Ron Carter is one of the most well-known and prolific jazz bassists ever. He has THOUSANDS of recordings as a leader and as a sideman. He is the subject of a recent PBS documentary called Finding the Right Notes. Throughout his 60-year career, he has performed with artists such as Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, Lena Horne, Bill Evans, B.B. King, Dexter Gordon, Wes Montgomery, Bobby Timmons, Eric Dolphy, Cannonball Adderley, and Jaki Byard.
During the pandemic, I had the opportunity to facilitate a Zoom panel discussion with Ron Carter during an online jazz festival that I hosted. I had questions of my own, but I also solicited students to ask a few questions of their own (represented as SQ). Below are some of the highlights of the discussion:
A Conversation with Ron Carter
JS: We know you have been hired by many great artists to join them for their recordings and performances, but you are not just a sideman. I just heard your solo recording that was released in 2021, so what motivated you to keep putting out new music?
RC: I think anyone who's played as long as I have is looking for the next best set of notes. And you cannot find those on CNN or at the local grocery store. You can only find those other moments in the company of guys who feel the same way. Can I make them give me their undivided attention? I can’t do that at home watching CNN or news or COPs. I have to get out there and be able to do it every night. I go to work with the best that I have.
SQ: Can you tell us about your early career?
RC: I went to Cass Tech (in the Detroit area) in 1953. I was a classical player, I had no jazz gigs. I didn’t have jazz gigs until I went away to college. I was from a very segregated African American part of the township. We couldn't have paved streets—all the [amenities] that communities had at that time. The white people made sure that this black Community didn't have those. My school was a was a magnet because all the black kids went there, there was nowhere else to go. And when I graduated in eighth grade I started going to a high school that was about a two-mile walk from my home. We had to walk on the circumlocution route—we had to go out of our way to avoid certain neighborhoods. I went to that for a year and a half avoiding neighborhoods that we weren't allowed to go. This white lady who was a musical conductor decided that I needed some special treatment so she got me teachers who would monitor my progress. When I began to outplay them, she would then recommend other teachers. The schools would often have these conventions and meetings and that kind of stuff and they would call on the local principals to provide music. I was present at two or three of these events and all of the students that were selected to perform with the orchestra were white kids. I looked around all this at one point, and the bass player on stage performing was graduating in January of 1955. I said to myself - okay, if he graduates then I'm the only guy playing bass. They have to call me…and here I am talking to you 27th of March 2021. I’m still waiting for them to call me.
SQ: If saxophone students have a limited amount of time to practice improvisation and they're new to it, what do you think the most important exercises are for getting the most out of their time?
RC: Listen. I think one of the failures of kids today is that no one teaches them how to listen. They learn all sorts of information but they haven't been instructed that the biggest source of information is listening to stuff that's coming in to them on a bar-by-bar basis. Having said that, one source of information happens to be the bass player in the band. I think these young saxophone players need to understand the information that is coming to them from the bass player, who's helping them construct lines, who's helping them define the form of the song, who's helping them remember the melody. Unless these students have these elements in their process, their development to be a real a good jazz player can't be as as as rapid as someone who understands the environment past the saxophone.
I recommend that you have them listen to some Sonny Stitt records for a really great sound. Or listen to some early Gene Ammons. Or Houston Person who's still alive and well—hear how he treats the melody with just a bass player. I think it isn't just about playing the saxophone. It is about playing saxophone with someone else.
You know there's some really, really wonderful female players and I don't mean to sound like I'm excluding them. Sonny Rollins and Hank Mobley are just really good fundamentally sound saxophone players, you know. I'd recommend that you assist them with listening to a broad palette of saxophone playing and have them understand that it's not just saxophone, playing with the music around them and that they're part of.
JS: Tribe Called Quest said, “Ron Carter on the bass, yes my man Ron Carter is on the bass,” so every everybody in hip hop knows who you are.
RC: I got a call one day. I just walking in from teaching college at City College in New York. I got home and the message on my machine was “this is the Q tip and I would like to talk with you. So I call them up Q Tip says he’s from a group called A Tribe Called Quest. He explains to me that they're doing another record project, and they would like to have me be a part of it. I said okay, what kind of music do you do? He said we're hip hop or rap whatever it's called back in those days and I said, well, I just got in from school I gotta put my book bag down and think about this I'll call you back.
So what I did is I called my son, who's more into the genre than I was. I said, “hey I got a call from this guy named Q Tip of a band called A Tribe Called Quest and let's make a record what do you think about this music?” He said they're probably the most musically advanced guys of all the hip hoppers, they have a good sense of key, and the lyrics are not too outrageous.
I called Q Tip and said I'll do this under under this condition. The language can’t be out of my area. I mean really know it doesn't take much to do that because I've got a very small zip code! Once the words go out of the zip code, my car's parked outside and the key is right into ignition already. If the words start going sideways I’m saying good night. I’ll put on my hat and get in the wind.
He said, “you can guarantee that won't happen, we can do this project… oh yeah man yeah okay…” So we set a time and the date, we agreed on some details, and I got to the studio about seven o'clock. Instead of just reading the poem, I want to know is there a tonal center involved? I wanted to find out what key I might play that sounds more in tune with the intent of your words. You know that nobody ever asked him that?
Okay, I went to the control room and plugged in to the recording board with my pickup and let the tape roll. We did maybe two takes—two complete takes—maybe five minutes each. When I finished, Q Tip said, “how'd you do that?” I put my coat on to leave and he kept asking how do you play that? (Q Tip expected the recording to take much longer.) I didn't plan for a long time recording. One of the things I do pretty good is pay attention to my environment. I told him that I hoped he got what he needed recorded to make the project successful because I think I kind of nailed it.
So I left it turned out that's considered a top hip hop record of the decade. So those guys, I was saddened to see them separate so quickly, because that group was charting a path to really make that music really different. They had a chance to really turn everything upside down because they were interested in music, they were interested in keys. They weren’t just making rhythms and sampling stuff you know.
Unfortunately, they broke up the group up way too soon, because every they could have made that music sound important. They were the first group to have live musicians playing with them who knew music, who gave them a certain kind of sound—a certain leverage with the words. But what I know? I'm only the bass player. I'm only a bass player—yeah that's better.
A special thanks is in order to my friend Ron Carter, Jr. who made this conversation possible.