5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Ron Carter
Christian McBride, Endea Owens, Large Professor and more writers and musicians share favorite tracks from the bass maestro, who turned 89 this week.
Many years ago, for a period of months, the bassist Ron Carter would go over to Rudy Van Gelder’s recording studio in New Jersey every Saturday. Together they spent hours working out microphone placements and recording techniques, ensuring that the sound of the upright bass could be well represented on tape.
That anecdote is just one among the thousands of studio tales and road stories stuck in the memory banks of history’s most recorded bassist, who turned 89 on Monday and is currently celebrating the milestone with a five-night run at the Blue Note in Manhattan. But it’s a good reminder that Carter’s main request has always been a modest one: to be heard clearly.
His new book, “Chartography,” is another earnest attempt to make sure we are picking up what he’s putting down on the low end. In the book, Carter transcribes and painstakingly unpacks his bass solos on five renditions of the standard “Autumn Leaves,” all recorded live with the Miles Davis Quintet, and each bearing its own insight into the quiet inventiveness of his playing. That group, from 1963 to 1968, destabilized small-group jazz’s relationship to rhythm and harmony on albums like “Miles Smiles,”“Nefertiti” and “E.S.P.” Since then Carter has amassed a catalog of both side-musician and bandleader work — ranging from jazz to funk to Western classical to gospel, on upright and electric bass — that far exceeds the 2,221 official recording credits recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.
Read on for a list of highlights from the maestro’s vast career, brought to you by writers, musicians and devotees. Scroll down to find playlists of their selections, and if you have a favorite that wasn’t mentioned, feel free to drop it in the comments.
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Herbie Hancock, ‘One Finger Snap’
Kenny Barron, pianist
One of my favorite records of Ron Carter’s is “Empyrean Isles,” which he recorded with Herbie Hancock in 1964. My favorite track is “One Finger Snap.” I actually heard that record being played when I was doing a run at the Lighthouse in Los Angeles with Yusef Lateef. They played music during the intermissions, and I heard that record and said: Who’s that — playing bass and piano? I found out it was a new record by Herbie Hancock, with Ron Carter on bass. We had first met earlier in the ’60s, when he did a record with my brother that I was on. He wasn’t the Ron Carter that he is today, obviously, but he was a great bassist and very supportive of the music. Then when I heard him on “One Finger Snap” that night, I was fascinated with his beat and his time and his sound — just his flow. He had all of that.
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V.S.O.P., ‘Third Plane’
Christian McBride, bassist
I was 11 years old when my great-uncle gave me a stack of records to listen to that got me started on my journey with jazz. Ron Carter’s name pretty much dominated the bass seat on all of the albums in the stack. Out of the many albums I heard, the first album of Herbie Hancock’s V.S.O.P. quintet from 1977 (along with Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams) caught my ear. And of the many high-octane songs on that album, Ron’s tune “Third Plane” was lyrical. Gentle. An earworm. It starts out as a straight-eighths, pseudo bossa nova. Then, after they complete the melody, they start swingin’ like only Ron, Herbie and Tony could. I copied note-for-note what Ron plays behind Wayne Shorter’s opening solo. At age 11, I didn’t know what made it something I wanted to learn, I just did it. It felt and sounded good. And it was Ron Carter. Until this very day, when I pull out my bass to warm up, from a deep muscle memory, I still play the first eight bars of what Ron plays behind Wayne. It’s my official warm-up exercise.
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Nancy Wilson, ‘I Thought About You’
Liany Mateo, bassist
The role of the bassist can sound deceivingly simple: Make the band sound like a band. We are the bridge between the melody, harmony and rhythm. We want everyone to feel taken care of and at the same time make clear decisions based on our own artistry. It can be a complicated process, but the best of us can negotiate and make it sound simple. Ron Carter effortlessly takes charge of the band from behind the bass on this track by Nancy Wilson. His beat mirrors Wilson’s infectious phrasing. You can visualize everyone in the studio having a ball, because when music swings this hard you can’t help but smile. The track is short, sweet, and he’s walking the mess out of the bass. If you ever have the privilege of seeing Maestro Carter perform, you’ll still see the joy he has from not just being a bass player but the bass player.
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Ron Carter, ‘Half a Row’
Marcus J. Moore, writer
I owe Mr. Carter an apology. Given his stately nature, I assumed his solo music could never be avant-garde. But as I relistened to his 1969 album “Uptown Conversation,” I realized it’s a suite with funk and ambient textures, and the song “Half a Row” is a sonic puzzle that nods to serialism without surrendering to formality. What could’ve been a dry exercise becomes tactile and sly. Carter’s playing is precise and elastic, and Herbie Hancock sands the edges with restless piano chords that keep the composition from settling. It feels like a mutual provocation, each phrase nudging the other toward deeper abstraction. On “Half a Row,” Carter meets listeners midway, offering something dense, elegant and accessible. Despite its 10-minute run time, it never feels indulgent; it’s a necessary statement with boundless returns.
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Grover Washington Jr., ‘Inner City Blues’
Marvin Goffe, Ron Carter discographer
My introduction to Ron Carter was at a funeral for a family member in 1982. The uncle who was in charge of the music for the repast didn’t want the mood to be too somber, and one of the records he played was by Grover Washington Jr., called “Inner City Blues.” It’s a 1972 LP on Kudu Records, a label affiliated with CTI, where Ron was the house bassist. He’s playing electric bass here. That was my introduction to Ron Carter, and my indoctrination into jazz. Many years later, I met Ron Carter, and I asked him: How many of your albums do you own? He said, zero. I said, you’re kidding. What I do now for Ron is, every two to three months, I run around gathering records — on the internet, at record shows. I’ve given Ron probably 1,200 to 1,500 of his recordings. And I worked with him and his team to get his name in the Guinness Book of World Records. Guinness was very discriminating. They knocked out a lot of what we submitted, including dates that only came out on Laserdisc. If you count those, and all that he has released since the record was established in 2016, he easily has appeared on 3,000 records.
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Miles Davis Quintet, ‘All Blues’
Giovanni Russonello, writer
The Miles Davis Quintet’s defining trait in the mid-1960s was its total lack of hierarchy on the playing field. Davis was, by then, one of the most famous people in the world, but he was as much listener as leader; all five members seemed to have an equal say on where the music went moment-to-moment. Actually, if one person played the most determinative role, it was probably the least noticeable one: Ron Carter. His bass attack is so even, his style so supportive and assured, that you’re most likely to encounter his genius secondhand: through the sudden, sideways directions into which he guides Herbie Hancock on piano; the total comfort of Tony Williams’s beat, even at high speeds; or the way Wayne Shorter builds a narrative throughout his solo, and finishes strong at the end. It is Carter — with his leaps and glissandos and harmonic counterintuition — building the architecture supporting these moments. On the high-tempo versions of “All Blues” that the band used to play on world tours, Carter would glide deftly between leading and supporting roles, embracing the rendition’s wriggling energy but keeping things steady all the while, as if running an engine with its own fan system built in.
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Ron Carter and Ricky Dillard, ‘Pass Me Not’
Endea Owens, bassist
“Pass Me Not” was the first track I heard from “Sweet, Sweet Spirit,” Ron Carter’s new album with Ricky Dillard (which turned out to be no-skips, by the way), and it struck me how Mr. Carter, who’s now 89 years old, was backing an entire choir of gospel singers, singing in full chest voice; drums, full rhythm section; all the works, guitar, horns — and still being heard profoundly on upright bass. And underneath, how he forms his harmonies, his rhythms; how he changes up his phrasing to completely shake up song structure, it’s all so impressive. What he does rhythmically throughout the piece is subtle, but moves the music forward. At the one-minute mark he changes to quarter notes instead of eighth notes and around three minutes he takes a short solo, which gives the piece a moment to breathe. Carter’s quarter-note feel has the power to change an entire song’s direction because he plays the full length of the note, which naturally allows the musicians to adapt to his beat. To still have that agility and power, let alone at his age, is amazing.
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Wayne Shorter, ‘Speak No Evil’
Donald Vega, pianist
This was probably the first track where I really noticed Ron Carter’s playing, long before I met him. I also remember hearing records by the Miles Davis Quintet, and thinking: That pianist, Herbie Hancock, has all this wild harmony! But the more I listened, the more I was like, Oh man, it’s actually Ron Carter kind of dictating the harmony and pushing everything from below. And then once I started playing with him, it became clear why. He has such a strong personality, and it comes out in his playing. You can’t help but listen to him. When he changes one note, it changes the whole direction of the band. On this recording, he’s very interactive with Elvin Jones on drums. And on the modal sections of “Speak No Evil,” when the chords are stagnant, his lines remain melodic and fluid, and it kind of balances the need for structure with creative freedom. When you play a bass line, you spell out the chord changes, but he’s not really doing that — he’s so melodic that you can hear the harmony clearly without him having to spell it out.
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Ron Carter, ‘Blues Farm’
Large Professor, D.J.
I hear Ron Carter’s “Blues Farm” as a total composition. It has this really cool ’70s jazz sound, which to me is like the sound of Midtown Manhattan. And he has so much range on the bass, from high to low — it’s almost like he’s playing the guitar in certain moments here. Growing up I had a neighbor, an older gentleman, who gave me all his cassettes and albums. One cassette was a taping of a jazz radio show, and this was one of the songs on it. Then, in my early days of digging, I finally found the “Blues Farm” album. Years later, I remember when Q-Tip told me: “Yo, we got Ron Carter to rock for us” on “The Low End Theory.” That was the pinnacle for me. The way Carter knew how to translate what he had been doing for so many years into hip-hop — that was incredible.
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Donald Harrison, ‘Receipt Please’
Tyrone Allen, bassist
This track comes from “Heroes,” a record by the saxophonist Donald Harrison, with Ron Carter on bass and Billy Cobham on drums. That’s a special hookup, because Carter and Cobham have been documented playing together since the late 1960s. By the time of this recording, in 2002, their connection was on a plane I aspire to reach with my favorite drummers. “Receipt Please” is a Ron Carter composition, and I love that it gives us the blues without using a traditional form. We also get to appreciate his chordless playing here; Mr. Carter gives us an entire orchestra underneath the soloist. His way of playing lines can make you notice that he’s there, but in such a supportive and distinct way. To me, it feels like he goes from the beginning to the end of the song in one long phrase. Even if he’s changing registers, or playing unexpected notes and rhythms, there’s a linear development. From the first note to the last, I’m always left reminded of the power every note can yield.
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Rosa Passos and Ron Carter, ‘Por Causa de Você’
Ashley Kahn, author
If you truly want to hear a musician’s heart and soul, slow down the rhythm and minimalize the accompaniment. Featuring only vocal and bass, this track, from the 2003 album “Entre Amigos,” stands out on an LP that is also a standout acoustic recording. It pairs two masters of sensitivity and emotional restraint, performing in the resonant interior of a Brooklyn church, the intimacy of their encounter caught by a single microphone — no amplification or close mic. The two find their way through a Jobim bossa nova. With bluesy hints, Carter matches his phrasing to Passos’ bittersweet, conversational delivery. One can hear them listening closely to each other. Between them, there’s both an ease and a note of diffidence, suggesting an intimacy that might be one step away from heartbreak. Carter’s solo answers that uncertainty with calm confidence, with his typical drops and double-stops: a languid, minute-long master class in technique, poise and emotional precision.
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Houston Person and Ron Carter, ‘Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most’
Linda May Han Oh, bassist
This track, from an album of duets with the tenor saxophonist Houston Person, is effortlessly beautiful and understated, and Mr. Carter’s way of approaching the accompaniment is so tasteful. By often playing in chords, more than one note at a time, he really helps to outline the harmony and plays something more than the bass’s usual role. The sound of the tenor and the bass together is so warm and intimate. They really don’t need any frills or anything fancy, they are just playing the song beautifully. And when we get to Mr. Carter’s unaccompanied solo, it is so clear, so solid, so steady and elegant."
