TV Reviews : Benny Carter: A ‘Symphony in Riffs’ on A

At 84, Benny Carter is rightly regarded as one of the masters of jazz. In his extraordinary 65-year career, which is still going strong, he has excelled as an alto saxophonist, composer, arranger, racial barrier-breaker and jazz dignitary, with lesser, though sometimes substantial, success as a trumpeter, bandleader and singer.

“Benny Carter: Symphony in Riffs,” airing tonight at 7 and 11 on A&E;, details this musician’s life, from his earliest days, growing up poor in Manhattan’s San Juan Hill district (where Lincoln Center now sits) through his rise to prominence during the Swing Era of the ‘30s to snippets of recent performances in Washington, New York City, Japan and aboard the cruise ship Norway.

In this hourlong program, which was written by Theodore Strauss and produced and directed by Harrison Engle, Carter’s story is told mainly via narration resonantly read by Burt Lancaster.

Also included are interviews (with Carter and others, including Times jazz critic Leonard Feather, long a Carter champion) and archival photos and film footage.

The film offers a wealth of information, some familiar, some arcane, almost all of it interesting. Sample bites: Carter’s triumphant European stay from 1935-38, where he headed the first interracial, international big band; his move to Los Angeles in the ‘40s, where he was the first black to score for film and, later, TV; his successful court battle in the late ‘40s to buy a home in what was called a “restricted”--i.e. non-black--neighborhood.

Yet Carter himself is not particularly revelatory: We get the whats and whens of his life, but not, from his mouth, the whys. That sort of personal stamp would have made “Symphony” fascinating instead of merely good.