Keter Betts: A Lifetime in Jazz

Music Monthly
Published: August 2000
by JOHN DUFFY

Driving down tree-lined suburban streets, do you ever wonder about the lives of the people who live in these unassuming, cookie cutter dwellings? The anonymity rendered by well-manicured lawns and freshly-polished minivans is illusive. Too often in our fame infatuated world, we assume all the creative people live in luxuriously far-off places, while we toil away at our barely tolerable lives.

Passing by one particular house on a quiet Chevy Chase side street, you couldn’t make up a story more interesting than the one lived by the man who resides there, perhaps one of the greatest journeyman bassists in the second half of the first century of jazz. There is a lifetime of road in his eyes. They dance upward toward the ceiling as he struggles to recall dates and names and associations dating back to World War II, a world away it seems.

His sandy baritone tells a good tale, and makes you all the more grateful you listened, even if his humble delivery always hides a more fascinating story than the one just recounted. (He might finish an ordinary concert tale with "and Duke Ellington was there, too....").

By all accounts Keter Betts should be slowing down in his twilight years. But at 77 he’s only just begun to contemplate any kind of actual retirement. The music room of his Chevy Chase home is a tribute as much to his love of golf as to his long career in music. There are more than a dozen trophies and plaques to the one Hall of Fame Award from the Washington Area Music Association. A vintage Makintosh tube preamp powers the hi-fi system. "It’s not for sale, so don’t ask," he laughs.

He’ll answer any number of probing questions into technique or his legacy in jazz history with a humble wave of he hand. "Everybody in this life is called to do something by God. My calling was to entertain people...make a joyful noise." When Betts says it, it’s not simply rote piety, but a hard-won truth. Fifty years on the road will do ya’ some learnin,’ and humble you as well. And as he enters his "twilight years," as he calls them, he spends more and more time teaching these lessons to youth.

In school music classes, at community centers, he tells young people (some as old as five), that anything in life worth your time takes discipline, practice, and passion. He has a favorite analogy that relates to his own musical journey. "I tell people that at some point in their life an alarm clock goes off alerting you to what your calling in life is, whether it’s music or not," he explains. "And you best heed that alarm."

William Thomas Betts was 5 years old when his alarm sounded, in the form of an Italian parade in his hometown of Port Chester, New York. He was born there in July of 1926. "It was in the summer and my mother had sent me to the store to buy a loaf of bread, and when I came out of the store, this parade was marching by," he says remembering his youthful amazement. A captivated Betts wandered the streets of the town following the music, enthralled at the sound and pageantry. "I got home three hours later and my mother had a fit," he laughs.

But the alarm had sounded, and Betts heeded the call. Beginning in elementary school he learned the drums, eventually traveling by train to New York City for lessons. He did the usual high school marching band thing, but by the time he had acquired a full-sized Gene Krupa drum kit, the reality of lugging it around became a chore. He switched to bass in 1946, at the age of 18, the year he graduated high school. "We lived on the fourth floor in those days, and after driving back from New York... you know it’s late and you have to make three trips up the stairs." Betts rolls his eyes. "With the bass it was just one trip."

It was just that simple. After only one year with that instrument, Betts was playing his first professional gig. Carman Leggio, an older friend who was stationed in Washington D.C. in the Air Force was invited to put a band together to play a small 15th Street club. The four-week job turned into 13 weeks. And Betts was in as he terms it, "jazz heaven." The jazz scene in the nation’s capitol during and after World War II was second only to perhaps Harlem in the ‘20s and or St. Louis in the ‘30s, and an impressionable young player like the fresh-faced Betts was overwhelmed. "It was like Mecca," he says with very little exageration.

"There were clubs everywhere, musicians playing, sitting in, hanging out," he recalls. With some of the bigger acts of the day coming to venues like the Lincoln and Harlem theaters, young players like Betts, scratching it out in the clubs and smaller ballrooms were treated to an endless buffet of top-of-the-line talent. For an aspiring bassist like Betts that meant the likes of Oscar Pettiford, Ray Brown, and Jimmy Blanten. "It was amazing," he says. "And to think at the time I was just one year out of high school and living this life and meeting all these wonderful people."

He recounts a few of the more familiar club names: The Bengazi Club, The Caverns, The Offbeat, Republican Gardens. All that hard work along U and T streets paid off when Betts was hired by rhythm and blues barnstormer Earl Bostic in the spring of 1949. Bostic’s band was the proving ground for young jazz musicians at the time; John Coltrane, Stanley Turrentine, and Benny Golson all numbered in its ranks at one time or another.

Bostic was known for separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and is never really given the proper credit. Betts must have fared well. He was hired shortly thereafter by Dinah Washington, at the time topping the R&B and pop charts with numerous crossover blues and jazz hits. It was his first association with vocal jazz, and one he credits with being one of the most influential gigs in his early career. "It was then, with Dinah, that I really started to learn about putting a song together, playing in order to frame the singer." With a singer at the front of the band-stand, Betts says, a good player becomes a tailor. "Imagine the singer being completely naked. It’s your job to dress the singer."

Applying this philosophy has even included work in other musical realms for Betts. "And working with singers you tend to do just that, dress them musically." Notable dates with Nat Adderly followed, including the 1960 album Work Songs with guitar great Wes Montgomery, and sessions with Jimmy Cobb. Throughout the late ’50s and early ‘60s, Betts was part of Washington D.C. native Charlie Byrd’s band, backing the guitar player on some of his most important bossa nova recordings alongside Stan Getz and the man largely credited with creating the form, Antonio Carlos Jobim.

But in ordinary conversation, Betts will likely gloss over these impressive items on his dossier, "dressing the singer" is how Betts has spent the remainder of most of his career. Betts began a partnership that stands almost unequaled in jazz or any other genre; 24 years with Ella Fitzgerald. Playing with the first lady of song on and off while picking up local work, Betts began playing with her full time in 1971, and performed on countless albums, television specials, and world tours until the singer’s retirement due to ill health in 1992.

In a trio or quartet that featured luminaries like Tommy Flannagan, Joe Pass, the great Duke Ellington. Betts was with Fiztgerald during almost all of her annual Carnegie Hall concerts, 13 week blitzes through Europe in the mid ’70s, scads of Montreaux and Newport Jazz Festival appearances, and several stays at London’s intimate Ronnie Scott’s Club, one of which led to Ella in London, one of her best latter day albums. All of this between television appearances, albums, and Betts raising a family of five children.

He was also with Ella when her health and eyesight began to fail (she insisted on performing into early in the ‘90s), and when she lost confidence in her aging voice. But besides a lifetime entertaining jazz lovers around the world, Betts learned much from Ella’s vocal mastery, developing a bluesy, rolling playing style that is still in fine form today.

Listen to Ella in London (1974) or Montreaux ‘77 - Ella Fitzgerald with the Tommy Flanagan Trio (1977) to hear Betts’ bass lines imitate Ella’s bent, blue notes and scat phrasing. Playing the only instrument in her regular band that could roll and slide notes (when Joe Pass wasn’t around), Bett’s became Ella’s melodic foil. The skill still serves him well today.

It was not until 1998 that Keter Betts got around to recording his own solo album. Bass, Buddies and Blues features a quintet in a mixed program of group originals and standards. Keter’s instrument is rippling with deep blues bends and warm slides. A second set featuring Baltimore singer Ethel Ennis, Bass, Buddies, Blues, and Beauty Too, appeared the following spring. A third solo album is now in the works.

Betts backed up Ennis at this year’s Artscape on July 23, the day after his 77th birthday. It is one of the last gigs he will play for some time, he says. The long days and nights on the road are done, and quite honestly, he’ll tell you he is very happy about that. He plays a lot of golf these days, several times a week if he can (the exercise helps his diabetes).

He performs occasionally with friends and teaches in area schools. Frequently, he also serves as musical coordinator for jazz performance programming at Black Entertainment Television, "...making sure the cameramen and the director understand what is going on musically, so they don’t tape anybody picking their nose or scratching their behind when someone else is soloing." And he’s resting.

For the first time in a long time (he can’t remember exactly when), Keter Betts is doing next to nothing save some renovations to his house and some time with Mildred, his wife of 46 years, and maybe even buy a boat. His eyes light up. "I’ve always wanted to buy a boat," he shrugs. "I’ve been wanting to buy a boat for awhile... enjoy my twilight years. I’ve always loved the water. Maybe it goes back to my youth." With Betts, it all seems to do that.