Betty Carter, one of jazz's great singers and a composer and arranger whose groups were virtual schools for generations of jazz musicians, died at home in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn on Saturday. She was 69.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, said her friend Ora Harris.
Ms. Carter sounded like no one in jazz, with her own diction, her own phrasing and her own sense of pitch. Though she was firmly inside the jazz-singing tradition, she was an abstractionist as well, and for her words were pliable. On her early material -- she began a solo recording career in the mid-1950's -- her light, pure voice sounded instrumental, with curved, beautifully shaped notes. It was immediately noticeable that she was after something different, and that her technique, always extraordinary, was there to work for her ideas. It was equally clear that she was a jazz musician first and a singer second.
About a decade after beginning her recording career, Ms. Carter refined her originality into a style that became the template for modern jazz singing. On ''Look No Further,'' recorded in 1964, Ms. Carter uses her voice against the bass, then as the band comes in her note choice mirrors the experimentation of instrumentalists like John Coltrane and Miles Davis; during the same session she recorded ''My Favorite Things,'' a composition associated with Mr. Coltrane. Her improvisations were explosive, tumbling out in great leaps at a velocity that expressed unfettered artistic freedom.
But it was artifice. Ms. Carter was one of jazz's most articulate small-group arrangers, and few musicians have ever controlled tempo the way she had; woe to the young musicians in the band who could not navigate the shockingly abrupt tempo changes or keep up with Ms. Carter's fastest or slowest tempos. Her snapping fingers, marking off the time, sent generations of musicians back to the practice room, chagrined.
In her hands a standard or her own compositions often contrasted some of jazz's slowest tempos with some of its fastest. She wasn't afraid to pare down the instrumentation of a group for a while, singing against piano or bass, orchestrating the arrival of other instruments. And the constant tempo-changing gave the impression of emotional extremity and careful control of the artistic environment. She sculptured sound, and it made her concerts some of the most moving experiences in jazz, a mixture of the emotional power of the songs' texts and the sheer joy of her imagination.
''I started to change my material to keep the musicians interested,'' Ms. Carter said in a 1992 interview with The New York Times. ''What do you do with a chorus and a half? You change things, stretch them out, change speed. Most musicians I played with were so good they could do what was necessary.''
Ms. Carter grew up in Detroit, which in the 1940's and 1950's was a good environment for jazz musicians, with the city producing some of the best musicians of the time.
Detroit was a stop on the jazz circuit, and a young Ms. Carter sang with Charlie Parker, who came through town. One of her nicknames was Betty Bebop, a tribute to her interests. In 1948 she began working with Lionel Hampton and his band, staying with the vibraphonist until 1951, when, during a performance in New York, she decided to remain there. During the same time she recorded the female part for King Pleasure's version of ''Red Top,'' singing a vocal rendition of Gail Brockman's original trumpet solo.
In New York in 1955 and '56, Ms. Carter began recording for Epic Records and generally taking in the city. In 1957, she recorded with Wynton Kelly and other peers; her work was irregular partly because her style was more jazz than cabaret, and partly because she tried to avoid the abusive working situations that have plagued jazz.
In 1961 Ms. Carter recorded what has become a classic album, ''Ray Charles and Betty Carter,'' with Mr. Charles; it features the pair singing astringent duets including a famous version of ''Baby, It's Cold Outside.'' Ms. Carter worked with Mr. Charles from 1960 to 1963, the year she toured Japan with Sonny Rollins and recorded an orchestral album for Atco Records.
Through the 1960's Ms. Carter struggled with her career, recording with Roulette Records in the late 1960's, during which the avant-garde and pop music rendered some artists identified with an older style commercially irrelevant. But in 1969 she started her own recording company, Bet-Car Productions, and on that label she released her albums.
In 1988 Ms. Carter began a relationship with Verve Records that included the reissue of the Bet-Car label along with the recording of a series of new albums. That same year she released ''Look What I Got!,'' which won a Grammy, and in 1994 she recorded an album, ''Feed the Fire,'' with the pianist Geri Allen, the bassist Dave Holland and the drummer Jack DeJohnette.
Also during the 1980's Ms. Carter, finally recognized for her innovations, became a concert draw internationally. She recorded duets with Carmen McRae, and she kept turning out well-rounded musicians, having trained them in her trio. Included in the alumni from the 1980's and the 1990's were the pianists Cyrus Chestnut, Benny Green, Stephen Scott, Marc Cary, Darrell Grant and Travis Shook. And her choice of drummers was extraordinary, having hired Greg Hutchinson, Clarence Penn, Winard Harper, Troy Davis and Lewis Nash. She began receiving numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts given last year by President Clinton.
In 1993 she began the Jazz Ahead series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a program that featured young and promising musicians. This year the Jazz Ahead series was invited to appear at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
Ms. Carter is survived by two sons, Myles and Kagle Redding, both of New York City. A marriage to James Redding ended in divorce.
''The survival of jazz culture takes priority,'' Ms. Carter said in the interview with The Times. ''The survival of this culture depends on people playing it and living the life. The young guys playing it in 20 years will be taking the music somewhere else. There was a period where, in jazz, the music sent people away. But it's now back to making people feel better, putting happy smiles on their faces. When I was coming up, that's what jazz was about. It wasn't about money. It was about how happy you could make people.''