands: Red Norvo, Bunny Berigan, Benny Goodman, back to Tommy Dorsey, then Jimmy Dorsey, Bud Freeman, Jack Teagarden, Artie Shaw, and others, including depping with Woody Herman.

There were several reasons for his restlessness. Dave insisted on musical perfection, a characteristic shared by some of those leaders for whom he played, but ignored by others. He had an intense dislike for the characterless music demanded by the realities of commercial success that were a sometimes onerous feature of life in the swing era. And there was his own occasionally unstable personality, a characteristic aggravated by excessive drinking. In his private life, he flouted the racial taboos of the time by marrying a black dancer. He also found himself often at odds with former musical associates, and sought to establish an alternative career as a writer. He was briefly inducted into the military during World War 2, playing for a short while in the US Navy band directed by Artie Shaw, but was soon discharged on medical grounds.

It was shortly after his discharge that Dave made his greatest impact on the jazz world when he joined Woody Herman. As the records of Herman's First Herd were played around the world, fans of big band jazz became aware that for all his physical frailty, tiny Dave Tough was a powerful giant among drummers. Yet, despite his undoubted playing skills, Dave had serious doubts about his suitability for bop. His drinking habit had by now became uncontrollable. Observers at the time remarked upon the combination of his discomfort with his role in the changing jazz scene and a detrioration in his physical and mental state, and how it led inexorably to fits. Sometimes, and deeply disturbing to fellow musicians and audiences alike, these fits occurred on the bandstand.

Many of the people who knew him, did their best to help him; not just musician friends but also the writer Leonard Feather and impresario John Hammond Jnr. But Dave would not be helped; portents of disaster had shadowed his entire professional life, and finally they came to pass. Exactly what happened one winter night can never be known. He appears to have fallen in the street while walking home from a gig. Maybe he had another fit; perhaps he was drunk; or he might simply have slipped or stumbled in the dark. Whatever the cause, he fell, fractured his skull, and died from the injury on 9 December 1948 in Newark, New Jersey. His body lay unrecognized in the morgue for three days.

Whether playing in the small Chicago-style groups of which he was a charter member, or in any of the big bands to which he brought uncommon fluidity, he consistently demonstrated his subtle talents. It was with Woody Herman, however, that Dave Tough reached the apogee of his brief but shining career. In that band he exceeded even his own high standards, urging along one of the finest of the period's jazz orchestras with sizzling enthusiasm, flair and irresistible swing that was rarely equalled and almost never surpassed.

Recommended CD: with Woody Herman The V-Disc Years (Hep CD2/3435 2) (Buy this now ...)

It is probably inevitable that Cootie Williams should be remembered chiefly for his work with Duke Ellington. Yet, although he spent, in all, some 22 years with Ellington's band, he made important contributions with other leaders and as a bandleader hired several sidemen who would themselves make significant marks in the jazz world.

He was born, Charles Melvin Williams, in Mobile, Alabama, on 10 July 1911. As a small child, he played various instruments in school bands but then took up the trumpet on which he was largely self-taught. He was barely into his teens when he began playing professionally. Among the bands with which he played in these years, the mid-20s, was the band run by the family of Lester Young. He continued to play in territory bands, mainly in the south, including that led by Alonzo Ross. It was with this band that he played in New York in early 1928, choosing almost at once to quit the band and move on to higher profile engagements. In that same summer, he recorded with James P. Johnson, then with Chick Webb and Fletcher Henderson, and early the following year he was hired by Ellington to replace Bubber Miley. This, Cootie's first spell in Ellington’s orchestra, was to last for 11 years.

At first, Cootie's role in the band required him to play the so-called ‘jungle effects’ originally created by Miley, but his rich open horn sound and his distinctive plunger muted playing quickly became an important part of the palette with which Ellington worked. By the time of his last year with the band, 1940, he was one of the most distinctive musicians amidst a group of highly individualistic players. Ellington, ever alert to the qualities of his sidemen, showcased Cootie in a composition with which the trumpeter would be forever inextricably linked. "Concerto For Cootie", which was recorded in 1940, remains a jazz standard to this day, usually under the title by which it became better known after a lyric was written for it: "Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me".

Cootie's work during this first period was not restricted solely to the Ellington band. He made records with other leaders, among them Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson. With the latter, he appeared on sessions accompanying Billie Holiday. He was also leader of one of the small groups drawn from within the Ellington band, the Rug Cutters. When Williams left Ellington in 1940, he was briefly with Benny Goodman, playing in both the full band and the sextet. In 1941, Cootie formed his own big band in which, over the rest of the decade, he included several leading swing era musicians, such as Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis and Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson, as well as a number of the new young beboppers, notably Bud Powell and Charlie Parker.

Commercial pressures that were affecting all big bands took their toll, and by the end of the decade, Cootie had been forced to cut the band down to a small group. As he would ruefully admit in later years, there was another effect of the pressure. Although he had been a temperate man before becoming a band leader, he later observed that during these years he became a serious drinker. For all the difficulties, however, Cootie's band was a very good example of its kind and period; and an important aspect of it was his own playing. Alert to the commercial possibilities of R&B, in the early 50s he played in this style, leading small bands and making record dates. He also recorded a number of fine mainstream jazz dates, notably co-leading a band with Rex Stewart for a 1957 session that resulted in The Big Challenge. This recording has seldome been absent from the catalogues, and with excellent playing from the leaders along with Coleman Hawkins, Bud Freeman, Lawrence Brown and Hank Jones, it is not hard to understand why. But despite successes such as this one, in 1962, after briefly rejoining Goodman, Cootie was tempted back into the Ellington fold.

Ellington rewarded the trumpeter with several features, among them "New Concert For Cootie", "The Shepherd" and "Portrait Of Louis Armstrong". He remained in the band - visually an apparently doleful presence - until Ellington's death, staying on when the band was briefly led by Mercer Ellington. He died on 15 September 1985, in New York City.

Throughout his years with Ellington, and on many occasions under his own name, Cootie consistently displayed a vigorous command of his instrument. Whether playing the muted colourful compositions of Ellington, or playing in the full-throated manner that reflected his admiration for Louis Armstrong, the distinctive trumpet playing of Cootie Williams remains one of the lasting joys of jazz.

Recommended CD: Duke Ellington's Trumpets (Black & Blue BLE 59.231) (Buy this now ...)

The following draws on my obituary of Benny Carter, which appeared in Jazz Journal International, September 2003.

These days, it is all too customary to see a musician written of as being 'great' and referred to as a 'giant' when even a moment's pause for thought makes clear that none of this hyperbole is in any way justified.

In reflecting on the passing of Benny Carter, it quickly becomes apparent that not only are words such as these justified, they are also nothing more than his due. Even a casual survey of his career demonstrates vividly why he was so highly regarded by his peers and successors; why it was they, and not some weary publicist, who very early in his career gave him the accolade, the King.

Benny Carter's long life did not start out at all auspiciously. He was born Bennett Lester Carter, on August 8th, 1907, in a neighbourhood of Manhattan, New York City, known as San Juan Hill. In those days, San Juan Hill was not an area of refinement and respectability. It was a rough, tough place and was home to many who would make their careers in crime, but for all its potential disadvantages, it was also a district where young men could, if they chose, make music.

Carter was one of several who took a talent for music into the world of jazz. His cousin, Theodore 'Cuban' Bennett was a widely respected (although unrecorded) trumpeter, and another cousin was Chicago-born clarinettist Darnell Howard. A near-neighbour was another trumpeter, James 'Bubber' Miley, who would gain fame with Duke Ellington's orchestra, while other neighbours included soon-to-be saxophonists Rudy Powell and Russell Procope and trumpeter Bobby Stark. Carter was eager to become a musician, and encouraged by his parents, both of whom played instruments, he played piano as a small child. A little later, when he was aged 13, he decided that he wanted to play trumpet and acquired one from a pawnshop. His eagerness was not, however, matched with patience. Unable to master the instrument in the couple of days he allowed for the endeavour, he went back and exchanged the trumpet for a C-Melody saxophone. This time he achieved quicker command and with the assistance of tuition from Harold Proctor and Lt. Eugene Mickell Snr., within two years he was sufficiently proficient to be made welcome when he sat in with bands in Harlem, which is where he moved with his family in 1923. With trumpeter June Clark's band, he made the switch to alto saxophone, and he then played with various bands, including those led by Billy Fowler, Lois Deppe, Earl Hines (where he played baritone saxophone), Horace Henderson, James P. Johnson, with Duke Ellington as a substitute, Fletcher Henderson, then joined Charlie Johnson's band at Smalls Paradise. He made his recording debut with Johnson, in 1928, and it is pertinent that on the date the band played two of Carter's arrangements.

The following year, Carter was leading his own band. It happened by chance. Late in 1928, he had rejoined Horace Henderson's band, and when the leader quit, and despite Carter's youth, he was then still only 21, the musicians chose him as their leader. During the early 1930s he alternated between leading a band and working as respected sideman and arranger with others, including Fletcher Henderson again, Chick Webb, and he was musical director of McKinney's Cotton Pickers. While he never achieved a fraction of the acclaim granted other bandleaders during the 1930s, Carter's band was one of the most highly regarded among musicians. Those who joined the band considered it to be an unparalleled academy of musical learning. That these 'students' in the early 1930s included names as noteworthy as pianist Teddy Wilson, tenor saxophonist Chu Berry, trombonists Dicky Wells and J. C. Higginbotham and drummer Sid Catlett, gives some idea of Carter's perceived status within the profession.

In addition to writing charts for most of the bands in which he played, his arrangement of 'Liza' for Webb was especially notable, Carter also wrote for Teddy Hill, the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, Count Basie, Charlie Barnet, Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. In the years that had passed since his abortive attempt to play the trumpet, Carter had mastered the instrument and played this with Willie Bryant. In addition to alto, C-Melody and baritone saxophones, trumpet and piano, he also played clarinet, tenor saxophone and trombone.

In 1935, Carter travelled to Europe where he joined Willie Lewis's band in Paris. He spent the next three years in Europe, playing also in Denmark and the Netherlands. In this same period, he commuted frequently to London where he worked as an arranger for the BBC dance orchestra led by Henry Hall. During these years, he made a number of very good recordings with multi-national bands that included musicians such as Coleman Hawkins and Django Reinhardt.

In 1938, he returned to the USA, a country now in the grip of swing fever, and formed another band with which he held a two-year residency at the Savoy Ballroom. Perhaps it was inevitable that the sheer musicality of Carter's bands, allied as it was to the unassuming dignity of his personal bearing, would prove detrimental to popularity. During the big band era he had only one hit, 'Cow-Cow Boogie' a novelty trifle sung by Ella Mae Morse. His small group work during this period included spells with the Chocolate Dandies and the Varsity Seven.

From early in the 1940s, Carter spent much of his time in Los Angeles, working as an arranger, composer and orchestrator in the film studios, tasks for which in the earlier years he was often uncredited. He also led his own bands, big and small, there and back in New York. The quality of the musicians he hired remained high. In the late years of the 1930s and in the early 1940s, the musicians who honed their craft in the ranks of Carter's bands sometimes included players of a very different stamp to those in his earlier bands: trombonists J. J. Johnson and Al Grey, trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Jonah Jones and Miles Davis, and drummers J. C. Heard and Max Roach.

By the late 1940s, Carter's film studio work consumed most of his time and energies, and as the next two and more decades passed he also worked extensively in television. Nevertheless, in the 1950s, and shrugging off a 1956 heart attack, he still found time to play with Jazz At The Philharmonic and to form and lead bands for residencies, short tours, and recording sessions. Notable among these recording dates were Aspects, 1961's influential Further Definitions album, on which he was joined by Coleman Hawkins, Phil Woods and Charlie Rouse, and 1966's Additions To Further Definitions, with a band that included Mundell Lowe and Teddy Edwards.

His film work, off-screen and on, began with Stormy Weather in 1943 and continued through Edge Of Doom (1950), 1951's An American In Paris, A View From Pompey's Head (1955),The Sun Also Rises (1957), Too Late Blues, Town Without Pity (both 1961), State Fair (1962), A Man Called Adam (1966), Buck And The Preacher (1972), and 1975's TVM, Louis Armstrong-Chicago Style among a very long list. On television, he worked on several popular series, including scoring many episodes of M Squad, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Banyon, and Name Of The Game.

The musicality and musicianship Carter possessed endeared him to singers and he wrote arrangements for a wide range of jazz and jazz-influenced pop singers, among them Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, Ray Charles, Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Lou Rawls, Mel Tormé and Sarah Vaughan.

It was fortunate indeed that Carter attracted the biographer he merited. At the end of the 1960s, he had been invited by Morroe Berger, of Princeton University, to lead seminars and classes on campus, a scene he had first visit ed in 1928 as a member of Fletcher Henderson's band. This activity continued through most of the 1970s, during which time Carter was awarded an honorary Master of Humanities degree. In 1982, Berger, brought out his two-volume biography, Benny Carter: A Life In American Music, written in collaboration with Ed Berger, which fully documented the life of this amazing musician. Except, of course, in 1982, Carter still had two decades of music making ahead of him.

The 1970's had seen Carter's re-emergence as a concert and touring artist. He made numerous national and international tours, played jazz clubs and concert halls, and made many albums. One of his concert performances, at the 1977 Montreux Jazz Festival is especially rewarding and utterly belies the fact that he was then a month short of his 70th birthday. Fifteen years on, and he celebrated his 85th birthday with a concert at Rutgers University, premiering two new suites written especially for the occasion: Tales Of The Rising Sun Suite and Harlem Renaissance Suite. Five years before that, in 1987, he had teamed up with John L ewis and the occasionally-assembled All-American Jazz Orchestra for concerts dedicated to performing works written especially for big bands. To this repertoire, Carter contributed a major long work, Central City Sketches, rehearsing, conducting and playing solo alto at its premiere. In 1989, his 82nd birthday was honoured by a concert at New York's Lincoln Center at which some of his songs were sung by Sylvia Syms and Ernestine Anderson.

Among awards received by Carter were the Kennedy Center Honor in 1996, an Honorary Degree from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1998, and the National Medal of Arts in 2000. In 1997, a special concert was held in honour of his 90th birthday at the Hollywood Bowl at which a new composition by John Clayton was played. Dedicated to Carter, the three-part suite was entitled, very appropriately, Maestro. The concert could not, though, be held on Carter's actual birth day; instead, it was held two days earlier because on his birthday the indefatigable maestro had a gig in Norway.

In May 2000, the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra premiered two of Carter's new works, Time To Remember, memorializing President John F. Kennedy, and Again And Again, a ballad performed by alto saxophonist Jeff Clayton. The occasion was a concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in Los Angeles, remembering the city's Central Avenue jazz scene, at which Maestro was reprised.

As a soloist, Carter's fluent playing on alto saxophone and the liquid sound he created made him kin to his near-contemporary, Johnny Hodges, and between them they effectively ruled the world on that instrument until the arrival of Charlie Parker. Although less well known, his clarinet playing was similarly rich and flowing. All these comments can be applied just as readily to his trumpet playing. Very few musicians double on reeds and brass; of those few that do, it is hard to think of any who achieve this with such apparent ease as Carter. In an interview some years ago, Bill Berry recalled an appearance with Carter in Tokyo who was, as usual, playing alto that night. Someone in the audience requested that Carter play trumpet. Although he did not have his own trumpet, and as far as anyone knew had not picked one up in years, Carter borrowed Berry's cornet and played with the perfection of someone who was in daily practice.

Carter's composing blended silky melodies with vibrant swing. Among his compositions are Blues In My Heart, which is one of the most recorded of his instrumentals, When Lights Are Low, also extensively recorded as an instrumental and as a vocal, with lyrics by Spencer Williams, Blue Star, Devil's Holiday, Dream Lullaby, Blue Interlude, Lonesome Nights, Doozy, which defies anyone not to swing when playing it, Symphony In Riffs, which was also the title of a 1995 video release, and he also wrote Kansas City Suite for Count Basie's band in the 1960s.

His arranging was of a very high standard and he ranks with Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, Edgar Sampson, and a handful of others as an important architect of swing era big band concepts. His writing for the saxophone section was perhaps the most instantly recognizable element of his arranging talent. The gorgeous, flowing, seemingly simple yet decidedly complex sound he created was just one of the many joys that this remarkable man brought to jazz.

Carter, who died on Saturday, July 12, 2003, at Cedars-Sinai hospital, Los Angeles, after a short illness, was married five times. His first marriage ended with the death of his wife in 1928. Three other marriages ended in divorce. In 1940, he had met Hilma Ollila Arons when she visited the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem to hear him play. Despite a mutual attraction, the times were not right for a mixed race relationship. Almost 40 years later, the couple met again and they were married in 1979 . He is survived by her and by a daughter, Joyce Mills, a granddaughter and a grandson.

To return to those words used at the opening of these remarks, Benny Carter truly was a great musician and one of the giants of jazz. We shall not see his like again.

(The official Benny Carter web site, run by Ed and Laurence Berger, should not be missed by anyone interested in the life and career of this extraordinary man.)

This is based on my review of a biography of Betty Carter that appeared in Jazz Journal International in November 2002.

As numerous fine artists know to their cost, a great many jazz fans do not care for singers. Even those that do claim to like singers often restrict their approval to a small and usually predictable selection of names. Only rarely, even within group - which is a minority group within a minority - is there acclaim for Betty Carter. Indeed, many fans and critics are not merely indifferent to her, but make a point of vigorously decrying her performances.

Perhaps a reason for this lies in the fact that there is about Carter none of the received wisdom that prompts even the least vocally-inclined jazz fan to admit to liking Ella Fitzgerald; and neither is there the almost de rigeuer acceptance of Billie Holiday (an acceptance which often comes with an implicit impression that she has been nominated only because everyone else does it). Carter never adopted Fitzgerald's way with a ballad, a way that reached far outside the jazz kernel to embrace a huge section of the non-jazz public. She never found the balance between successfully singing jazz and ballads as did Carmen McRae. She had none of the vocal glory that was Sarah Vaughan's. And yet, for all these apparent shortcomings, Carter possessed qualities that made many jazz instrumentalists admire her to a degree they did not grant to other, invariably more famous, artists. In this respect, the admiration of and acceptance by her instrumental peers, Carter most closely resembles Holiday.

As must be apparent to anyone who has paid even the most fleeting attention to Betty Carter, she never swam with the tide. She appeared to care nothing for fame and fortune, often making career decisions that appeared hellbent on taking her into unemployment if not downright poverty. Reading her recent biography makes apparent several things about this driven and often impassioned artist. For one thing, she actually did care about fame and fortune. She wanted both, but she wanted them on her own terms; and there's the rub. She was a skilled musician who knew exactly what she wanted from herself, from those who accompanied her, and from those who employed her. She drove herself to achieve perfection, as she saw it, and she drove her musicians to achieve commensurate skills. In the process, she acquired a legendary reputation as a hard taskmaster, but one from contact with whom almost everyone emerged a better musician. As for those who employed her, they quickly learned that in addition to being skilled at her trade, she was similarly skilful, and hard-nosed, in business matters. Above all, she demanded of them that one thing that many employers in the jazz world seem least able to offer: respect.

She learned all her lessons, musical and business, the hard way. The former on the road with Lionel Hampton followed by decades of touring and performing night after night for audiences who would, as often as not, respond with indifference or who simply failed to understand what she was about. Her initial business inspiration came from Hampton's wife, Gladys , a woman she clearly admired and emulated. But being inspired to do something is only the start. What comes next is the hard part. In the course of a career lasting half a century, Carter traveled many byways, faltered in numerous dead ends, and rolled smoothly along sadly few highways. Only in the final decade of her life, was she granted some of the recognition and admiration she deserved.

Even at the end, the audience for Betty Carter never attained the magnitude of those that attended the careers of Fitzgerald and Vaughan, or even McRae. In this respect, Carter most resembles Holiday, although, in most other respects, Carter's last few years benefited from far more attention outside of the jazz hardcore than was accorded Holiday. That Carter lived to be a guest of presidents, and to be welcomed at seats of learning, and to be credited with many important actions that arose from her work as a musician, as a role model for black artists, and for black women in general, was something that Holiday was never granted. Only after death did Holiday attract worship. This last point prompts a question. Fifty years from now, will Carter will be accorded the kind of iconic status that is Holiday's today? Somehow, I doubt it. Despite the years of struggle, Carter did not have those qualities of the tragic woman that have forever shrouded the real Holiday and helped create the legend. Carter was a tough, no nonsense woman who knew what she wanted and damn well got it, even if she had to step on toes to achieve her ends. Not that those ends were in any way unreasonable. She wanted to be treated like the hardworking artist she was, who had learned her trade, and could hold her own, musically, in any company. Surely, this was not too much to ask for; yet only rarely was it granted.

A strong, determined and gifted woman, Carter would surely have been successful at whatever she did and we should hold ourselves fortunate that she chose to be a jazz singer. Chances are, in any other arena she would have been just as bloody-minded and outspoken. And it is that aspect of her complex character that might well have hindered her in any other profession , just as it clearly hindered her in the male-dominated world of jazz; a world in which, as already stated, the singer is almost always a second-class citizen.

Betty Carter is a singer almost all jazz fans have heard about, but whose records almost no jazz fan has in his collection; a singer about whom most fans know little or nothing. With the publication of her biography there is no longer any excuse for not knowing all that one might wish to know about a remarkable musician, who just happened to be a singer; a remarkable human being, who just happened to be a woman.

By her own lights, Carter was the last of the great jazz singers. For the sake of the music, I hope that she was wrong in this. Indeed, I am certain that she was mistaken, but I have no doubt that it will take a very special kind of singer, and, even more important, a very special kind of person, to prove her wrong.

One of her best known albums is The Audience With Betty Carter; in a way, this is serious mistitling. The audience was seldom with her. Perhaps, as time goes by, this sad state of affairs will be redressed. It is the least that she deserves.

Open The Door: The Life And Music Of Betty Carter by William R. Bauer. Published by University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbors. Michigan, USA. ISBN 0-472-09791-1. (Buy this now ...)