Carter, Benny

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.