‘There are three pieces of advice I give all my students: first, be on time. Time is money so don’t waste it. Second, check your ego. Pay attention and play well. Third, keep your ears open. If you’ve left your ego at home and got your ears open then you can hear what is happening with the music and make the best possible contribution.”
So states Ron Carter, who, at 86, remains a formidable figure in American music: having played on more than 2,250 individual albums, he has an entry in Guinness World Records as the most recorded bassist in jazz history. “I love to make music and I’m a servant of the music,” says Carter, who teaches at various New York universities. “Being a bandleader is good because I get to make all the decisions but I also revel in the opportunity to play with other musicians, to serve their vision, because it’s a learning thing, a beautiful process. And,” he adds drolly, “playing sessions pays well.”
Carter’s Foursight quartet are performing two concerts at the London jazz festival this month. As the living link between bebop and hip-hop, the elegant double bassist is a godfather of sorts for the UK’s thriving jazz scene.
Carter’s brilliant technique, powerfully propulsive swing and deeply resonant sound has made his bass as distinctive an instrument as Miles Davis’s trumpet or Thelonious Monk’s piano. It’s a sound that links a formidable array of jazz greats – Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Sarah Vaughan, Stan Getz, Lee Morgan, Lena Horne, Cannonball Adderley, Helen Merrill, Charles Lloyd, Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard – alongside household names of pop, rock and soul, including Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Santana, Gil Scott-Heron and Erykah Badu. When the rapper Q-Tip requested Carter play on A Tribe Called Quest’s 1991 album The Low End Theory, his fluid bass helped inaugurate a brief blossoming of jazz-rap.
Oddly, though, Carter never set out to play jazz. “I was a classical head, not a jazz head,” he says of his Detroit childhood. “Cello was my main instrument and, as a youngster, I was pretty good at it.” But segregation prevented Carter from realising his true potential. “Whenever my high school presented their kids to perform at a PTA meeting or other such adult gatherings they always chose a white kid, not me.” Ever pragmatic, Carter noted that the orchestra’s double bassist was going to graduate the following semester, “which meant there would be no bass player. And if I was the only bassist, they would have to call me. So, I sold my cello, got some money together, and started taking bass lessons, and I was playing bass in the orchestra in January of 1955.”
As skilled at bass as he was cello, Carter enrolled in a music degree at the University of Rochester yet, once again, was limited by institutional racism. “I realised that the people who did the hiring for philharmonic orchestras weren’t interested in employing African American musicians. It was obvious.” The same pragmatism that saw Carter adopt bass over cello meant he turned from classical to jazz. “As a student I had a weekend gig in the house band at a Rochester club where we backed visiting jazz musicians. I didn’t initially give it serious thought but I was encouraged by several people who came through there – Sonny Stitt, among others – to come to New York when I graduated.” Carter notes that he wasn’t the only Black classical musician exiled to jazz. “Hubert Laws was another. And Miles studied at Juilliard for a year before determining there was nothing they could teach him. There’s a few of us.” I mention the old cliche that jazz is America’s classical music. “That’s exactly right!”
Carter settled in New York in 1959 and joined the drummer Chico Hamilton’s quintet, forging a creative partnership with the band’s visionary saxophonist-flautist Eric Dolphy. “Eric was a wonderful musician and human being,” says Carter of his friend, who died suddenly from diabetes in 1964. “He had remarkable technique and brilliant ideas – a new concept of harmonics – and I loved playing with him.”
Regular work came Carter’s way and in April 1963, during a two-week residency with the trumpeter Art Farmer at New York’s Half Note club, Miles Davis entered and stood by the jukebox.
“At intermission, Miles came up to me and stated that Paul Chambers was leaving his band to go with Wynton Kelly and would I be interested in joining him for a tour he had booked? I replied: ‘Mr Davis’ – I didn’t call him Miles yet – ‘I am contracted to work with Art for the next two weeks. If he says it’s OK for me to leave early then I will happily join you, otherwise I have to honour my agreement.’ Miles went ‘What?’, then went over and spoke to Art and Art said it was OK for me to leave. So off I went. Miles respected that I was willing to honour my agreement with Art, that I wasn’t a flake, and this set us on a good standing.”
With 25-year-old Carter on board alongside the drummer Tony Williams (17), the pianist Herbie Hancock (22) and the saxophonist Wayne Shorter (33), Davis launched his second great quintet. Across the next five years they would redefine modern jazz, releasing six albums that blended the modal explorations of Davis’s 1950s quintet with electric instruments and increasing experimentation. Here, Carter’s fluid playing and original compositions established him at the forefront of the US scene.
“That band was a laboratory and Miles was head chemist,” says Carter. “I’m very proud of the music we made and, even now, I think it still stands out. Miles wasn’t one to give orders in the studio; he was more interested in what you would bring to the session. It was a case of listening, paying attention, understanding what was developing. It was an adventure.
“I learned a lot of things from working with Miles: I certainly learned that, as band leader, you need broad shoulders as all the responsibilities rest with you. I left Miles in 1968 because we’d been travelling a great deal and I wanted to spend more time at home. By then I was getting lots of offers to play on sessions so I knew I could survive without having to be on the road all the time.”
1969 proved to be a seminal year for Carter: his second album Uptown Conversation won wide praise while his many sessions included playing on Aretha Franklin’s Soul ’69 album and Roberta Flack’s First Take – the latter, Flack’s debut, produced The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, a US No 1 in 1972 (after Clint Eastwood included it in Play Misty for Me’s love scene). Carter’s bass playing anchors the song, its deep tones adding a sensual resonance.
“Roberta Flack is a fantastic singer and a remarkable pianist,” Carter says. “Recording with her was a dream. We’d be in the studio and she would play the songs and I would just listen and add what I thought suited each song. I’d drop notes in where I felt they fitted, simple as that. While Aretha was the queen of soul singers, just fabulous. And a gifted pianist, too. We’d be in the studio and she’d say to me: ‘Ron Carter, why did you play that note there?’ And I’d reply: ‘God told me to!’ And Aretha would laugh. Man, we got on really well.”
James Brown was another star he backed – “R&B musicians try to sound as close to the record as possible while jazz musicians do the exact opposite,” Carter says – but alongside his dedication to serving the music of others, Carter has released dozens of albums as bandleader. These range from mellow jazz fusion through inspired collaborations with talented friends to solo bass workouts; there is even a series where Carter plays Bach on double bass. He has also managed to write several books of bass tuition while teaching classes and offering online and private tuition. Only the pandemic and a bad back – which forced him to cancel his 2022 performances – has slowed this jazz magus down.
“The best advice Miles ever gave me was early on in our working relationship,” reflects Carter when I ask what continues to motivate him. “He said: ‘Play the music well’, and that meant don’t make excuses, don’t get lazy or bored; even if you’ve got the flu get up there and play well. I’ve always tried to live by that advice and pass it on to my students: play the music well.”
• Ron Carter’s Foursight Quartet play Cadogan Hall, London, 16 and 17 November
