Ron Carter interview: “None of us knew we were recording, until a year later when it came out and people had already heard it”

At six feet four inches, bassist Ron Carter cuts an imposing figure on the bandstand. He casts an equally monumental shadow over jazz history, with a storied career that few in jazz can match. One of the most respected bassists of all time, a National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Master, he has appeared on more than 2,200 recordings during the course of a 75-plus year career.

Yet as jazz writer Will Friedwald once pointed out in the pages of The New York Sun, “If Carter were recruited by NASA to be rocketed to Mars and become the first jazzman to perform on another planet, he would still be most famous for one thing: having played in Miles Davis’ ‘second great quintet’ of the 1960s.”

While such a compliment might be seen as something of a double-edged sword – there is much more to his career than the time spent as Davis’ bassist between 1963 and 1968 – it does confer a kind of immortality, since fans like their heroes to come plainly labelled. But dig a little deeper and you’ll discover he’s been in the engine room of some of the finest jazz recordings ever made, not just those with Davis; “Ron’s historical footprint is massive,” fellow bassist John Patitucci recently told writer Dan Ouelllette.

Skidding across the wave-tops of the 2,200 plus recordings Carter has made – and putting the classics of jazz he recorded with Miles Davis to one side – there’s Gil Evans’ Out of the Cool, Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage, Stan Getz’s Sweet Rain, Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil, Eric Dolphy’s Far Cry, Booker Little’s Out Front, George Benson’s Beyond the Blue Horizon, Red Clay by Freddie Hubbard, Sam Rivers’ Fuchsia Swing Song, Geri Allen’s Twenty One, Joe Henderson's State of the Tenor Vols 1&2… this is a very incomplete list, but you get the point.

He’s been first call bassist for a wide range of artists, each with their own melodic, harmonic and rhythmic approaches to jazz, all of which he effortlessly adapted to.

Ron Carter (photo: Claudio Strebel)

But that’s the past, and Ron Carter, who will be 88 on 4 May, is very much about the present and the future. His latest album is with two leading figures on the Swiss jazz scene, twin brothers Michael and Florian Arbenz. Released at the end of February, The Alpine Session: Arbenz vs Arbenz Meet Ron Carter is a sophisticated piano trio album that gives equal justice (and deserved exposure) to the Arbenz brothers, underpinned by Carter’s sophisticated and supportive basslines.

Featuring well-voiced extended harmonies and a dynamic approach to rhythm from the brothers, it’s a forward-thinking take on two standards and four originals. Straight ahead it may be, but it has a very contemporary feel that’s fresh and open-minded, allowing Carter to slot effortlessly into the Arbenz's musical world. Yet like any session in which he's played, leaving his mark, a source of inspiration with his famous rhythmic drive that lifts his fellow musicians onwards and upwards.

So how did this little gem of an album come about?

“I was over in Switzerland, in 2024, had a series of concerts,” explains Carter. “Bob Freeman, a dear friend of mine whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with many times, said, 'there’s a couple of guys in town who are looking to put this record together, and if I was to stay over a little bit longer would I make a record with them?' I said, 'yes, how do they play?' He said, 'well, they’re interesting players, they’re two great talents, and they were'.”

One of the two standards on the album is a memorable rethink of Duke Ellington’s ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got That Swing)’; and asked if this was the first time he had recorded it, he paused, thought, and said it probably was.

After graduating from High School, Carter continued his classical bass studies at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester in northwestern New York, with the goal of gaining a chair in a major symphony orchestra. He graduated with a BA in music, while at night he gained jazz experience with the likes of Pee Wee Ellis, Chuck and Gap Mangione and Roy McCurdy, before becoming increasingly involved in the New York jazz scene, gaining valuable experience with Chico Hamilton, Jaki Byard, Randy Weston, Bobby Timmons, Cannonball Adderley, and Thelonious Monk. Among his first recorded appearances was Eric Dolphy’s Out There, and How Time Passes with Don Ellis, while his first album under his own name was Where?, featuring Dolphy on alto sax, flute, and bass clarinet that explored Third Stream concepts.

So did the very different personalities Carter encountered during this period, such as the outgoing Cannonball Adderley and inward-looking Thelonious Monk, who occupied opposite ends of the personality spectrum, pose interpersonal as well as musical challenges?

“Well, I considered it a whole honour to consider them my teachers,” says Carter. “A good student appreciates the difference in the teachers they are fortunate to be under guidance with – the kind of concept, writing, swing, intonation, force, it’s just two different classrooms and as great as they were, I was a good student and I wanted to be a better student, that was my role with these guys.

“What I took from those two people, and their bands, was how determined they were and how every night was a chance to play really good music. They didn’t accept off days, they didn’t accept difficult travel, they didn’t accept poor sound at the theatre or club, and you had a chance with these sort of people to be in their groups, and play some really good music, at this moment, right here, right now. I appreciated that and could see how serious you had to be 24/7 to grow and play new things, and even play some wrong things and have a chance to fix them the next set, or the next chorus – with those two, one of the concepts of getting better was doing exactly that.”

Carter joined Miles Davis in 1963 and made 14 albums with him, including ESP, Miles Smiles, Nefertiti, and Filles de Kilimanjaro (recorded in the studio), and My Funny Valentine, Four and More and Live at the Plugged Nickel Vol. 1 and 2 recordedinlive performance. The latter set was originally recorded and released in 1965, and the complete two nights of recording was released as an 8-CD set in 1995 and became generally recognised as the defining moment of Davis’ Second Great Quintet – with Wayne Shorter on saxophones, Herbie Hancock on piano, Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums – and the Olympian Heights that chord-based improvisation could be taken before fracturing into abstraction.

The set comprises some of the greatest jazz improvisation on record, and when Wayne Shorter formed his critically-acclaimed Quartet in 2000, the first permanent acoustic group under his own name, the Plugged Nickel sides were both his inspiration and starting point.

So what does Carter remember about this defining recording?

“Well, first of all none of us knew we were recording, we didn’t know, any of us, until a year later when it came out and people had already heard it. I was talking to Jack DeJohnette at the time of its release and he said ‘Yes, it’s a great record... it’s the Plugged Nickel.’ I said, ‘I think we weren’t recording then, nobody told me they were recording.’ ‘Oh yeah man, it’s a two record set, I went out and got it,’ and sure enough it was a two record set at the Plugged Nickel.

“Having said that Stuart, perhaps as the young group that we were – I am sure that if we were aware that we were being recorded it would have been a little bit different as we would have been more cautious knowing that this music was going to be on somebody’s turntable forever. Having said that, my part in that recording in Chicago meant I commuted to New York for three days, I finished the gig at night, got on the plane, got to New York, had a wife and two young kids, go to the Manhattan School of Music for my class, got on the plane, I did this for three nights at the Plugged Nickel. It’s what we did as I had a chance to play with Miles, and Wayne and Tony and we were learning some things to do, and I didn’t want to be the guy who wasn’t available and stop this process grow. I had to get to the gig on time and still go to school for my scholarship, it was just a test of will, and a test of, ‘Do I really want to do this?’”

At the time of the Plugged Nickel recordings in Chicago, Carter was studying for a Master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music, from where he subsequently graduated. Ultimately, travel that took him away from his wife and children – who in 1968 were the formative ages of six and three – and with an increasing portfolio of freelance work in New York, plus Davis’ interest in moving into the electric tone colours and rhythms of rock music – something that Carter had no interest in – saw him leave the group.

In 1968, producer Creed Taylor launched CTI under the umbrella of A&M records before becoming an independent in 1970 (CTI is an acronym for Creed Taylor Inc.). Taylor, who had founded Impulse! records, insisted on distinctive cover art and a pristine recorded sound and brought these qualities to CTI. Didier C Deutsch, CTI press officer from 1972-6, would later write that CTI was “ostensibly created around bassist Ron Carter, who anchored most of the albums released by the label.”

Indeed, Carter was contracted to the label, and his work realised the range of his abilities, recording with a variety of artists in a variety of musical situations. Throughout, the clarity and tonal quality of his bass shines through. Carter had reached a point where his personality and his approach to music mapped each other in driving up standards,

“Ron was always the bass player,” Creed Taylor once told writer Dan Ouellette. “He got it all together. He made it happen. He took complex music and made it all sound easy. He was the go-to guy.”

For his part, Carter has fond memories of those years: “The whole catalogue had all great sounds – we all have different music tastes, this or that artist – and they had some really great players – Hubert [Laws], Freddie [Hubbard], George [Benson], Johnny Hammond Smith, Herbie [Hancock], Stanley [Turrentine], Billy Cobham, Paul Desmond, Chet Baker – and wonderful arrangements and some great recorded sounds.

“Rudy Van Gelder was the dean of recording jazz and at some point ,I became really friendly with Rudy because I was pretty busy out there and I was interested in recording processes. One day we were talking about recording the bass and we agreed to meet on successive Saturdays, about three or four Saturdays in a row, for two or three hours. I took my bass out to his studio in Englewood Cliffs [New Jersey], and we would try various physical set-ups – I’d be in the middle of the room with this mic, I’d play with that mic in different parts of the studio room, I’d use different type impedance with different kind of microphones.

“At the time a bass pickup was being conceived for upright bass and I was experimenting with different pickups in different locations in the room, and this would go on for about three or four hours for a succession of Saturdays, and we finally agreed upon what combination of stuff we were using, the microphones, the space, the pickups to get the right sound whenever he put this combination together. So the recorded sound you hear is as pure as it possibly can be. And that applied to the whole CTI catalogue, which really appealed to people.”

Broadly speaking, the 1970s were characterised by free jazz on one side and jazz-rock, which mutated into fusion, on the other. While CTI created its own space, by 1976 it had run its course. Carter signed as bassist and producer for Orrin Keepnews' Milestone records. The same year, as part of the Newport Jazz Festival in New York, a retrospective was planned for Herbie Hancock at Carnegie Hall with three groups, Mwandishi, the Headhunters and a reunion of the Miles Davis Second Great Quintet, with Freddie Hubbard in Davis’ stead. The reunion band was particularly well received and they decided to tour as VSOP.

“I liked that environment, it was really hot – 'hot' meaning 'enthusiastic',” says Carter. “There was a real group sound, and the music was determined by how well the players could relate to each other’s music – a group listening experience.

"I think we’ve kind of got away from that group listening experience because I don’t hear that in group playing, a group sound, today. I kinda miss that intimacy of hearing that and VSOP had a great group sound, where four or five players trusted each other – I can tell you there were some really great nights, some of them were exceptional, and fortunately some of the moments were captured on those live concerts.”

That VSOP were able to buck the fusion trend to wildly enthusiastic audiences, captured on the live albums, was quite something. They continued for several years and in the 1980s they had Wynton and Branford Marsalis tour with them.

Top of anyone’s VSOP shopping list should be The Quintet, recorded in UC Berkeley’s Greek Theatre, Tempest in the Colosseum and Live Under the Sky. Their Carnegie Hall debut comprises one CD of the two CD set Herbie Hancock VSOP. It was these recordings that pointed the way to the acoustic hard and post-bop renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s.

Carter’s distinguished career as a freelance continued through the decades – so many sessions it’s difficult to document today. There were All Star Tours and jingle sessions, live dates and recording dates with leading and upcoming musicians. Then there was movie soundtrack projects – Desperate Characters (1971), La Passion Béatrice (1987), A Gathering of Old Men (1987), Blind Faith (1998) and What Happens in Vegas (2008) plus his work on three of the best known jazz films of the 1980s and 90s: ’Round Midnight (1986), Bird (1988) – Carter once played with Charlie Parker, “Not many people today can say they played with Bird,” he says – and Kansas City (1996).

He’s been director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Studies, and involved with jazz education in colleges and universities offering degrees in jazz performance. As a classically trained bassist and cellist, he has participated in classical and jazz projects, the latest of which is with the New York based string quartet Ethel.

“I’ve also done recordings with the Turtle Island Quartet, the Kronos Quartet, several projects for Orrin Keepnews on Riverside, and a record of Thelonious Monk’s music with a string quartet, so it’s not a new idea for us. It’s a new idea to Ethel, and I’m looking forward to chances to play some good music with them.”

A remarkable career, indeed. Sometimes labels just don’t fit.

The Alpine Session is released via Bandcamp on 21 February