Betty Carter Has a Way With Jazz: Her Own

Jazz singer Betty Carter does the songs her way.

A few notes into a rendition, the inimitable Carter style becomes clearly recognizable. She’ll slip and slide around, only hinting at a song’s melody; she’ll offer wordless scat phrases on a ballad; she’ll take tunes at seething breakneck tempos then stop them on a dime. It’s no problem distinguishing her from Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan or Carmen McRae.

It wasn’t always so easy. “In my early years, I sang songs straight, the way everybody else did,” said Carter, 58, in a phone conversation from San Francisco.

“Then in 1975, I started taking more risks. Before then, my music wasn’t out. My music’s out now,” she said with a laugh. “I know more now, so I’m really out.”

Carter, who opens tonight at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s Cinegrill, explains her approach to a song.

“I ask myself, ‘What is the music like, what are the lyrics like, has it been overdone or is it new, what can I do with it, musically, to make it different?’ ” she said. “I like to arrange music, to come up with surprises that will keep the audience and my musicians on their toes. I don’t want people to think I’m going to give them something that somebody else gave them.”

Does her taking liberties with such standards as “The Man I Love” or “Imagination” alienate or engage her audience?

“It’s only people my age who can’t get with a song done another way,” said the Flint, Mich., native who now resides in New York. “Young people’s ears are clean, not overexposed, and with them, I can get a chance to stretch out. And if they go back and listen to a straight version of something I sing, they’ll realize I am doing something really different.”

To keep herself prepared for her performances, Carter rehearses relentlessly, and she demands a lot from her backup crew--Darrel Grant on piano, Ira Coleman playing bass and Troy Davis on drums.

“I want them to hear me, work with me and be creative at the same time,” she said. “And I want them to avoid cliches. Cliches keep you from thinking. Most of all, they have to listen. If they want this job, that’s what they have to do.”

No one--not herself, her band, her audience--can predict what a Betty Carter show will be like.

“There are no two sets alike,” she said. “I improvise. I’m very, very loose. I call the sets from the stage when I get there, tune by tune. The guys won’t know what’s coming next so they better know the music. That’s what will make them learn the music. No, I don’t give them a list of songs before the set.”

Asked if she’s a jazz singer, Carter replied without hesitation, “Yes.”

But in answering what qualities make her a jazz singer, she wasn’t exactly explicit.

“I want to be,” she said with a chuckle. “It’s an attitude, and the attitude is me. You won’t be able to explain it but you know it, you know it when you hear it. My audiences, both here and in Europe, they know what this music is. I’ve had so many young kids come up to me and say, ‘Now that’s what jazz is.’ ”

Carter believes she was a jazz singer from the outset of her career.

“I did a lot of singing in high school, on stage by myself, and that got my ego turned on,” she said, “and, because I liked be-bop, I could improvise quickly. On my first job, with Lionel Hampton (in 1948), I didn’t sing any songs. I just took choruses scat singing. I thought it was awful he wouldn’t let me sing a song about love. But that early training was really beneficial.”

Judging by her successes, Carter’s way is working. She’s appearing consistently, both in the United States and Europe; her latest solo LP, “Look What I Got!” (Verve), sat atop the Billboard jazz charts for six weeks; “The Carmen McRae-Betty Carter Duets” (Great American Music Hall) has just been released; her renowned late ‘50s duet LP with Ray Charles has been reissued on MCA; she has one track on the new Hal Wilner Disney tribute, “Stay Awake” (A&M;); many of her early Roulette and Bet-Car albums are available on compact disc, and she’s going to be on “The Cosby Show” on NBC this month, “doing a little acting and singing the song ‘Look What I Got!’

“And Cosby and I did a video of ‘Look What I Got!’ ” Carter said, “and he gave it to me, to do anything I want to do with it. Is that something beautiful?”

It should come as no surprise that Carter’s way has made her happy.

“I love my music, I’m feeling good, I’ve raised my children, I own some property, and I have never done anything but sing jazz,” she said. “I can’t regret anything I’ve done, because it’s working.”