Strings and Threads

Bass legend Ron Carter has the sound and the style to match.

By Jason Roeder
Berklee.edu Correspondent
June 24, 2005

Ron Carter received an honorary doctorate from Berklee at Commencement 2005.
Photo by Phil Farnsworth
 
Go ahead, ask him about the suit. He'll tell you. The navy blazer with gold buttons is Burberry. The slacks, Ralph Lauren. The shirt, Paul Stewart of Manhattan. Bass master Ron Carter is well attired and proud of it—and if you want to play on his stage, you'd better be, too.

"It seems that the jazz community has gotten away from dressing up for work," said Carter, recently on hand at Berklee's David Friend Recital Hall to deliver the Warrick L. Carter Lecture. "It annoys me to pay $40 at a nightclub, expect to hear some quality music, and the band that walks out looks like they just came from the gymnasium. I find that insulting. I've told some of those guys that, and they looked at me like I was from somewhere else. I said, 'I am. I'm from the planet of elegance.'"

Carter, who over his lengthy career earned a Grammy Award and recorded with the likes of Bill Evans, Gil Evans, and Dexter Gordon, not to mention his five-year stint with the Miles Davis Quintet, started things off with a virtuosic improvisation that lasted 15 minutes. Then he took questions from the students, faculty, and staff members who filled every seat in the room and clogged the doorway to eavesdrop as best they could. One pianist wanted to know what Carter liked to see from keyboardists. For one thing, said Carter, a little help would be nice.

"When I'm playing a solo, I don't want the piano player to go to the bar, go to the men's room or ladies' room, or go outside," Carter said. "I need the same kind of support the horn players get. Somehow, piano players get in mind, 'Okay, bass solo, let's go outside.'...Tell those piano players they've got 88 chances to get it right."

Carter also discussed his transition from cello to bass, which he picked up in high school. And though the bass grew to become the instrument with which he would build his career and reputation, the switch wasn't about music, but race. The technical high school he attended in Detroit occasionally sent its best musicians to small gigs—teachers conventions, PTA meetings—but white cellists always got the calls. When the school's only bass player graduated, Carter saw a way in.

"If I became the bass player, they'd have to use me," Carter said. "I thought that'd be the end of the problems."

Unfortunately, as was so often the case for people of color at the time, problems had a way of lingering. With a full scholarship to the Eastman School of Music, Carter thought he was finally on his way. But for all his promise, he had too many conversations that ended the same discouraging way—he had enormous potential, but it was wasted on someone with dark skin.

"This conductor took me aside one day and said, 'Young man, I would love to have you in my orchestra,'" Carter remembered, "'but the board of directors isn't ready for colored guys who can play well.' I was just stunned. I said to myself, 'Not only am I not a colored guy, I'm a handsome six-foot-four, 175-pound African American person...and I'm playing bass because when I was a cellist, I couldn't get a job as a white cellist, and you're telling me that no matter how good I play, if I apply for this orchestra that was like in the top 10 in the country and have the talent to fit its needs musically, that they won't hire me because I'm black? Whoa. I was stunned. I couldn't believe that this was going to happen to me again."

Carter has played on more than 2,500 recordings.
Photo by Phil Farnsworth
 
Fortunately for Carter, he was also playing jazz on the side to pay for food and books. Bassist Paul Chambers and his father were drivers on the same bus line, and Chambers introduced Carter to reedist Eric Dolphy. Dolphy told Carter that there was an opening in drummer Chico Hamilton's band. At last, a break. There was one catch, though: they didn't need a bassist, they needed a cellist. Carter hadn't played that instrument in at least a decade.

"I thought, 'I'm still going in this circle,'" Carter said. The back-and-forth swung once more, however, and this time was the last time. "But the cellist decided to stay, and the bassist decided to quit."

When asked about the direction of jazz today, Carter acknowledged that he hadn't been exposed to enough of the new music to form an "official" opinion.

"However, my unofficial opinion," Carter said, "is that they're missing the boat. They haven't done enough homework, and they haven't played enough homework. Those who know the old names don't know the styles of those old names, and those who know the styles of the old names have not found a way to add that to their history book of playing styles."

So, aside from an understanding of jazz heritage, what else should a young bassist be developing? For one thing, Carter said, young players need to act as ambassadors for their music, to welcome people who might not have been digging Coltrane as long as they have, if at all.

"Young people need to understand that if they want to do this music, there's responsibility that comes along with it," Carter said. "You have a responsibility in terms of not using slang with people who maybe don't play jazz or don't know the music or never heard it before. Part of your responsibility is to take the music to the people."

Then there's professionalism, of course, the obligation to show up on time and to play with the effort a paying audience deserves. "Part of your responsibility," Carter said, "is to go to your gigs every night and perform like it's your last chance to get it right."

And you'd better not forget your suit.

The Warrick L. Carter Lecture is held annually as part of Berklee's Black History Month Music Celebration.

Jason Roeder is editor/writer in Berklee's Office of Communications.




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