BENNY CARTER: A Life in American Music

Metuchen, New Jersey and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1982. First edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Foreword by Benny Carter. Introduction by Dan Morgenstern. Two volumes. 16 pp. photographs, with textual musical examples. Metuchen, New Jersey and London: The Scarecrow Press and the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, 1982. First edition. This monumental work presents the career of alto saxophonist, trumpeter, arranger, composer, and bandleader Benny Carter (1907-2003), one of the most important and versatile figures in jazz, and treats the social and musicological aspects of jazz and popular music with an interdisciplinary approach unique in (truncated) jazz literature. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with Carter and other important figures in the music industry, the authors trace Carter's musical development from his work with small Harlem dance bands in the 1920s to his elaborate movie scores of the 1970s through transcriptions and analyses of representative solos and arrangements. The accompanying discography is one of the most comprehensive ever devoted to the work of a single musician. The first installment in the Studies in Jazz series. Inscribed by Benny Carter on the front flyleaf in the first volume. Original blue cloth bindings; issued without dust jackets. The boards are somewhat edgeworn, with some mild bumping to the corners of the second volume; otherwise very good. Inscribed by Author. (Inventory #: 58708)