Benny CarterVs. Johnny Hodges

When Johnny Hodges moved from Boston to New York in the twenties, he began to make the rounds to see where he stood in the pecking order of alto saxes. One night in 1927 at a basement club on 7th Avenue, he heard a man whom he had met two years before in Saratoga Springs, New York, when they were both in that resort town playing summer gigs. Hodges was impressed enough to tell Charlie Holmes, a fellow altoist from Boston, to go “to Small’s Paradise and hear the greatest alto saxophone player in the world.” He was referring to Benny Carter, whom most would rank as Hodges’ only genuine rival on the alto over the next two decades.

Over the