Open the Door: The Life and Music of Betty Carter

by William R. Bauer

Betty Carter's lifelong influence on the music world is unparalleled. Her contributions to music as a jazz singer, composer, arranger, and teacher have fostered a generation of musicians and fans.
This book looks at Betty Carter's contribution to the music world and delves behind the scenes to show Carter's growth as a businesswoman who took charge of her career.
Drawing upon revealing interviews with Carter, the author shows how ever-changing shifts in the music industry affected the singer's life and influenced her music. Bauer shows through his analysis of her musical examples how Carter absorbed various musical influences, from Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday to Miles Davis, and made them her own. From her apprenticeship with Gladys Hampton, Carter grew to become a shrewd dealer who learned to do her own contracting, A&R, and marketing and distribution. By chronicling one of jazz's great singers and composers, the book sheds light on how early jazz musicians got their work to the public and how this process has changed during the past fifty years.
William R. Bauer is Assistant Professor of Music at Rutgers University-Newark, where he directs the Rutgers Newark Student Jazz Ensemble, MOSAIC, and teaches in the Jazz History and Research program. He has written several articles about jazz vocal performance and scat singing, as well as various aspects of music education. His compositions have been performed throughout the United States and in Europe and include works for the theater and dance.

Genres: Music

456 pages, Hardcover

First published January 9, 2002

Reviews

[Andrea Claburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Betty Carter was one of the most innovative and influential vocal jazz musicians of the 20th century, but outside of the jazz community most people don't know her name, which is a sad commentary on the state of our (vacuous) musical culture today. This book tells her story in a respectful and measured tone, not delving too deeply into her personal life but rather giving a clear overview of her career and accomplishments, and includes transcriptions of several of her original songs as well as a few jazz standards strongly associated with her. It's not for those who are looking for salacious details - that can easily be found in other jazz bios ("Deep in a Dream", "Straight Life") - but it does infer from her childhood and early adult experiences what drove her to be the maverick and perfectionist that she became. An early advocate of jazz education, Betty was described by the New York Times in 1991 as "jazz's finest university" for her ability to identify promising young professional instrumentalists (Kenny Washington, Curtis Lundy, Branford Marsalis) and mentor them as part of her touring band; she also launched her own educational program in the early 1990's, Jazz Ahead, for young musicians. Betty was a true original, and this book is an important historical document for anyone interested in knowing more about one of the great vocal jazz artists of all time.

[Naeem · Rating 4 out of 5]

A musical biography of the greatest woman jazz singer of all time. (Well, after Billie Holliday.)