Benny Carter - "The King"

[paul secor]

Does anyone know when the nickname "The King" was given to Benny Carter? I don't recall seeing him called that in the 60's when I started listening to jazz.

[marcello]

No, but..."The King (the nickname given to him by Ben Webster)"

[Kalo]

Odd. I don't recall ever having seen that nickname applied to Carter, and I've been aware of him since the about 1980.

[Big Beat Steve]

By sheer coincidence yesterday evening I browsed through my old (VERY old) issues of the Swedish jazz mag ORKESTER JOURNALEN and in an issue from 1936 I came across a feature on Benny Carter captioned "Benny "King" Carter"!

This had me wondering too as I figured that maybe there was a mixup with the "King Carter" territory band (apparently an alias for one of the incarnations of the Mills Blue Rhythm Band) that had recorded in 1931. But would early Swedish jazz and dance band scribes - aware and advanced though they were by European standards - have been aware of THAT band?

At any rate, that nickname must have been around for a LONG time.

[sidewinder]

There's also a 70s Pablo LP by Benny called 'The King'.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Perhaps he auditioned for The Drifters.

MG

[paul secor]

I thought maybe he got the sobriquet "King" by outliving his contemporaries.

[jazztrain]

Paul:

The nickname is explained in "Benny Carter A Life In American Music" (Monroe Berger, Edward Berger, and James Patrick). Here's the story (along with a little background involving Carter and Irving Mills):

"The association between Carter and Mills began early in 1931 while Carter was playing in and arranging for the Fletcher Henderson band. One of their first deals concerned Carter's song, "Blues In My Heart," which became a jazz standard. Mills bought it outright for twenty-five dollars, wrote a lyric, added his name and published it. He also set up a recording of it by the Blue Rhythm Band, which he had organized and controlled, but under the name King Carter and His Royal Orchestra -- without Carter in it. Carter, the composer of the song, received no royalties on it for the entire twenty-eight years of its first term of copyright and began to receive payments only on the renewal in 1959.

Early in 1931 Mills conceived the idea of adding to the bands already under his management several more to form a group of "Royal Orchestras," all the leaders of which would have first names that were also titles: Duke (Ellington), King (Carter), Baron (Lee), Earl (Jackson). Indeed, this is how Carter came to be known, especially among musicians, as "King." Of these royal leaders only the Duke and the King were musicians; the Baron and the Earl were stage personalities like Calloway, who also joined the Mills bands at this time."

Does anyone know when the nickname "The King" was given to Benny Carter? I don't recall seeing him called that in the 60's when I started listening to jazz.

[Big Beat Steve]

Ah, thanks for the explanation!

So I wasn't that far off the mark with my assumption about the King Carter link.

With no Benny Carter anywhere in sight on those 1931 King Carter recordings (reissued a.o. on Jazz Document and Collector's Must) I had discarded that option but that's that after all...

[BruceH]

Odd. I don't recall ever having seen that nickname applied to Carter, and I've been aware of him since the about 1980.

There's also a 70s Pablo LP by Benny called 'The King'.

Beat me to it.

[paul secor]

Paul:

The nickname is explained in "Benny Carter A Life In American Music" (Monroe Berger, Edward Berger, and James Patrick). Here's the story (along with a little background involving Carter and Irving Mills):

"The association between Carter and Mills began early in 1931 while Carter was playing in and arranging for the Fletcher Henderson band. One of their first deals concerned Carter's song, "Blues In My Heart," which became a jazz standard. Mills bought it outright for twenty-five dollars, wrote a lyric, added his name and published it. He also set up a recording of it by the Blue Rhythm Band, which he had organized and controlled, but under the name King Carter and His Royal Orchestra -- without Carter in it. Carter, the composer of the song, received no royalties on it for the entire twenty-eight years of its first term of copyright and began to receive payments only on the renewal in 1959.

Early in 1931 Mills conceived the idea of adding to the bands already under his management several more to form a group of "Royal Orchestras," all the leaders of which would have first names that were also titles: Duke (Ellington), King (Carter), Baron (Lee), Earl (Jackson). Indeed, this is how Carter came to be known, especially among musicians, as "King." Of these royal leaders only the Duke and the King were musicians; the Baron and the Earl were stage personalities like Calloway, who also joined the Mills bands at this time."

Does anyone know when the nickname "The King" was given to Benny Carter? I don't recall seeing him called that in the 60's when I started listening to jazz.

Thanks for the info/explanation.

[dale88]

No, but..."The King (the nickname given to him by Ben Webster)"

Ben Webster probably could have picked it up from the Irving Mills promotion. Here is another quote from Edward Berger in the Giants of Jazz compilation: "Ben Webster had been a member of Carter's 1934 orchestra and was a close friend. (In Webster's Amsterdam apartment, the only photo on display in the living room was of himself and Carter, whom he and many other musicians always referred to as "The King".)

[dale88]

Paul:

The nickname is explained in "Benny Carter A Life In American Music" (Monroe Berger, Edward Berger, and James Patrick). Here's the story (along with a little background involving Carter and Irving Mills):

"The association between Carter and Mills began early in 1931 while Carter was playing in and arranging for the Fletcher Henderson band. One of their first deals concerned Carter's song, "Blues In My Heart," which became a jazz standard. Mills bought it outright for twenty-five dollars, wrote a lyric, added his name and published it. He also set up a recording of it by the Blue Rhythm Band, which he had organized and controlled, but under the name King Carter and His Royal Orchestra -- without Carter in it. Carter, the composer of the song, received no royalties on it for the entire twenty-eight years of its first term of copyright and began to receive payments only on the renewal in 1959.

Early in 1931 Mills conceived the idea of adding to the bands already under his management several more to form a group of "Royal Orchestras," all the leaders of which would have first names that were also titles: Duke (Ellington), King (Carter), Baron (Lee), Earl (Jackson). Indeed, this is how Carter came to be known, especially among musicians, as "King." Of these royal leaders only the Duke and the King were musicians; the Baron and the Earl were stage personalities like Calloway, who also joined the Mills bands at this time."

Does anyone know when the nickname "The King" was given to Benny Carter? I don't recall seeing him called that in the 60's when I started listening to jazz.

Didn't Irving Mills do almost the same thing to Nat King Cole's Straighten Up and Fly Right, by buying it for a few dollars and Nat didn't receive another penny for years?

I find it interesting/amusing that the two Kings, Nat King Cole and Benny Carter toured several times together, played at the same venues several times, and became lifelong friends. Carter and Cole were both appearing at Kelly's Stable in late 1941. Nat's manager, Carlos Gastel, then became Benny Carter's manager until 1945. My favorite 'lost opportunity' would have been for Benny Carter to arrange an album for Nat King Cole.