Keter Betts - R.I.P.

[Lois Gilbert]

The great bassist passed away on Saturday...
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Legendary jazz bassist William Thomas "Keter" Betts was born July 25, 1928, in Port Chester, New York. While running an errand for his mother while in the fifth grade, Betts came across a parade. Instead of continuing on his way, he followed the parade all over town, entranced by the music. That incident marked the beginning of his love affair with music.

Starting out on the drums, Betts tired of carrying the set up and down the four floors to his family apartment, and in 1946, he switched to the bass. When Betts was only nineteen, he landed his first professional gig, playing for thirteen weeks in Washington, D.C., with saxophonist Carmen Leggio. After touring the country from 1949 to 1951, Betts met jazz singer Dinah Washington and toured with her from 1951 until 1956. The next five years found Betts working in the hottest clubs in the country and touring Europe and South America with Charlie Byrd and Woody Herman. In 1964, Betts joined up with Ella Fitzgerald for a short tour. He would rejoin her several more times, and their career together would span twenty-four years.

Betts has been an instructor of music at Howard University in Washington, D.C., since 1963, and he also instructs young adults through various programs, including the Washington Performing Arts Society's Concerts in Schools and Prince George's County's Arts Alive. Despite appearing in more than 100 recordings, it was not until 1998 that Betts released his first solo album, Bass, Buddies & Blues, and followed it up a year late with Bass, Buddies, Blues Beauty Too.

Betts has been a member of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Big Band and has been inducted into the Washington Area Music Association Hall of Fame. Since 2000, Betts has performed annually at the All-Star Christmas Jazz Jam on Millennium Stage. Betts is widely considered the most respected journeyman bassist in jazz music, and his career continues strong today.

[bluenoter]

Very sad news. Over the years, I saw him play bass with group after group here in DC. I'm sorry to say that I kind of took him for granted.

R.I.P.

[Ron Thorne]

Another jazz ambassador and masterful musician is gone.




R.I.P., Keter Betts~

[RainyDay]

I'm sure I saw Betts at either an SF Jazz event or at Yoshi's. All the jazzers in their golden years are leaving us. It makes me so sad. RIP.

[Lois Gilbert]

Jazz Bassist Keter Betts Dies at 77

by Adam Bernstein
Washington Post, August 8, 2005

Keter Betts, 77, a jazz bassist heard on more than 200 recordings, notably
with guitarist Charlie Byrd and singers Dinah Washington and Ella Fitzgerald,
was found dead Aug. 6 at his home in Silver Spring.

The cause of death has not been determined, according to the McGuire funeral
home in the District.

Trumpeter Clark Terry, formerly with the Duke Ellington and "Tonight Show"
orchestras, said Mr. Betts was "on the top plateau of all the bass players."

Mr. Betts played in bands with Oscar Peterson, Tommy Flanagan, Woody Herman,
Nat Adderley, Joe Pass, Clifford Brown and Vince Guaraldi.

After he made the Washington area his home in the mid-1950s, Mr. Betts
teamed with Byrd, the lyrical guitarist who made his name with sensual,
samba-inspired bossa nova music. They were regulars at the Showboat Lounge in the
District and made several State Department-sponsored trips abroad.

During one trip to Brazil, Mr. Betts became enthralled with samba records
and, he said, spent months persuading Byrd to play the music around Washington.

Although Mr. Betts was on the million-selling "Jazz Samba" (1962) album --
recorded at Washington's All Souls Unitarian Church -- stars Byrd and
saxophonist Stan Getz were credited with launching the bossa nova craze in the United
States.

One of the most memorable songs from the album, "Desafinado," featured Mr.
Betts doing the supple bass-line introduction. But his contribution to finding
the music went unheralded until recent years, after he spoke to JazzTimes
magazine about his role.

Ken Kimery, a producer and drummer with the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks
Orchestra, told The Washington Post in 2003: "My experience with him is that he
feels the story will come out, and he does not feel he'll have to be the one
who takes the effort to do that.... Here's a gentleman who's done so much and
does not feel the need to self-promote."

William Thomas Betts was born in Port Chester, N.Y., July 22, 1928, and was
raised by his single mother, a domestic worker. He got his nickname when a
family friend said the baby was as cute as a mosquito. Mosquito became Skeeter,
then Keter.

One day, his mother sent the youngster for milk and bread at the market.
Thrilled by the sound of a passing Italian parade, he followed the drummer
across town. He was gone four hours with the milk and bread.

"My mother almost killed me when I got home," he told an interviewer. "I got
a whippin'. After that, I told my mother I wanted to play drums."

She figured that if her fury did not dissuade him, he must be serious. She
arranged for drum lessons.

His switch to the bass came one day in 1946, his senior year in high school.
He went to New York to see Cab Calloway's big band and meet the drummer.
When bassist Milt Hinton appeared at the stage door, he told the teenager that
the drummer was gone but that he would spring for a 35-cent lunch. He also
talked up the bass.

Ultimately, Hinton's words were not as persuasive to Mr. Betts as the fact
that carrying a drum set up four flights of stairs to his mother's apartment
was excruciating.

Almost from the start, Mr. Betts's professional career brought him to
Washington. New York area saxophonist Carmen Leggio invited Mr. Betts to play with
his band at a club near the Howard Theatre in 1947.

In 1949, while Mr. Betts was playing at Washington's Club Bali, R&B
bandleader Earl Bostic heard and hired him. He made his recording debut that year on
Bostic's rendition of "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams."

"I didn't want to play R&B," Mr. Betts said. "But it was a good chance to go
on the road and see the country."

He met Dinah Washington in 1951, when she and pianist Wynton Kelly were
doing a one-nighter with Bostic's band. The singer offered Mr. Betts a job, and
he spent five years with the notorious Queen of the Blues and cut several
classic records, including "Dinah Jams" (1954) and "Dinah!" (1956).

Her gruff exterior was "for the people," Mr. Betts said. "She was a
different person inside." She paid for Mr. Betts's wedding reception in 1953 at
Birdland in New York; Tito Puente provided the music.

Washington taught Mr. Betts a secret to good musicianship: Learn the lyrics.
She said the best musicians know the entire song, not just the chord changes.

"There's an art to playing behind the singer," he said later. "When the
singer comes onstage, they're buck naked. And it's the job of the group backing
her up to dress that person for the audience."

He met Fitzgerald through his golfing partner, bassist Ray Brown, the
singer's ex-husband and business manager. Mr. Betts played with Fitzgerald in the
mid-1960s and again from 1971 to 1993, often doing weeks of one-nighters
around the world.

Meanwhile, he played at the Kennedy Center and on jazz cruises. He also
stayed active in musical education through Head Start, among other programs. At
the Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts, he often amazed
the kindergarten set by taking "Happy Birthday" and covering it in different
styles: classical, Brazilian, country and western, rock and jazz.

In 1994, he was inducted into the Washington Area Music Association's Hall
of Fame.

He emerged as a bandleader with a flurry of recent CDs and composed a
handful of songs, notably the sweet and tender "Pinky's Waltz," in memory of his
wife, Mildred Grady Betts, who died in 2000.

Survivors include five children, William Betts Jr. of Washington, Jon Betts
of Olney, Derek Betts of Los Angeles and Jacquelyn Betts and Jennifer Betts,
both of Silver Spring; and four grandchildren.

[Mike Schwartz]

Originally Posted by Ron Thorne

Another jazz ambassador and masterful musician is gone.




R.I.P., Keter Betts~

Amen...one of those with a perennial smile on his face on stage emulating the joy of making music.

[Valerie]

My sincere condolences go out to Mr. Betts's family and friends. He was a special talent and human being.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

The Gospel According to Betts Was All About Joy

By Richard Harrington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 9, 2005; C01

Like the instrument he mastered over six decades, Washington jazz bassist Keter Betts was elemental and essential, both to the sound of the city in which he had lived for more than 50 years and to those he played with -- whether over several decades as Ella Fitzgerald's most trusted and dependable accompanist or in the moments he graciously sat in with young talent at local jazz venues.

Betts, who died Saturday in his Silver Spring home at 77, seemed to be everywhere, perhaps due to a geniality and gregariousness that the years did nothing to diminish.

Betts's role in the jazz community, and the larger music community, reflected the traditional role and responsibility of the bass in a jazz ensemble: to anchor but also to provide a core pulse, to cushion and contextualize the sound of others but also to illuminate and inspire. As a player, Betts displayed impeccable taste, an insistent sense of swing, gorgeous tone and an appreciation for melody rooted in his collaborations with original song stylists such as Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington.

Little wonder, then, that Betts was one of the most sought-after bassists, and not only in a jazz context. In the early '90s, legendary R&B group the Orioles asked Betts to do a night's session work on an album and he ended up writing a set of arrangements, several days worth of work. When it came time to settle, Betts asked for a pittance. It was an act of generosity repeated time and again.

Betts taught and mentored generations of local jazz musicians and countless students he encountered in workshops and school programs, from elementary to college level. A teddy bear of man, with a perpetual smile, Betts preached the gospel of jazz, and the spirit of creativity, with grace, charm and enthusiasm, seeding future fans for a great, original American music form that, sadly, always needed great ambassadors. To hear Betts's wise discourses on jazz, his stories about the brilliant artists and improvisers he worked with, was to recognize the breadth of his own accomplishment.

Betts was probably best known for his long partnership with the grand First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald, starting in the mid-'60s. Betts had spent years accompanying Washington, following a road apprenticeship with R&B saxophonist Earl Bostic and several years of seasoning on the club scene of the city he'd moved to in 1947, just a year out of high school.

But before hooking up with Fitzgerald, Betts would figure largely in one of the most significant musical movements of the '60s. In 1961, he and guitarist Charlie Byrd, already veterans of State Department-sponsored cultural goodwill tours of Europe and the Far East, were invited to Latin America. In Brazil, they discovered the simple yet beguiling and hypnotic sounds of bossa nova, which melded Brazil's infectious samba with West Coast-style cool jazz.

Betts was particularly enamored of the music and spearheaded a recording session at Pierce Hall in All Souls Church on 16th Street with Byrd and tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, who sensed that his rich, breathy vibrato would sound magnificent playing this new music. It was Getz's record date and Getz's label, Verve, but it's Betts's ebullient and ingratiating bass vamp that introduces the opening track, Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Desafinado," and sets the mood for 1962's "Jazz Samba," the jazz album that introduced and popularized bossa nova worldwide. Byrd and Getz always get the credit for that, but it was actually Betts who had the vision and inspiration, though he was forced out of Byrd's group soon after, just as the music exploded. Betts seldom talked about any disappointment over how history charted his contribution, but always took great pleasure when writers and fellow musicians recognized his significant role.

A few years later, Betts met Fitzgerald through Ray Brown -- one of his favorite partners on the golf courses they encountered on jazz tours around the world. Brown, himself one of the greatest of jazz bassists, had once been married to Fitzgerald and later managed her career; putting the singer and Betts together would be one of his greatest moves. From the start, they were simpatico, something particularly evident in concert during their showcase voice and bass duets-- daring dialogues and dances of rhythms and melodies that could be beautifully elegant one moment and wildly inventive the next.

Fitzgerald often told interviewers that Betts had a sixth sense as to what she needed, that it was his bass, not the drums, that drove the music. No one, she said, drove it better, and no one drove it as long, from 1964 until 1993, when Fitzgerald stopped touring because of declining health (she died three years later). But before that, there would be 50 European tours and an endless string of American concerts, including one at the Kennedy Center, during which Betts brokered a rare interview with the notoriously shy Fitzgerald for this reporter.

In the last few years, Keter Betts had his own serious health problems (he was diabetic much of his life), but he kept on playing with undiminished energy and imagination, kept on mentoring young musicians and gleefully challenging his peers. And he continued to embody the substance and spirit of the music he so loved. Jazz elevated Keter Betts to worldwide renown of his own and he in turn elevated everyone fortunate enough to be around him.

[Lois Gilbert]

Jazz Master's Final Chord

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, August 9, 2005; A17

A great jazz number doesn't fade out like a mere pop song or rock anthem. A great jazz number has an ending -- often abrupt, sometimes even in a different key, but always an ending that fits what has come before. So it was on Saturday with one of the great careers in the history of this surpassing American art form.

If you've never heard of Keter Betts, who was found dead at 77 in his apartment near Washington, you're not alone. Betts played upright bass, not one of the glamorous solo instruments. But you've heard of some of the people he toured, jammed and recorded with: Dinah Washington. Ella Fitzgerald. Oscar Peterson. Nat Adderley. Stan Getz. Charlie Byrd.

No fade-out: Betts was working at his craft until the very end. He was scheduled to play at the Kennedy Center next month; later this week he was supposed to participate in a jam session with local musicians.

I mark the passing of this man who never achieved the fame he deserved because the story of his life and work is so quintessentially American. Born William Thomas Betts in Port Chester, N.Y., to a single mother -- that's two strikes already, black and poor -- he bootstrapped his way to the top of his profession through talent, persistence and luck. He haunted stage doors until the musicians he idolized would come out to talk and offer advice, maybe even listen to him play. He took advantage of every opportunity and never came to a gig with anything other than his best.

And his life spanned the glory years of jazz, decades when American musicians were combining European melodies and African rhythms to create a new kind of music unlike anything the world had ever heard. It was music of exceptional rigor, grounded in the most advanced theories of composition. Betts played with many of the greats of jazz and was a friend or passing acquaintance of all the rest -- jazz is a small world, steadily getting smaller. It was Betts who became enchanted with Brazilian rhythms during a trip to South America and shared his new enthusiasm with saxophonist Getz and guitarist Byrd. Betts played bass on the two stars' seminal 1962 album "Jazz Samba," which introduced America to the bossa nova.

Best of all, at least for those of us who met him late in his life, Betts had a near-photographic memory. He could sit and spin his wonderful stories for hours on end. He'd be talking about the time he ran into "Diz" at some European festival, "Diz" being Dizzy Gillespie, and he could remember the hotel where he stayed, the venue where he played, what the two men talked about over dinner, what they ate. And, of course, what songs he played that night and who else was on the bandstand.

So many jazz legends had their lives shortened by drugs, like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, or illness, like John Coltrane. Others sacrificed brain cells and hepatic function to alcohol; once, in the late '70s, I went to see Getz perform in a club in San Francisco, but the show was canceled after he proved to be too drunk to assemble his saxophone. Betts was a counterexample -- stable, happily married, immune to the depredations of the sporting life.

As a result, he reached old age with all his faculties intact. He could still flat-out play -- driving be-bop, soulful ballads, smooth Brazilian samba. He had a lifetime of experience to draw from, and the young musicians who learned from him could have had no better teacher.

Sometimes, after he'd told one of his great stories about Ella or Dinah or the New York jazz scene in the '50s, friends would tell him that he really needed to write it all down -- write down the history of America's great contribution to modern music from the vantage point of an insider, someone up on the bandstand instead of out in the audience. But the fact was that he was more interested in making music than writing about it.

Maybe that's the way it was meant to be. A great jazz number is evanescent; attempts to capture it on vinyl or magnetic tape, or to translate it into bits and bytes, are like putting a bird in a cage. Great jazz is meant to be performed live and appreciated live. When the music is gone, only memory can do it justice.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...080801149.html

[Lois Gilbert]

3 obits from the Washington Post! But all so eloquent....

[Lois Gilbert]

Funeral Services:
William Thomas "Keeter" Betts
Jazz Aficionado
Monday, August 15, 2005

* 10: am to 11:30 an Public viewing
Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church
3401 Nebraska Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20016

* 11:30am- 12:45pm Services
* Internment immediately following services @ Parklawn Cemetery
* 3: PM: Family will receive friends at MMUMC (address above)

Memorial Service:
A special memorial services is being planned in Keeler's honor, date, time,
place TBA. We will keep you informed and would sincerely appreciate your
support with this event.

[hornplayer]

Damn! How I hate to read these obits!

RIP, Keter Betts.

[cookie]

That's such sad news!

One time when I was in DC, they played a Keter Betts tribute on the radio. It was great--lots of Dinah! Well, I think that was the first time I *really* thought about Keter as an artist, not just a sideman. Unfortunately, that does happen to often to bassists---they get taken for granted sometimes.

It's sad to know that he's gone. Condolences to his family and friends.

[drjazz100]

Funeral Services:
William Thomas "Keter" Betts
Jazz Aficionado
Monday, August 15, 2005

10: am to 11:30 an Public viewing
Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church
3401 Nebraska Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20016

11:30am- 12:45pm Services
Internment immediately following services @ Parklawn Cemetery
3: PM: Family will receive friends at MMUMC (address above)
Paying tribute to Keter Betts on Monday, August 15, 2005 (just a few) who have confirmed

Junior Nance
Dr. Billy Taylor
Freddie Cole
Ethel Enis
Featured bassist: Michael Bowie, James King, Steve Novosel
Tommy Cecil
Buck Hill
Steve Abshire
Bertell Knox
Dick Morgan
Jimmy Cobb
There will be a jazz tribute during the public viewing - 10:am - 12 noon
Performances during the service by Freddie Cole, Ethel Enis, the Basist etc.

[Dr Dave]

Here's the obit from this morning's New York Times:

August 22, 2005
Keter Betts, 77, Jazz Bassist Who Spread the Bossa Nova, Is Dead
By PETER KEEPNEWS

Keter Betts, a veteran jazz bassist who spent more than two decades accompanying Ella Fitzgerald and played a role in bringing the bossa nova to the United States, died on Aug. 6 at his home in Silver Spring, Md. He was 77.

His death was confirmed by McGuire Funeral Services in Washington, which did not specify the cause.

Mr. Betts, best known for his work with singers, always said that he was more interested in providing support for other performers than in being in the spotlight himself; he did not record an album as a leader until he was almost 70.

His association with Fitzgerald began in the mid-1960's, became full time in 1968 and continued until her retirement in 1993. Among the other singers he backed were Dinah Washington and Joe Williams. He also worked frequently with the pianist Tommy Flanagan, both in support of Fitzgerald and in a trio under Flanagan's name, and performed or recorded with Cannonball Adderley, Woody Herman and many others.

While on an extended South American tour with the guitarist Charlie Byrd in 1961, Mr. Betts first heard the music of João Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim and other bossa nova pioneers in Brazil. Back in the United States, the two musicians joined forces with the saxophonist Stan Getz the next year on the album "Jazz Samba," released under the joint leadership of Getz and Byrd, which helped start the worldwide bossa nova phenomenon.

William Thomas Betts was born in Port Chester, N.Y., on July 22, 1928, and played drums before switching to bass as a teenager. His first job of note was with the popular rhythm-and-blues saxophonist Earl Bostic in 1949.

In his later years Mr. Betts was active in jazz education in the Washington area, where he spent most of his life, and also performed frequently on jazz cruises.

Mr. Betts, a widower, is survived by three sons, William Jr., of Washington, Derek, of Los Angeles, and Jon, of Olney, Md.; two daughters, Jacquelyn and Jennifer, both of Silver Spring; and four grandchildren.