The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #163385   Message #3897265
Posted By: keberoxu
03-Jan-18 - 08:26 PM
Thread Name: Obit: a thread for Betty Carter (1929-1998)
Subject: RE: Obit: a thread for Betty Carter (1929-1998)
This link is not easy to come by;
it's very early in Betty Carter's career, this recording.
So much so that it was broadcast as a 78 RPM single!
Probably there was a 33 RPM long-playing vinyl album as well.
Only, the featured artist would not have been young Betty Carter,
but the singer known as King Pleasure.

I don't know near enough about this -- am just hearing it for the first time. This is a case of a tune being recorded as an instrumental, becoming popular in that version, and someone decided to preserve the studio arrangement and write words to the instrumental.

The little I do know is:
the instrumental "Red Top" goes back to a 1947 studio recording
featuring Gene Ammons, tenor saxophone.
Who was his trumpet player? No idea.

So when King Pleasure brings a young singer named Betty Carter
into the recording studio with the session musicians,
King Pleasure sings lyrics to the Gene Ammons tenor sax solo,
and Betty Carter sings lyrics to the trumpet solo.
Check this out!

"Red Top" vocal arrangement