Courtesy of Ron Carter






Blue Note

A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH RON CARTER

(August 8, 2002)


When I think elegance and class, not many names come to mind. The list is short and Ron Carter is on it. Carter has been a favorite of mine since I first heard him with the now legendary Miles Davis Quintet (quite possibly the best band in the history of this music). Since I have grown to respect, not only Carter's sheer musical vocabulary, but also the man. I am honored to have another moment with Carter, as always unedited and in his own words.


FRED JUNG: Your latest Blue Note release, Stardust, is a tribute to the late Oscar Pettiford.

RON CARTER: Yes, it is Fred. I'm very sorry that I never saw him play live and what little I've seen have been some pretty old videos whose clarity isn't really like they can make it today. I've heard great stories about how he would just come in out of the blue and play this stuff that no one could imagine could take place on the instrument. I talked with Benny Golson recently and he told me that he went to this little club in Paris in the late Fifties and Oscar Pettiford was playing in this maybe two hundred seat night club on the bandstand all by himself the whole evening and everyone was just stunned, not that it could be done in it itself, but that it could be done so completely. So I have great admiration for anyone who takes on that kind of challenge. Certainly, as a composer, he's one of the better known unknown composers.


FJ: Benny Golson is featured on the album.

RON CARTER: Yes, I've known Benny for a very long time. My first meeting with him was when he was in New York in the process of forming the Jazztet and I went by his house one afternoon and auditioned for him and he told me that I was the guy for the job, but my plans, I had just reenrolled in school for a masters in Manhattan and he said that what I ought to do is finish school and that we would have plenty of time. It turned out to be prophetic.


FJ: You have always been a proponent of education.

RON CARTER: The first thing I tell him is to get a bass teacher. Unfortunately, bass players are the last guys who think about studying because no one tells them that it's necessary. Then when they get up some years and have some gigs under their belt, they realize that they are pretty far behind everyone else's skill level at that age. They don't read changes or read them very poorly. They don't read bass parts as complicated as they get with New York writers. They're kind of the last guys to get on the bandwagon as far as having their intellectual and educational skills up to par with everyone else. So my first recommendation to them is to get a good teacher. And my second thing, is to have them find someone who will sit with the piano, whether it's in school or a private instruction and learn how the piano works, learn how the chords look on the keyboard, how to build bass lines to study composition. I think music is going by really quickly today. It's going by really fast. There are a lot of guys who are writing a lot of new things and with the communications the way they are, these communications can get across the country in the time it takes to put an attachment on an email. So they've got to really be on top of as many physical possibilities on their instrument and as many harmonic possibilities as he can come across through teaching and through taking lessons from teachers as is possible. I think the days of guys coming up being self-taught are pretty gone.


FJ: Does the learning process plateau?

RON CARTER: Absolutely not. The more wonderful players you meet, the more you know that this is another key to another door that I have to find out how to open.


FJ: With all the legends you have played with, you must have a lot of keys.

RON CARTER: Well (laughing), Fred, I missed a few locks on the way too. It brings to mind the prison guard walking down the hall with this key chain that looks about six inches in diameter and enough keys to go into the locksmith business.


FJ: Having Joe Locke on vibes augments the group sound as well.

RON CARTER: Yes, well, the vibes have their own kind of quality of course and I just wanted to get the sound of the band up out of the bass range. Benny's got a wonderfully dark sound and Roland plays the keyboard with a warm, dark sound. I thought that the vibes would be a nice way to get the range of the band up some with the kind of warmth that he has in sound, it worked out very well. I'm very happy with him and the record.


FJ: As a sitting board member of the Harlem Jazz Music Center, what are the goals you would like to see come to fruition?

RON CARTER: To try and play jazz uptown, to make jazz more available, more accessible with a few courses now and then in the Harlem community. All of us who work, all of us African-American musicians who work downtown and in the downtown area would love to go back to Harlem and play as we did in the Fifties. When I came to New York in 1959, there were eight really big jazz clubs uptown and they had major talent. I came to New York, my first night and I went to a place called Count Basie's and I saw King Curtis and John Coltrane playing at Count Basie's. I went back the next week and I saw Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Shirley Scott. That's my introduction to New York uptown. We hope that at some point, Harlem building renaissance, that they will have space and emotional category to allow some space for a better than antiquate jazz club to be competitive with clubs downtown so that musicians will look forward to playing uptown because the conditions are comparable and in some cases better.


FJ: Certainly, the community has embraced it. Has corporate America?

RON CARTER: Well, they're kind of going whichever way the wind is blowing. Right now it is going in the hip-hop and rap direction and until that makes a drastic change in terms of a drop in sales in everything that rap and hip-hop influences, they won't hop on the bandwagon too quickly.


FJ: Has rap and hip-hop had an adverse effect on improvised music?

RON CARTER: They've had no effect. What they do if you consider the raw term of improvising, being able to scratch a record, there are certain rhythms and being able to find a loop that works, in the purist sense of improvisation, they have done that in their art form, but I think they haven't helped the jazz community nor have improvisation skills at all.


FJ: Is jazz fading away to become an American afterthought?

RON CARTER: As long as there are young players coming up year in and year out, it will always be here. Right now, it is just 2.5 percent of the total sales market, which is a pretty minuscule amount when you figure the pop market and hip-hop and rap market, jazz is not competitive right now with those record numbers. I play clubs pretty often and concerts and clubs still sell and the concert halls have maybe one or two seats left in a one thousand seat hall. So the music will be here forever.


FJ: Do you still have an active interest in classical music?

RON CARTER: Sure. I don't get to play it much because I am trying to get my band off the ground or my various groups. I don't have the time that I had five years ago to be a physical participant, but I certainly sit down and enjoy listening to music on records.


FJ: Who is in your working band?

RON CARTER: Stephen Scott playing piano and Steve Kroon playing percussion. Clubs owners still have a problem with a bass player as a bandleader more than it is having a flute player up front or a horn player up front. I spoke to Buster Williams recently and he said he is still confronted with the issue of how a bass player is going to be a bandleader. Dave Holland found a solution but his solution is having a horn player and a vibe player and a trombone player in the band. It is still an emotional problem for booking agents and at some point when I see these people, I try to invite them to where the group is working so they can see that not only is it a wonderfully different sound, but it is financially viable for them as a booking person. There are new agents that come along everyday and they haven't had to come across this kind of instrumentation often enough to know that it works and the older booking agents are older and they're not doing as much work anymore so the field always changes. Every night is difficult, Fred. Tonight I am working with Lalo Schifrin and he's celebrating his seventieth birthday at the Blue Note in New York this week and Ray Drummond, a wonderful player, has been playing this music since Tuesday night and my job is to walk in tonight, basically cold, with an hour and a half rehearsal and make the band sound like I've been there since Tuesday. The challenges present themselves all the time and what I try to do is make my presence felt, but make the music still the most important item on anyone's menu.


FJ: As a teacher, do you find pupils these days have a difficult time conforming to a supporting role after they've tasted the bandstand as a leader?

RON CARTER: Absolutely, no one told, they haven't been in enough bands as a sideman to know what it takes to function as a sideman. And the leaders of the groups when they are a sideman are equally inexperienced. So you have literally the blind leading the blind. It's a problem to show them what it takes to be a comfortable sideman as it is to be a comfortable leader because there is not the kinds of formats that were available years ago that should make that process easier.


FJ: Thankfully, you are still fighting the goof fight.

RON CARTER: Thank you, Fred.


FJ: How deep is the ocean?

RON CARTER: (Laughing) It's deep, Fred.

Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and is the ultimate driving machine. Comments? Email Him