Ron Carter

His first record as a leader, and for half of it he is not playing the bass. Carter came to the instrument late, after years on cello, and on three of these six tracks he goes back to it, with George Duvivier holding down the bass underneath him. Eric Dolphy is the other voice, switching between bass clarinet, alto and flute, and Mal Waldron is at the piano a week before he cut The Quest with most of the same band, and Carter was twenty-four years old.

The cello tracks are the reason to own this. "Rally" and Randy Weston's "Where?" put a bowed and plucked cello out front against Dolphy, and it works because Carter plays it like a bass player, with time and weight, not like a string section. "Bass Duet" is exactly what it says, Carter and Duvivier and nobody else, and it is over before it gets clever. The two standards are handsome and a little polite, which is what DownBeat and AllMusic disagreed about at the time.

Prestige reissued it in 1971 under Dolphy's name, and for a long time that was the only way you found it. The OJC edition put Carter's name back on the front. It is usually dated 1961, which is the session year; the record came out in 1962.

Eight years between his first and second albums, and in between he had spent five of them in the Miles Davis quintet. This is the record where he finally sounds like the leader of something. All seven tunes are his, Herbie Hancock is at the keyboards, and the band splits between two drummers, Grady Tate on the tighter tracks and Billy Cobham on the open ones. Herbie Mann produced it for his own short-lived Embryo label.

"Einbahnstrasse" is the one people know, because Hancock had already recorded it as "First Trip" on Speak Like a Child. Here it is looser and longer and Carter takes it back. "Half a Row" runs past nine minutes with Cobham pushing and nobody in a hurry. Carter plays electric bass on four tracks, which was still news in 1969, and he plays it like an upright player who has been handed a different tool, not like a rock player.

The CD reissue added alternate takes of "Einbahnstrasse" and "Doom." The original Embryo pressing credits Cobham as William E. Cobham, Jr. Sources disagree on whether Laws and Tate are on "Ten Strings"; the jacket says yes.

Guitar and bass, no drums, no piano, recorded live at the Playboy Club in New York during a concert series called Jazz Adventures. The jacket puts Jim Hall's name first and that is fair, since Hall had been making duo records a strength since his Bill Evans dates. But listen to what Carter does on "St. Thomas": he is the drummer, the second guitar and the bass at once, and the tune never feels thin.

"Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise" is the tune he had cut on his own debut eleven years earlier, and the difference is the whole story of the decade in between. On Where? it is a young man's cello feature. Here it is two players who trust each other enough to leave space. "Receipt, Please" is a Carter original he would cut again on Yellow & Green, and "Whose Blues?" is Hall's, the only other original on the set.

Dick Katz produced with Orrin Keepnews supervising. It got to number 33 on the Billboard jazz chart, which for a live guitar and bass duo is remarkable. They did it again a decade later on Live at Village West, reviewed on the next page.

Carter was the house bassist at CTI through the early seventies, on everybody's records, so it was only a matter of time before Creed Taylor gave him one of his own. This is it, cut in a single day at Van Gelder's with the usual suspects: Hubert Laws, Bob James, Richard Tee, Billy Cobham, Ralph MacDonald. Five originals and John Lewis's "Django." Pete Turner photo on the gatefold. You know the look.

It is also the first of his own dates where he brings out the piccolo bass, the small instrument tuned a fourth higher that would become his signature for the rest of the decade. On the title track it sits up in the guitar register and sings, and you can hear him figuring out what to do with it in real time. "Django" is the best thing here, taken slow, with James on acoustic piano and Sam Brown's guitar keeping it from turning into a string arrangement.

Whether Bob James is on electric or acoustic piano depends on which pressing you read; the original credits and the 1979 repress disagree and the CD sides with acoustic. It does not change the listening. Three stars because it is pleasant and careful, and he made better ones on the same label within two years.

Same label, same studio, same producer, and a completely different record, because this time the horn is Joe Henderson and the pianist is Roland Hanna and nobody is trying to make a crossover hit. Four Carter originals, a standard he plays alone at the end, and in the middle the tune he had played every night for five years in the Miles Davis band.

"All Blues" is the reason to buy it. Carter takes the vamp he built the original around and stretches it, and Henderson does not try to be Cannonball or Coltrane on top of it. He plays it as his own tune. Hanna is a beautiful pianist for this, patient and blues-literate, and Cobham, who could overplay on the CTI dates, does not. "117 Special" swaps Hanna for Richard Tee on electric piano and is the one track that sounds like 1973.

"Will You Still Be Mine" closes it as a bass feature, Carter alone with the changes. AllMusic prints the recording date as the release date; it came out in 1974. The laminated gatefold has Alen MacWeeney's photographs and a Bob Ciano design, and clean copies are still cheap.

Four long tracks with a Spanish tint, and the one everybody talks about is the eleven-minute "So What." Carter was the bassist in the band Miles built after the Kind of Blue band, not the one on the record, but he played the tune night after night on tour, and here he leads it himself with Hubert Laws on flute where the trumpet used to be. It is respectful and a little long. The vamp is his to do what he wants with, and he mostly wants to stay in it.

The Carter originals are better than their reputation. "El Noche Sol" opens with Cobham on a field drum and Roland Hanna keeping things acoustic, and "Arkansas" runs past ten minutes with Leon Pendarvis subbing in on electric piano. Jay Berliner's guitar gives the whole thing its Spanish accent without anybody pretending to play flamenco.

Wikipedia dates the session November 18; the jacket just says November 1974. Ron Wynn at AllMusic gave it two and a half stars and called the concept interesting, which is about right. Reissued on CD in 1987 and remastered by Van Gelder for Japan in 2009.

Kudu was the CTI imprint for the funkier, more commercial end of the roster, and this is Carter's one record on it. Dave Matthews wrote the charts for a horn section that reads like a session-player hall of fame, Randy and Michael Brecker, Phil Woods, David Sanborn, and the program includes a Cole Porter show tune, the theme from the TV cop show Baretta, and a Stylistics hit. Three singers on two tracks, and the whole thing runs thirty-three minutes.

The title track is the good part. Carter's bass line under the Porter melody is the reason the record exists, Steve Gadd is on drums for that one only, and there is a bass solo that reminds you who is nominally in charge. After that the record belongs to the arranger and the horns, and Carter is a sideman on his own album. "De Samba" and "Quarto Azul" are his tunes and they get the same treatment as the covers.

Thom Jurek's two stars at AllMusic called it a studied and even delightful exercise in the commercial side of fusion, and that is generous and accurate at once. Two stars here too. If you collect the Kudu run for the Pete Turner covers and the period sound, get it. If you want to hear Carter lead a band, go to All Blues or Piccolo.

His last CTI album, and a strange one, because two of the six tracks belong to a different record than the other four. "Willow Weep for Me" is Carter alone on piccolo bass for two and a half minutes. "Epistrophy" is a piano trio with Kenny Barron and Ben Riley, no guitar, no electric anything. Those two are the first time Carter, Barron and Riley are on a record together, and within a year they were the core of the Piccolo quartet.

The other four are the CTI house sound of 1976, Hugh McCracken on guitar and harmonica, Billy Cobham on drums, Don Grolnick on Fender Rhodes. "Tenaj" and "Receipt, Please" are fine tunes, the second one a duo piece from Alone Together now dressed for radio. The title track has Carter on electric bass, which he did not do often and did not need to.

The jacket prints "Opus 1.5"; Wikipedia has "Opus 15." Session dates come from the CD reissue notes, the LP says only May 1976. AllMusic's credit list adds a guitarist named Harvey Mandel who is on no jacket and no discography; ignore it. Three stars, mostly for the trio and the solo.

He left CTI and went to Milestone, and the first thing he did was make a record with strings. Not a CTI strings record either, though Don Sebesky is conducting, because this one was cut at Fantasy's own studio in Berkeley and produced by Carter himself through Retrac, which is his name backwards. Five originals, a rhythm section of Kenny Barron, Hugh McCracken and Harvey Mason, and sixteen string players led by Sanford Allen.

"Ballad" is the center of it and the track that shows what he was after: Carter and the strings alone, no piano, no drums, the bass carrying a melody across an orchestra the way a cellist would. It is the cello player from Where? heard again fifteen years later. "Woolaphant" and "One Bass Rag" are the rhythm section tunes and they swing, Mason especially, and "12 + 12" closes with the piccolo bass back out front.

It is usually dated 1976, the session year; Discogs dates the original Milestone pressing to February 1977 and Wikipedia says 1976, so the label line here follows the pressing. The jacket credits no individual producer, only "produced at Retrac Productions." Reissued on CD in the OJC series.