Speaker 1: Pushkin, We're continuing our celebration of Blue Note Records eighty
Speaker 1: fifth anniversary with a conversation with a certified living legend,
Speaker 1: Ron Carter. For starters, he was a key member of
Speaker 1: a group that's on the shortlist for the Greatest band
Speaker 1: of all time. That's the second Great Miles Davis Quintet,
Speaker 1: featuring Ron Carter himself, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams,
Speaker 1: and naturally Miles Davis. And although many conversations with Ron
Speaker 1: Carter start and end with that period of his life
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty eight, at eighty
Speaker 1: seven years of age and as a lifelong seeker, there's
Speaker 1: a lot more to the Ron Carter story, and I'm
Speaker 1: happy to say we got an interesting little slice of
Speaker 1: it for you today. When Don was and I sat
Speaker 1: up on the stage at the Blue Note Club in
Speaker 1: NYC with Ron Carter, we wanted to know a little
Speaker 1: more about his life growing up in Detroit, class aspirations.
Speaker 1: In response to those questions, Mastro Carter delivered an emotional,
Speaker 1: stream of consciousness response that resonated deeply with both Don
Speaker 1: and I. My hopes that it will move you as well.
Speaker 1: And since we're celebrating the eighty fifth anniversary of Blue
Speaker 1: Note Records, ron Carter also gives some fascinating insight into
Speaker 1: a few key people from the label's esteemed history. This
Speaker 1: is Broken Record Liner Notes for the digital age.
Speaker 2: I'm justin Mitchman.
Speaker 1: Here's Don Was and myself from the Blue Note in
Speaker 1: New York City with Mastro Ron Carter. To see the
Speaker 1: full video version of this episode, go to YouTube dot
Speaker 1: com slash Broken Record Podcast.
Speaker 3: When I first got the job at Blue Note, I
Speaker 3: went to the archives, did a little research, and there's
Speaker 3: an insanely inordinate number of musicians who come from Detroit,
Speaker 3: like not even a close second in terms of cities.
Speaker 3: What do you think it is about Detroit?
Speaker 4: You know, I think when the when the people from
Speaker 4: the South went up north that migration. I just think
Speaker 4: that that the enthusiasm of being free and the chances
Speaker 4: of being productive and being free went to where the
Speaker 4: industrial states were. They had those kind of options, and
Speaker 4: Detroit has always been a manufacturing city cars right now,
Speaker 4: and then Henry Ford made the unfortunes with the assembly
Speaker 4: line in Detroit. And my general view is that the
Speaker 4: people who were of that mindset They all came to
Speaker 4: places where he could find the work. You know, the
Speaker 4: musicians went to Philadelphia, person that East Builders and uh
Speaker 4: Pittsburgh Ahmed. But somehow Detroit was the biggest manufacturing city
Speaker 4: that had the most options. As a non his struggle guests,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 3: Right, you chose to be a classical cellist originally represent
Speaker 3: your ambition and you changed. What were the circumstances that
Speaker 3: that caused you to change over to playing bass? From Chello.
Speaker 4: The start of the story is I was going to
Speaker 4: all black junior elementary school and this person came in
Speaker 4: with it. Came into a room where they had these
Speaker 4: things front on the table, you know, like ten to
Speaker 4: ten eleven twelve year old kids. She says she's going
Speaker 4: to start the orchestra at this school, and children, these
Speaker 4: are the instruments that we're going to play. I walk
Speaker 4: around and pick one that you think appeals to you
Speaker 4: at the best sound you can get out of there,
Speaker 4: whatever it sounds like, and we'll make some music together.
Speaker 4: And somehow the cello caught my attention. It was it
Speaker 4: was aluminum, you know, And so as I got better
Speaker 4: the teacher's record and I said, I was looking past
Speaker 4: their teaching level. Ultimately, I was considered a really giant
Speaker 4: talent for an African American fourteen year old. And so
Speaker 4: one day I looked around. My dad said, son, if
Speaker 4: you want to be in this game, you got you
Speaker 4: gotta be better than everybody else who's in the game. Okay.
Speaker 4: Having said that, I thought that I was upholding that
Speaker 4: general family motto, you know. So I looked around one
Speaker 4: day in the base player was graduating this. I'm a
Speaker 4: senior in high school. A senior had done met there
Speaker 4: would be nineteen fifty three fifty four spring, you know.
Speaker 4: And I was always good at math. My father was
Speaker 4: a genius, but I could subtract pretty good. So I'm
Speaker 4: looking around and said, if he's only one guy there
Speaker 4: and don't need a base player not as a zero,
Speaker 4: I don't want to be that guy. So prince my
Speaker 4: parents that do is a good way me to get better,
Speaker 4: you know, and get get get get the work out,
Speaker 4: looking for get the exposure, get the experience. Because I
Speaker 4: was the only guy playing this, you know. So they they
Speaker 4: sold my cello and the borrower money for a base
Speaker 4: and got some lessons, you know, and uh, the Eastman
Speaker 4: was having auditions throughout the country Eastern School of Music.
Speaker 4: So I got some books, got a teacher and figured
Speaker 4: out what the library was, and audition and I got
Speaker 4: a full scotship for four years. I'm not a bass
Speaker 4: player at Aceland, you know. And uh, while I knew
Speaker 4: of jazz, because we all knew about the jazz and
Speaker 4: blues and stuff like that, I never gave it a
Speaker 4: thought of being a player on that level. I was
Speaker 4: gonna be a cello solo man. Now I was gonna
Speaker 4: be an orchestral bass player. I almost gay with that
Speaker 4: because I got the same notes basically, you know, different attitude,
Speaker 4: but I could do.
Speaker 2: That, you know. Uh.
Speaker 4: And as I got better at Eastman cause it was
Speaker 4: a very competitive investment environment, you know that they were like, uh,
Speaker 4: six or seven African Americans and a student bid them
Speaker 4: maybe six or seven hundred kids and then about ten
Speaker 4: basse players, yeah, bass player of students, you know. Uh.
Speaker 4: And again I'm st I ask cause him was a teacher,
Speaker 4: and he's Tim's coming on how I was improving and
Speaker 4: how I was really understanding the music, the music and
Speaker 4: around me, you know, how to playing on an orchestra.
Speaker 4: Just those kind of details that good teachers show students
Speaker 4: who they think are capable of handling another level of performance.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: So I'm getting better. You know, I'm still working on
Speaker 4: my father's mental You wanna you wanna play the game,
Speaker 4: you gotta have a better hand, so to speak, you know. Uh, So,
Speaker 4: I mean I'm getting orchestra. I'm done this. I'm getting
Speaker 4: all these gigs. I go home for the summer because
Speaker 4: I have no money to stay in town s. School
Speaker 4: is over, the dorm too is closing, you know. So
Speaker 4: I get my car drive back to Detroit, and my neighbor,
Speaker 4: who was a saxophone player, said, hey, hey, Ron, I'm
Speaker 4: the I'm putting together a little band to play for
Speaker 4: the Dwayne State University parties for sororities maternities. But we
Speaker 4: need a bass plick, and you do that. I said, well,
Speaker 4: I don't read a little library, and I understand that's
Speaker 4: different music. But if you can give me some records
Speaker 4: or something we listened to in the library, I'll see
Speaker 4: how much I can learn in the time I'll be
Speaker 4: home for this three months off of school. And at
Speaker 4: the time, Dave Blue Brick was really hot. But jazz
Speaker 4: goes to college. That record you know with uh so,
Speaker 4: I said, well, I learned some of these songs cause
Speaker 4: I'm starting to sing like Chet Baker. I said, Chet Baker,
Speaker 4: you know, he's a singing trip. Okay, whatever.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 4: The piano player love Bud Powell. And back in the
Speaker 4: day there was jazz on TV Detroit and that they
Speaker 4: still have the show from Rouge Lounge, which is about
Speaker 4: our drive outside Detroit Northeast and the host of Swoopy Sales,
Speaker 4: the comedian yeah you know. And one day here on
Speaker 4: this show the Max Roads Quartet with uh Max, George Morrow.
Speaker 4: You know, I think maybe a Bubb's on the band
Speaker 4: and maybe Heroldlin. I can't remember this so far back,
Speaker 4: but he he was, he was. They had the twenty
Speaker 4: minutes of songs with Bud Powell and Max I said, said,
Speaker 4: rock this is it. Yeah, I said, okay, I'm still
Speaker 4: playing Bark and Beethoven Brahms, cause that's what I'm That's
Speaker 4: what I'm aiming for. But look out for the summer.
Speaker 4: The scholarship didn't cover all my expenses and I need
Speaker 4: to have some money so I could back to school
Speaker 4: cause my parents weren't able to take care of the
Speaker 4: remaining kids. There were like five left that at home
Speaker 4: when I left for Scolet, so I'm responsible helping him
Speaker 4: to cover and stuff. So okay, I can do that.
Speaker 4: As I'm getting better. I get back to Rochester for
Speaker 4: this my junior my sophomore year, and uh there's a
Speaker 4: local club. Local clubs have some music, the black clubs,
Speaker 4: you know, thirty into all night sessions till four or
Speaker 4: five o'clock in the morning, and I got eight o'clock
Speaker 4: thiry class man, Come on, it's Carter. Hello. You know.
Speaker 4: I'm into that kind of zone, you know, but I
Speaker 4: need the money, so I try to figure it out.
Speaker 4: You know, I've got some books, I got the library. Uh.
Speaker 4: I was able to do the jam sessions at the night,
Speaker 4: from the two mid night the three in the morning,
Speaker 4: you know, but I got better at it, you know,
Speaker 4: by still in an orchestra, I'm still trying to get
Speaker 4: this orchestral orchestral accomplishment that I'm aiming to do.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Jazz was something that helped me stand school by strings
Speaker 4: for the instruments, stuff details, you know, a and uh
Speaker 4: I I noticed the bulletin board. They would have jobs
Speaker 4: for orchestras, auditions, stuff like that, you know. And uh,
Speaker 4: while I saw that, I was still not seeing it
Speaker 4: and that those auditions were kind of general, but I
Speaker 4: wasn't feeling any schooled encouragement to check that out, you know.
Speaker 4: And and it didn't stop me on my tracks as
Speaker 4: to why I weren't they encouraging me to check it out.
Speaker 4: I just said, look, I'm trying to I'm trying to
Speaker 4: get a degree here, but I'm I'm got a minor
Speaker 4: and I got a major in this, got these classes.
Speaker 4: I'm in a very competitive environment. All these kids think
Speaker 4: they're the best there is and they'd work until that end.
Speaker 4: They got practice time. I mean, it's just other factors
Speaker 4: in my life, right, you know. Uh, I had really
Speaker 4: learned how socialize with white people, cause I'm I'm all
Speaker 4: black community. I'm growing up in that environment, you know.
Speaker 4: M Uh, I had a scholarship, but I meant I
Speaker 4: had to work in the kitchen to wash the dishes
Speaker 4: during the meals, you know. So I met some nice
Speaker 4: guys who were in the same general boat who had
Speaker 4: a lot more money, but they were real nice guys.
Speaker 4: So to this day, I still contact those guys cause
Speaker 4: they're still my friends, you know. So I was getting
Speaker 4: out to learn how to learned how to socialize with
Speaker 4: a uh, a non complete black environment. So I was
Speaker 4: growing up too at the same time. You know. A
Speaker 4: footnote to this story down is that uh Eastman School
Speaker 4: in musical separate from University of Rochester physically. It was
Speaker 4: like a s four mile distance in campuses, you know.
Speaker 4: And so when the freshman met at the Eastman, the
Speaker 4: guys from the River campus they called it, came to
Speaker 4: the school the s you know, socialized, you know, and uh,
Speaker 4: a couple of size, couple of guys thought that all
Speaker 4: musicians were at the time.
Speaker 3: The work was fruits.
Speaker 4: You know, it was not a very nice word, you know,
Speaker 4: A and uh us on Detroit and that put there
Speaker 4: with that hardhead and you know, the badass on my jacket,
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff, you know. I said, I said,
Speaker 4: so I have not about I just made a couple
Speaker 4: acquaintance and said, man, those guys can't talk to like that.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm not sure, but I don't know about
Speaker 4: you guys, but I'm not I'm not buying that kind
Speaker 4: of description of me, you know, said well, well, gee,
Speaker 4: what do you want to do? I said, well, I
Speaker 4: was play a decent basketball player. I want to try
Speaker 4: to make the team, said man, but you got practice that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I know that, I know that very well. Well let's
Speaker 4: see what happens. So the two of us got unerved together.
Speaker 4: You know, we would bicycles two and a half miles
Speaker 4: out of the campus and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: And then we had the couple of practices and the
Speaker 4: guy got the squad down to whatever twelve people, and uh,
Speaker 4: I made the squad. So I was playing. I was
Speaker 4: on the Trusturant squad basketball team. I got made in
Speaker 4: about three games by two points. But it was okay.
Speaker 4: The point, well say, I made the squad, you know,
Speaker 4: but it was seemed clear me that I couldn't do
Speaker 4: both and being I couldn't be a good basketball player,
Speaker 4: and my goal to be it was to be a
Speaker 4: good player. I couldn't do both. So I acknowledged that.
Speaker 4: I told these guys, okay, this is one guy who
Speaker 4: did that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: In the meantime, I'm noticing the bolleting board mentions about
Speaker 4: the auditions for the violence section. They the third violin player, earlyer,
Speaker 4: thesistant concert master, and they need a bass player at somewhere.
Speaker 4: So I noticed these sayings, you know, and uh, I'm
Speaker 4: not feeling any encouragement. And I'm not feeling any overt encouragement.
Speaker 4: The one said, hey man, check this out. Try how
Speaker 4: that feeling. I didn't get that. I wasn't feeling that
Speaker 4: you and any event. One of the processes at the
Speaker 4: time now was that every every every orchestral sequent of
Speaker 4: Rochester Philharmonic they would need some spaces field. So they
Speaker 4: called students in the school who could cover the libor
Speaker 4: who deserved the right, who who earned the right to
Speaker 4: be a part of the Rochester Philharmonic as they were
Speaker 4: juniors or sophomoret or seniors in college, you know. And
Speaker 4: so it turned out nineteen fifty eight they needed a
Speaker 4: bass player for the Philharmonic orchestra for the fifty eight
Speaker 4: fifty nine season, you know.
Speaker 3: And uh so asker said you should be the guy
Speaker 3: to do that.
Speaker 4: So I said, okay, So whatever whatever the process was,
Speaker 4: I got a call next day said that they had
Speaker 4: the opening and the Philharmonica and they want me to
Speaker 4: fill the chair. I said, okay, this is what it takes, huh, okay,
Speaker 4: sign me up. Okay. So for a year I was
Speaker 4: the probably first personal club player in the Philharmonic Orchestra.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm still making gigs on weekends now. And
Speaker 4: uh one weekend there was Horace Silver's band a place
Speaker 4: called Squeezers bam Box, and the horse had Teddy Kodak,
Speaker 4: maybe Clifford Jordan our farmer.
Speaker 2: He got a really good band man still back in Detroit.
Speaker 4: No, no in Rochester, Rochester, Yeah, uh had a really
Speaker 4: good band. So ultimately I joined the house the house band,
Speaker 4: the place called a rich Crest and uh uh just
Speaker 4: out side of New York, and they bought him acts
Speaker 4: and I was part of the intermission band. Me drummer
Speaker 4: named Don Manning and pianist named Joe Close who walkman
Speaker 4: left town and went to Joe went to sell the
Speaker 4: uh Jo Ernestin Anderson a really good piano player. And
Speaker 4: then even some seeing all these guys come in weekends
Speaker 4: with this with the uh uh officer of dis disach band.
Speaker 4: Uh I met ike Issex, who was what Camonkree at
Speaker 4: the time. You know, Sam Jones came through, you know,
Speaker 4: uh sunny Stick came by himself as a single and
Speaker 4: and uh so he played with the house band. So
Speaker 4: and me, the Joe and and Don and the first
Speaker 4: time he tried us, I was de flat blues right here.
Speaker 4: M I said, well, okay, I can do that nothing
Speaker 4: but the blues and deflat then, I mean, really that's
Speaker 4: the test, you know, and so we got. It was
Speaker 4: that nice experience to me to see how this guy
Speaker 4: who is as close to bridge you can get without
Speaker 4: being buried, played every night that level. I mean, it
Speaker 4: was just often. It's just amazing, you know. Uh some
Speaker 4: Gaelic mean that he may not know his name, but
Speaker 4: he's one of the early duals Slim and Slim and Slam.
Speaker 4: And he came in as a single and we talked
Speaker 4: about music and changes and chords. You know, they were
Speaker 4: really making this music concept more available to me firsthand.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I'm in Philharmonic Arcs. We have concerts, and
Speaker 4: I got a white bow time matching vest, you know.
Speaker 4: And then uh uh they had guest conductors, Pierre Montreu, uh,
Speaker 4: Leo Postokowski, all these people came into four or five
Speaker 4: of them. And so one day I'm got to rosal
Speaker 4: Leo Posta Cooski was about for six you know, now
Speaker 4: six two six three something like that. You know, he said,
Speaker 4: why don't you have a seat? I get some look
Speaker 4: in the eye to eye, cause I was you know,
Speaker 4: he says, so the young man, I have noticed your
Speaker 4: performance here, and you seem like a really good person
Speaker 4: and a marvelous player. And I'd like you to go
Speaker 4: to my orchestra down in Texas. But the boy of
Speaker 4: the directors right now, I'm not ready to hire colored people.
Speaker 4: H I said, Okay, that's the first honest I mean,
Speaker 4: that's the first honest answer I got to describe the
Speaker 4: classical world at that time, you know, I said, okay,
Speaker 4: and and uh right went right. Then I knew that
Speaker 4: I had to find another a another play to play music,
Speaker 4: you know. And along this time the bass players would
Speaker 4: say that I had some skills, and they thought that
Speaker 4: I'd do good in New York. They didn't know my
Speaker 4: classical interest. That that wasn't con that wasn't there thing.
Speaker 4: I just a bass player was in the and then
Speaker 4: in the mission band, you know, they said, New York.
Speaker 4: He's a good bass player. And she'd come in and
Speaker 4: try you look, you know. In the meantime, I met
Speaker 4: a couple of guys called the Man Jones, Gap and
Speaker 4: Chuck and their family the man Jones. Frank and Nancy
Speaker 4: hosted any musician who came to town who played jazz.
Speaker 4: They hosted them for lunch or dinner. It's clearly amazing.
Speaker 4: So I meant dazzy. I meant all those guys at
Speaker 4: their home for dinner. And the Chuck and Gap had
Speaker 4: a band, and and the tentler named Benny sells out
Speaker 4: in a band called Little Giants, and uh or Keaton
Speaker 4: has heard about them and game they made a record
Speaker 4: with the Riverside. Uh So I was in my first
Speaker 4: record back then in those days, and they were clearly
Speaker 4: encouraging me, not necessarily not to play classical, but to
Speaker 4: acknowledge from my talent. Also lay you know, they're providing
Speaker 4: many a meal cause I had no money. The kid
Speaker 4: didn't pay much, but he did keep me in school.
Speaker 4: I just got married in nineteen fifty eight. I I
Speaker 4: was not scustling, but they made it easy to not
Speaker 4: worry about where my next meal was coming from. Frank
Speaker 4: and Nancy well a lovely couple.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Of course Chuck got famous, and the Gap cause the
Speaker 4: local piano player who've worked all the time. They're really
Speaker 4: great people. Until this day. I'm in touch with gap
Speaker 4: in Charlie. Now you know in any event, U ultimately, Uh,
Speaker 4: jazz shows ken in Rochester at the Eastman Theater, and
Speaker 4: they had the Jazz Package shows and they were all
Speaker 4: jazz acts. The particular show.
Speaker 2: Had men A.
Speaker 4: Ferkinson's band, had Lamon Herricks and Ross's band, had Dave
Speaker 4: Rubik's group and Miles all in the same show man,
Speaker 4: you know. And and UH and me and Chuck and
Speaker 4: Charlie went to the concert. I said, let's see what
Speaker 4: it looks like, you know, Okay.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: So it turned out some almost supposed to take the
Speaker 4: band to the train station, cause that was part of
Speaker 4: the truck line from Canada, Canada upstate New York. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you had the other to New York City. And they
Speaker 4: all made a stop at this Rochester cause there's a
Speaker 4: big school Rochester, rit big you know, it's Eastern Kodak,
Speaker 4: it's all there, Balsh and Lob, it's all there. It's
Speaker 4: a good financial stop to make come way back to
Speaker 4: New York from Canada, you know. And anyway, so who
Speaker 4: was supposed to take these guys to the translation never
Speaker 4: showed up and s and so uh the guy asked me,
Speaker 4: would I take him to the transtation. Miles band through
Speaker 4: the transtation. I said, I got to look forward.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 4: You know these guys they they didn't at level of transportation.
Speaker 4: So no, no, no, they ride with you. So I
Speaker 4: took Miles and and and uh Red Garland to the
Speaker 4: transtation of my car. And but that's it, just ride.
Speaker 4: We were you know, they were famous. I'm in school,
Speaker 4: I'm basic playing school. But the Philarmonic had you listen
Speaker 4: to them yet?
Speaker 2: Not really?
Speaker 4: I mean I knew who they were, but then everybody
Speaker 4: knew who they were, you know. But uh, I was
Speaker 4: just impressed that they trusted my driving skills.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I got nineteen nineteen fifty Ford man, come on,
Speaker 5: you know, uh so you see hello, how are you
Speaker 5: mister Davis and mister mister Garland.
Speaker 4: You know I'm the guy to go take it to
Speaker 4: the train station. Okay, good, all right, Okay, that's it.
Speaker 4: So I graduated. So in the meantime, Jicko Hamilton had
Speaker 4: a band and he told me we had we we
Speaker 4: see said, uh someone said, he said, hey, Ronnie, all
Speaker 4: you played Chell? Yes I do, mister mister Hampton said
Speaker 4: play something. So I brought a chiller and said in
Speaker 4: the practice room and play a couple of things with
Speaker 4: a box that I knew, so still had some skills,
Speaker 4: you know. He said, we were working in New York
Speaker 4: on this day, August. Work it is, and if you
Speaker 4: get to New York when you graduately, come to New York.
Speaker 4: And if I'm working, take my Chello players about to
Speaker 4: leave the band and I need a policeman.
Speaker 3: Are you interested?
Speaker 4: I said, well, I mentioned, I'm not sure how many
Speaker 4: skills I have left cause I haven't played in a
Speaker 4: long time, but I think I can hamlet it, you know.
Speaker 4: He said, well, come to New York. And then if
Speaker 4: they how are you? I said, okay. So I graduated
Speaker 4: at June of nineteen fifty nine and got me to
Speaker 4: New York office for the same year, and the band
Speaker 4: was working at Birdland. So I walked downstairs. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm mister Hamilton here. He said, well, change the plans.
Speaker 4: I said, oh yeah, what said, Well, chel players are
Speaker 4: going to stay, but I need a bass player White
Speaker 4: Rules for bul Rules have decided to go back to
Speaker 4: Seattle and set up shopping in Seattle. Are you doing
Speaker 4: to take this gig? I said, sure, I'm here now
Speaker 4: I've meant a commitment to stay here. You know, who's
Speaker 4: in a band. Then this buddy Mire plants playing guitar,
Speaker 4: that Gerson was a cello player and her dolphin was
Speaker 4: a red player. I said, okay, and he said, I said,
Speaker 4: we're leaving in uh wherever it is. We got to
Speaker 4: come country on the road, and we come back. We
Speaker 4: go to California for a while. I said, well, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm still going to school. He said, well, why don't
Speaker 4: you try to delete the school until January and en roll?
Speaker 4: And I'll say, I don't know, not to talk to
Speaker 4: them because I got a scholarship for a master's program
Speaker 4: for the year, you know, and I'm not I think
Speaker 4: i'd cancel it. I'll be in We'll talk with him,
Speaker 4: you know. So I talked to the school and said,
Speaker 4: I got this chance to go on the road, but
Speaker 4: chick on hambleting, you know, can I start my scholarship
Speaker 4: in January of nineteen sixty rather than.
Speaker 2: The fall of fifty nine?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said, okay, okay.
Speaker 4: You know, so I left town with chicken hamblting for
Speaker 4: like five four weeks, all these stops on We drove
Speaker 4: from Boston to Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Drove.
Speaker 2: How was that drive?
Speaker 4: We had four drivers, Chico, me and Timmy and his
Speaker 4: brother drove.
Speaker 3: So it was fun.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm just a guy in Detroit, but family
Speaker 4: of six, six girls and my brother. It's all new
Speaker 4: to me. Man. You know. Uh, one of the stops,
Speaker 4: by the way, it was in Washington, d C. The
Speaker 4: first stop in Washington, and uh, it's it. It was
Speaker 4: really north of New York, but cause it's really down
Speaker 4: south for me, you know. And we put up to
Speaker 4: Howard Johnson's if you know that name from back in
Speaker 4: the day, and and uh were right in the bus
Speaker 4: of the the shows and of the show's tracking by bus.
Speaker 4: You know, they had Colin Hawkins and Mouser's band. That's
Speaker 4: just a great bunch of people. To watch them operate,
Speaker 4: watch them talk, watch how they communicated with each other
Speaker 4: with all their genius skills.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: So we end in waiting in the bus for a while.
Speaker 4: We still waiting, and then the guy comes back and says, well,
Speaker 4: you know that they don't serve black people. Yes, we
Speaker 4: have to go around the back or find somewhere else
Speaker 4: to eat, you know, And Howard Johnson's Yeah, I said ah,
Speaker 4: this is, this is, this is Yeah, you got the
Speaker 4: bus for the geniuses and they didn't want to serve
Speaker 4: them be cause they're not white. I didn't. I didn't,
Speaker 4: I didn't. I I didn't get that. You know, I'm
Speaker 4: uh twenty maybe nineteen now, you know, from Detroit, like
Speaker 4: the riots and all that stuff. So I the idea
Speaker 4: of that kind of convertation is not new to me.
Speaker 4: But to be so close to it and to see
Speaker 4: the people who they don't wanna serve a sandwich to
Speaker 4: man this talent, how could that be?
Speaker 5: Man?
Speaker 4: But so I'll just fucking picture how could that? How
Speaker 4: could that take place? You know? Hello, world, world, next door?
Speaker 4: Come this way that you know? Any event, I got
Speaker 4: over that and I understood. Okay. So one of these
Speaker 4: things I do, guys, is when I do these interviews.
Speaker 4: They always wanted to know about my classical background. I said, okay,
Speaker 4: you know, and and uh how I feel about it,
Speaker 4: you know? And uh do I have no regrets? And
Speaker 4: do I miss it? All those courts I give our
Speaker 4: small yes, I do miss it. I've made some wonderful
Speaker 4: fore answer that I grew up with some great people
Speaker 4: who are trying to play it better like I was.
Speaker 4: You know, I missed the sound of the orchestra. That's
Speaker 4: one thing to listen to a record. It's nothing to
Speaker 4: be sitting right in the middle of the sound. That's
Speaker 4: an incredible feeling. Man, I missed that, you know, but
Speaker 4: they were not. But take what you do, just the interviewer,
Speaker 4: this is nineteen sixty two, sixty three, sixty four, whatever
Speaker 4: it was. Just take some pictures of the orchests. Go back,
Speaker 4: go back ten years now. All orchestras had a photograph
Speaker 4: for the orchestra for the promo Chicago, Philly, Cleveland, New York, Boston.
Speaker 4: And you let me know how many minorities are in
Speaker 4: those orchestras compared to the orchestras on the stage now,
Speaker 4: whatever it would have been. And you think that's okay,
Speaker 4: You think that didn't You think that hasn't made an
Speaker 4: impression on May still And I said not. These schools
Speaker 4: and it's not a propaganda's conversation. Now this is page three.
Speaker 4: These schools are still turning out wonderful African American musician
Speaker 4: players to be primarily symphonie players or players. And if
Speaker 4: you look at the number of photographs of these orchestras
Speaker 4: at five year intervals, and the same five year intervals
Speaker 4: that these schools are turning out these wonderful classical players
Speaker 4: orchestral players to.
Speaker 2: Be what happens to them.
Speaker 4: According to these pictures, they're not working with Cleveland or
Speaker 4: Philadelphia or New York or Boston or Los Angeles, where
Speaker 4: these kids what happened to them. The reason my picture
Speaker 4: is not in these pictures, they're towing them out in
Speaker 4: the ago that they weren't ready to hire color people.
Speaker 4: That's why I'm not playing there. According to these pictures,
Speaker 4: I'm looking at if I've got my shirt, like home glasses,
Speaker 4: all that kind of stuff. Nonhing's changed other than the
Speaker 4: date of the calendar man, you know. So there's a
Speaker 4: lot of work. There's a lot of work to be done.
Speaker 4: And my footnote to this kind of conversation always kind
Speaker 4: of ends up there because they think I just know
Speaker 4: about miles and my life started in nineteen sixty three
Speaker 4: to sixty eight and a half. You know, I as
Speaker 4: to say I'm expearenced. I'm living that life, you know,
Speaker 4: you know, and one of the things that keeps just
Speaker 4: fire blue. You know in Nassian Torch that the hottest
Speaker 4: fire is not to flame. It's this blue thing, you know,
Speaker 4: one of the kind of things that keeps keeps me
Speaker 4: on fire, that color. You know, our situations like when
Speaker 4: I was doing commercial work in New York, New Orchestra's
Speaker 4: doing stuff bix bix scores in New York. You know,
Speaker 4: there has a sex us of a se base section
Speaker 4: of uh. They were from four to five players A
Speaker 4: and UH. I was known as the hot jazz player
Speaker 4: in town. So they wanted to know what I'm They
Speaker 4: wanna know what I'm doing there.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: So the the the the the the game was guys
Speaker 4: that the everyone who were not specifically assigned their first chair,
Speaker 4: they got there earlier so they could be the first chair.
Speaker 4: That means you got the best money, highest paid, you
Speaker 4: got a little more respect from the orchestra, could do
Speaker 4: the first chair violin as a base play, whatever where
Speaker 4: it was, you got a chance to make the boweling,
Speaker 4: the fingering you were. That was all on you. And
Speaker 4: the remaining four or five people in the section. Their
Speaker 4: job was to say yes, yes, yes, yes, you know
Speaker 4: A and UH. Because I was either number four or
Speaker 4: five on the list of important players. You know, I
Speaker 4: I I didn't feel that. Uh, they thought I'd be
Speaker 4: along there cause I just finished I said with Miles
Speaker 4: Miles Davis last night, or or Randy Weston or Herbian Man, whoever,
Speaker 4: whoever the gig was for that week. You know. So
Speaker 4: one day I had enough, So t the sessions were
Speaker 4: like nine to nine to one and two to five,
Speaker 4: and you come back and you do the lunch. You know,
Speaker 4: I said, Okay, guys, I got this. I'm I'm telling me,
Speaker 4: you know. So we took a break at one one o'clock,
Speaker 4: you know, and I know that uh about twelve thirty
Speaker 4: one o'clock they gonna start filtering and get for the
Speaker 4: next happen. You know, I get there before these base
Speaker 4: prients get there. Now, while I hadn't been in an
Speaker 4: orchestra seriously for like three or four years, I never
Speaker 4: forgot the library, and I knew all the things that
Speaker 4: base priers had the audition to be accepted. I know
Speaker 4: that stuff. Man, I just didn't put in the trash.
Speaker 4: Can just stort part of my uh DNA, you know.
Speaker 4: So what I decided to do is just give them
Speaker 4: a lesson of what my capacity was in my experience.
Speaker 4: So I just said I'm selling in the last chair
Speaker 4: cause that was my seat at the film, you know, okay,
Speaker 4: And I played three or four orchestral excerpts through the keys,
Speaker 4: and I just let it. That's that's my statement. M
Speaker 4: that's him. I said, hey, where you go? I said,
Speaker 4: I got a gig my to Berlin. Then I I
Speaker 4: can't stay here. You know. That's the footnote. That's kind
Speaker 4: of conversation. So yes, I'm still affected by that. You
Speaker 4: can't let that go. If you let it go, it
Speaker 4: continues somewhere else and someone who can't handle it. And
Speaker 4: I hate to thank guys of how much talent that's
Speaker 4: not available to a public of listening music because they're
Speaker 4: not they're not the uh cause they're probably of the
Speaker 4: minority string section, string player, you know. Uh. Again, the
Speaker 4: pictures are slowly having a little more representative of a
Speaker 4: broader musical ability of players in minority community who deserve
Speaker 4: to be in these chairs. Like these other guys and
Speaker 4: gals are gal singular, you know, but I think, uh,
Speaker 4: this blue part of the sling torch, I think is
Speaker 4: necessary for me. You know, I enjoy the memories and
Speaker 4: I don't regret not being able to have those memories live.
Speaker 4: Matter is that they wanted to hire me and I
Speaker 4: passed the auditions. They couldn't afford me. I mean they
Speaker 4: we could not afford what I get. I'm bringing a
Speaker 4: whole whole other vibe to this orchestra and what they
Speaker 4: stand for. I'm more famous than the conductor. What does
Speaker 4: that cost?
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Ron Carter after
Speaker 1: the break. We're back with more from Ron Carter. Down
Speaker 1: was and me? How do you contriue the blue flame
Speaker 1: that they keeps you from here? How do you keep
Speaker 1: that burning without burning yourself?
Speaker 4: The DNA that helps make keep a balance, you know, uh,
Speaker 4: balance meaning there's always someone out there, some young kid
Speaker 4: of color, you know, who was who was going through
Speaker 4: what I went through sixty years ago, and if they're
Speaker 4: doing any homework and do any research, because it's not
Speaker 4: so available to them, because you know, here's some person
Speaker 4: who went through this kind of experience that I'm going
Speaker 4: through sixty years later, he found somewhere else for his talent.
Speaker 4: It doesn't mean that there can be a good jazz player.
Speaker 4: I mean they may turn out to be a better writer.
Speaker 4: I'll put their skills into being a composer. Or a
Speaker 4: better teacher. It just says them know that there's still
Speaker 4: the way to be involved in the community of some kind,
Speaker 4: even though it's not the one that you instanly chose,
Speaker 4: and someone else made that choice kind of for you.
Speaker 4: They threw you, and they threw you into another train track.
Speaker 4: That's okay.
Speaker 1: Did you feel like a did jazz playing the gig
Speaker 1: and you were doing and eventually I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: did that ever feel like a consolation?
Speaker 4: Early on, I felt like this one I'm supposed to be.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: I never took it as a a great second choice.
Speaker 4: I'm saying those guys missed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you felt a natural affinity for it certain.
Speaker 4: Parts, yes, but I understood to do what I was
Speaker 4: doing they required another kind of level of work and commitment.
Speaker 4: It's one thing trying to stand what the right note
Speaker 4: could be some other things for other patients to keep
Speaker 4: looking for it.
Speaker 3: Did you listen to other styles of music, like when
Speaker 3: you were a kid, did you listen to the c KLW?
Speaker 4: And probably, But at the time, you know, church was
Speaker 4: still very important in my my and my family's, in
Speaker 4: my community's life, you know, So I knew all the
Speaker 4: church songs, all the words, you know, uh at the
Speaker 4: time my conversation. Then then then all the world changes.
Speaker 4: But I understood the harmony. You know. It was kind
Speaker 4: of complicated, you know, and I never went to the
Speaker 4: rehearsals because I was playing show and the stuff doing.
Speaker 4: You know. So that kind of muty was always in
Speaker 4: my in my family and my community. Uh. No one
Speaker 4: said jazz is the devil's music in myles or uh
Speaker 4: uh uh. When they when they would take the little
Speaker 4: kids to the uh Symphony Hall, Fisher Theater and they
Speaker 4: in the in the Detroit to see the orchestra, they
Speaker 4: encourage this, this is what the orchestra sound like.
Speaker 2: They were.
Speaker 4: They weren't saying that you can't be in there. But
Speaker 4: at the time of twelve or fourteen, you don't see
Speaker 4: anybody who looks like you, m a and they aren't
Speaker 4: planning that seed. They're just showing you an orchestra.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Where you take it from now that's kind of up
Speaker 4: to you. Your background, your interest, your the determination, you know,
Speaker 4: your skill level wherever it is. You know, do you
Speaker 4: wanna go through all this what whatever?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: But no, I don't. I don't think that my career
Speaker 4: now it's that. I never thought it as a uh
Speaker 4: uh Constellation prize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think.
Speaker 4: Of how much those guys missed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, when you go back to Detroit over the years,
Speaker 1: I mean as your career starting is, you're going back
Speaker 1: late fifties, early sixties through the sixties, and you're seeing
Speaker 1: like Motown, for instance, happening in Detroit.
Speaker 4: Was that?
Speaker 1: I mean were you Were you watching that at all
Speaker 1: and interesting at all?
Speaker 2: Not at all at Detroit.
Speaker 4: I wasn't a jazz player, and so when I would
Speaker 4: go back for summer vacations, I would never go to
Speaker 4: the jazz clubs. I had a job by the one
Speaker 4: summer I spent as a progression director. My job is
Speaker 4: go to the parks at a park at seven o'clock.
Speaker 4: At eight o'clock, take out all the gids about the baseball, bat,
Speaker 4: the tub, the gloves, all that stuff, and mine to
Speaker 4: the kids behavior from nine o'clock to three o'clock. When
Speaker 4: that time came up, put stuff away and do it
Speaker 4: again tomorrow. So I kept my health together, I got
Speaker 4: my physical skill together. You know, I was older than
Speaker 4: most of the kids, so that was really the old
Speaker 4: man who's controlling that. The bad Mitton said, you know
Speaker 4: the guy who made us pick up the bases after
Speaker 4: the softball game. That I was okay with that because
Speaker 4: that's what I was. You know, I just want to
Speaker 4: be better than they were.
Speaker 2: Add it you.
Speaker 3: Did, did you bump into James Jamison?
Speaker 4: None of those man, I didn't know any of those people.
Speaker 3: Where was the people you went to high school? Was
Speaker 3: like Alice Coltrane, I didn't know her.
Speaker 4: My got Ira Jackson suophone players started playing after a while.
Speaker 4: Kirk Leitzing was my classmate. He used to do his
Speaker 4: homework homework. Uh, my classical my classmates of cast, they
Speaker 4: were all classical players like I was. And uh some
Speaker 4: of them went on to a major orchestras and conductors,
Speaker 4: the major's orchestras. Uh, some of them. A couple of
Speaker 4: them went to, uh we're in the Washington the DC Symphony.
Speaker 4: You know, a couple of them in the major orchestra
Speaker 4: scattered throughout the world. I was the only one of
Speaker 4: my class who went to jazz to this level wherever
Speaker 4: the level that is. But I kind of lost track
Speaker 4: of those guys and none of none of 'em did
Speaker 4: this for a living m you know.
Speaker 3: And you didn't know Paul Chambers.
Speaker 4: My father knew Hispanically, were both bus drivers. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: I didn't meet Paul in New York officially, but we
Speaker 4: never hung out cause I had a family. He had
Speaker 4: a family. He was trapped with Miles all the time.
Speaker 4: M I came to New York. I was still a
Speaker 4: student of Manhattan for a master's.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Uh, I did two gigs, but I was not where
Speaker 4: he was in the in the spectrum of the jazz community,
Speaker 4: you know. Having met Sam Jones and in Rochester, I
Speaker 4: came to New York and at some point a year
Speaker 4: or so later, Uh, Sam was working at Monk and
Speaker 4: at some point he got sick and he called me
Speaker 4: to c I meet this gig for him. I said, well, Monk,
Speaker 4: he said, yeah, you can do that. So I said okay.
Speaker 4: So I got my base and a cab and went
Speaker 4: in the subway and went down to a place called
Speaker 4: Circle in the Square, which is a block from the
Speaker 4: village gate. Cause this nice small theater, and I met
Speaker 4: mister Monks and mister Monk, Sam Jones is sick, and
Speaker 4: he called me the sub for him. He said, okay,
Speaker 4: do you know my songs? I said, most of them.
Speaker 4: He said, well tonight we'll find out which ones you
Speaker 4: don't know, and he was okay. So we did next
Speaker 4: week in Philadelphia for a week. So we getting this
Speaker 4: kid getting Barons' car as five thirty drive to drive
Speaker 4: to uh the PEPs to show place in Philadelphia, do
Speaker 4: two sets, getting her car and drive back to New
Speaker 4: York cause I had a class in Manhattan at eight
Speaker 4: o'clock in the morning. Did that for a week, but
Speaker 4: they shore one Saturday. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another base Uh A bass player that you seem to
Speaker 1: have an interesting relationship with early on was George da Vivier.
Speaker 4: Yes, I saw George working with you. Did you go hambling?
Speaker 4: And and uh uh I didn't know the drummer, but
Speaker 4: the singer was uh Lena Horne.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And George had had uh yell lieutenant sunglasses. Not only
Speaker 4: did he play it great, he looked different a and uh.
Speaker 4: Ultimately we became really good friends, I mean really close friends. Uh.
Speaker 4: When he got sick, I was by his side, you know.
Speaker 4: But he had a club called the Bass Fiddle up
Speaker 4: on Saint Nicholas in about a hundred and thirty fourth Street,
Speaker 4: and I would go back to the gigs to talk
Speaker 4: with him from my music, and he would had a
Speaker 4: juke box. They had all the jazz records on it.
Speaker 4: He would play one. He said, Oh, young fella, how'd
Speaker 4: you do that? I said, I said, Uh. MR said no, no, no, George,
Speaker 4: Uh George, I just hear what I do and try
Speaker 4: to find out how to make it work tomorrow night.
Speaker 4: He love that kind of stuff. I was with him
Speaker 4: on his bad days and his health days, you know.
Speaker 4: And and uh uh. One of his last earthly beings
Speaker 4: was a mona. Hinton and Milk were very great friends
Speaker 4: of his. And somehow he had gotten really sick of
Speaker 4: his home uptown and he couldn't get a cab t
Speaker 4: to couldn't get anybody to come pick him up and
Speaker 4: take him to the hospital. So i'mnna call me at home. Said,
Speaker 4: can you come to where we are uptown, to George's house,
Speaker 4: the apartmentere he was, and take George to the hospital
Speaker 4: cause we can't get a cab. M She said absolutely.
Speaker 4: So I got my son in the car, put the
Speaker 4: back seat down the little Volval, we drove uptown to
Speaker 4: George's house and ultimately they found a cab driver who
Speaker 4: will take him to the hospital and he was last.
Speaker 4: He didn't survive much past that time, you know. Uh,
Speaker 4: but yeah he was. He was uh a person whose
Speaker 4: imagery of the base was really really impactful. This is
Speaker 4: what the base can do in the group. A and uh,
Speaker 4: we didn't have a social connection in terms of going
Speaker 4: going by south for Dannel or come to my hout.
Speaker 4: And it was always com to the base. H how
Speaker 4: the base does in the groups. The white groups are
Speaker 4: called him. They needed him there cause he was the
Speaker 4: best at what there was. He had what they needed.
Speaker 4: There's a a very important thing to see it take place,
Speaker 4: given being told that the orchestra are not ready to
Speaker 4: hire colored people yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm un in them in New York.
Speaker 4: Man, with all these great players come to New York,
Speaker 4: I see this guy playing in the same base I'm
Speaker 4: kind of playing. And he gets these gigs cause the
Speaker 4: white guys know, they didn't need him in the orchestra
Speaker 4: and the and the S and the and their group.
Speaker 4: That's quite a.
Speaker 2: That kind of well white jazz groups ja.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but the white guys were badly the
Speaker 4: Benny Goodman the kind of cats you know though, that
Speaker 4: that spectrum of Yeah, the music scene, the big time guys. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they call George to call Milt cause they knew they
Speaker 4: were bring something into their band that nobody else give 'em.
Speaker 3: Yeah, left an impression. I got that.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with the rest of our conversation
Speaker 1: with Ron Carter after this last break, We're back with
Speaker 1: the rest of our conversation with Ron Carter.
Speaker 3: For listeners who don't really know when you when you
Speaker 3: talk about the role of the base in a in
Speaker 3: a band, I don't. I don't know that the people
Speaker 3: really understand everything that that a base can do besides
Speaker 3: just hold down low end or something like that.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I kind of don't mind that. I mean,
Speaker 4: I go to concert occasionally classic concerts, and I've gone
Speaker 4: to the offense I can't and I don't see the
Speaker 4: audience specifically one what kind of basse player, what kind
Speaker 4: of based does the bass player I have? And what
Speaker 4: kind of strengths is he using? And what kind of
Speaker 4: fingering does he have? I don't see them doing that.
Speaker 4: You know, only the he has audience is forced to
Speaker 4: be that kind of research person for the person for
Speaker 4: his don't you need to know what I do? Just
Speaker 4: can you like the.
Speaker 3: Results of it? That's what I'm concerned with.
Speaker 4: Having said that, though, you can't just accept that as
Speaker 4: being the way it is. And I try to respond
Speaker 4: to them in an adult fashion, not not sandbox styles.
Speaker 4: I try to explain to them that just okay, I'll
Speaker 4: tell you.
Speaker 2: What you do.
Speaker 4: You person, watch the next football game, you two. You know,
Speaker 4: there's a guy who's clearly the quarterback. What he's doing,
Speaker 4: he's got if it's in his ear, he's got ear
Speaker 4: ear piece. That's someone upstairs, and and the thing and
Speaker 4: the coach. I tell him what I played the call?
Speaker 4: Uh yeah, and he's doing, has this honest sleeve he has.
Speaker 4: He has the the details here some kind of way,
Speaker 4: and he's called shots wherever he does. Everybody must buy
Speaker 4: that cause he just got the word from heaven or
Speaker 4: that this is what it is. Okay, he got quint
Speaker 4: out on the stage, the main net to cost the tune.
Speaker 4: And there's no one doing like this but this guy
Speaker 4: in his head. Imagine that. I try to him to
Speaker 4: see that kind of angle.
Speaker 2: You have all the power.
Speaker 4: Indeed, and they understand that they're rating four guys buying
Speaker 4: largely understand that some of them don't. That's okay.
Speaker 3: What happens when you start going in a certain direction
Speaker 3: and you feel the other players aren't there.
Speaker 4: I don't want to go do that. Yeah, I accept that.
Speaker 4: Maybe they want me to two p all night. I'll
Speaker 4: do it. Footnote to this answer. I was doing that
Speaker 4: date with a singer at some point, and the process
Speaker 4: was they would have an arranger coming from California, make
Speaker 4: some sketches for the arrangement, and the singer would come
Speaker 4: in and rhythm sec make this. They'd make this track
Speaker 4: with him singing, and the arrange would take the tracks
Speaker 4: back out to California and filling in with the orchestra
Speaker 4: the stuff. You know, well, I'll joined this part on
Speaker 4: this specific date. And uh, the rhythm section I was
Speaker 4: with was a really a bunch of good guys in
Speaker 4: New York. That's always the case. And we communally had
Speaker 4: decided that these changes were kind of stiff and we
Speaker 4: didn't wanna do that for six hours.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Our job was kind of making hip for us, cause
Speaker 4: we got to play this stuff.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: We'd do four or five tunes in the day, just
Speaker 4: like two days for my day and wet Tuesday, you know.
Speaker 4: So the second day we'd come in and and the
Speaker 4: range cast me over. Said hey, hey, do you have
Speaker 4: a seat, And I said, I'm feeling pretty good. You know,
Speaker 4: now much talk? He said, you know? Uh, I like
Speaker 4: where you play, that's why you're here. But I like
Speaker 4: my baselines on our route. I said, well, well, so
Speaker 4: so I'm gonna gon do those songs again. Say I'll
Speaker 4: tell you one. I'll play your ship until you can't
Speaker 4: stand it, and then you tell me I'm free. So
Speaker 4: we did two, a few songs, he said free, and
Speaker 4: we became dear friends, I mean really dear friends. Yeah,
Speaker 4: to this day, nothing to tell you. But my point
Speaker 4: was I played what they want, and I have to
Speaker 4: trust that their judgment, that maybe I have a better
Speaker 4: idea to do it than they have.
Speaker 1: What about the times you're not so sure? I read
Speaker 1: or heard or read somewhere I can't remember now where
Speaker 1: I saw this or read it. Where you said the
Speaker 1: first time you played with Herbie that he was playing chords,
Speaker 1: you weren't quite sure what they were, and so then
Speaker 1: you weren't quite sure what you should be doing exactly
Speaker 1: just early on.
Speaker 4: Uh, I'm not sure that's quite an exact translation. I
Speaker 4: think what I might have kind of conveyed to the
Speaker 4: question or questionnaire was I know what he's doing, but
Speaker 4: I couldn't figure out the best note to make that work.
Speaker 4: And uh, I didn't understand that he trusted me that
Speaker 4: much that he would go with my way because he
Speaker 4: didn't know where I was going other than that it
Speaker 4: wasn't what he his way was. And at some point,
Speaker 4: without discussion the rehearsal, we decided it was decided that
Speaker 4: my way wasn't a bad way, and then it could
Speaker 4: work for everybody.
Speaker 3: So there was some conversation and dialogue in GM.
Speaker 4: But not not what people would think, you know. We
Speaker 4: didn't have sound with a blackboard and listened to ultimate
Speaker 4: texts and figured out what now that we.
Speaker 2: Had a life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when the gig was over, Man Herbert just got married.
Speaker 4: It got a big record, very big record. Tony was
Speaker 4: living the stair at someone at Miles's house. I had
Speaker 4: this new family. I've gone home out doing other stuff
Speaker 4: other than Miles's band. There wasn't that kind of necessary
Speaker 4: additional time to feel that the band could do something
Speaker 4: that's really great, something really nice. Ultimately, it was a
Speaker 4: little past night, yes, but we didn't understand. I didn't
Speaker 4: understand the ramifications of what we were doing as we speak,
Speaker 4: you know, But again, our relationship was based on being
Speaker 4: wild for other guys night in.
Speaker 2: And man out.
Speaker 1: There's There was a compilation of put out kind of
Speaker 1: recently handful of years ago, made five years ago called
Speaker 1: Bootleg five. It was a Miles Davis re release and
Speaker 1: as a bunch of session as a bunch of recordings
Speaker 1: of you guys talking in between in the.
Speaker 2: Studio and.
Speaker 1: Uh, it's it's you can tell listening to it that
Speaker 1: you guys weren't one hundred aware of what you were
Speaker 1: contributing to the world of music because it was all
Speaker 1: very casual, you know.
Speaker 4: Well, I think what I hope that people would understand
Speaker 4: from that particular set of records discs is that while
Speaker 4: Miles was the band of leader, he was not leading
Speaker 4: the band. He took information from everybody. He said, what
Speaker 4: about this, or don't do that? Try to He was
Speaker 4: open to any suggestions. We thought they would make not
Speaker 4: just the music different, but absolve him from the responsibility
Speaker 4: of making everything happen, you know, not that he couldn't,
Speaker 4: not that he had did, but with this select bunch
Speaker 4: of four other guys, they relieved him of that sole
Speaker 4: responsibility of being not just the band leader, but leading
Speaker 4: the band.
Speaker 2: It's like a good basketball team.
Speaker 4: The band was leading him and he understood that all
Speaker 4: you got to do is man is be able to
Speaker 4: hit a set shot and take you stand over there,
Speaker 4: it's coming your way.
Speaker 1: And t o too here. And it seemed like TiO Maceo, yeah,
Speaker 1: would produce it. Like you know, he was involved quite
Speaker 1: a bit too.
Speaker 4: He was kind of having kind of kind of control
Speaker 4: on some of the stuff and and and uh uh
Speaker 4: uh budget. You know, it was time they had. He
Speaker 4: wanted to make sure that everyone got back on time
Speaker 4: from going out to get the drink or going out
Speaker 4: to scent get lunch. Uh. He was kind of the
Speaker 4: that the uh, the guy with the card that was
Speaker 4: into the time machine you call that thing pushed the car. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and he was the guy who organized the dates, book
Speaker 4: the studio, time was there for the mixing. He did
Speaker 4: all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: He's a good composer. You know. I think we played
Speaker 4: a good sex one at one time, and that was
Speaker 4: on one of this projects.
Speaker 2: I had fun. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Uh seeing how he was the leader for a change
Speaker 4: because he wasn't no leader with milesers Man. He was.
Speaker 4: He was the guy who was part of the process.
Speaker 4: Now he's the guy who's dictating the tatoon, the temple,
Speaker 4: the key, all that stuff. It's interesting to see him
Speaker 4: no longer be the guy hiding behind the curtain of
Speaker 4: the or the glass. Now he's on the other side,
Speaker 4: you know. And he understood a whole another level of
Speaker 4: it that takes something that happened. I appreciated that.
Speaker 3: ESP was produced by Irving Townsend, right what did they did?
Speaker 3: My nmsel a falling out.
Speaker 4: With I have no idea. I never knew little details,
Speaker 4: and I didn't really care to know them, you know,
Speaker 4: and only not that it isn't I didn't care. I
Speaker 4: was more concerned with I think guys, can the man
Speaker 4: hear where I'm going sooner? H And then can I
Speaker 4: remember a nice thing I did on the first set?
Speaker 4: To do it for the third set tomorrow night and
Speaker 4: see how many guys pick up on it? And to
Speaker 4: that end, I have a book come out of the
Speaker 4: public company called uh Tratography, and this book is written
Speaker 4: out scores. What is what we have done is transcribe
Speaker 4: five different performances of the same song, the same band
Speaker 4: perfect laboratory, so cool, and and it transcribes my basic
Speaker 4: line for two and a half courses. How it changes
Speaker 4: for the side performances, but how the band as still
Speaker 4: what I'm playing, and that's what we did live every
Speaker 4: night man.
Speaker 1: Because it's not just a static baseline, No, it's.
Speaker 4: Every night it's something new based on this process, based
Speaker 4: on this germ. Now every night you water it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: how how.
Speaker 3: Do you clear your mind of so that you're not
Speaker 3: repeating what you did the night before, but moving it forward.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you something happened to me recently. I played
Speaker 3: a gig in Detroit a couple of weeks ago, and
Speaker 3: it was good to see all these folks. People I
Speaker 3: went to elementary school came and they were all there
Speaker 3: before the show, and then we went out to play,
Speaker 3: and I realized, I'm completely I'm prepared to play the show.
Speaker 3: And it took me fifteen minutes to get in a
Speaker 3: proper headspace to just be inventive and to let go.
Speaker 3: I'm curious about the balance of again, like following that
Speaker 3: seed you're talking about planting, but also being spontaneous.
Speaker 4: One of the things that I try to do down
Speaker 4: is kind of have a line between them and me
Speaker 4: and just me. You know. You know we've had times
Speaker 4: they've been stuff's going on right now it's difficult to
Speaker 4: turn off the news, yeah and go to work because
Speaker 4: the news is so so in motion consuming, man, you know.
Speaker 4: And I say that because I feel like I'm getting
Speaker 4: like this right now, just thinking about trouble, the trouble,
Speaker 4: the difficult times we're in, and I know I got
Speaker 4: to go play a threell next week with a coin
Speaker 4: I've got to put. This film is a signed long
Speaker 4: enough to do what immine hopes I can do for
Speaker 4: the band and my devices. Guys, it changes from how
Speaker 4: swept up I allow me to get in this over here.
Speaker 4: You know, there have been times when this part has
Speaker 4: been so emotional for me that it bleeds over into
Speaker 4: the first set of who I'm working with. Most of
Speaker 4: the groups work with can't understand that issue because they
Speaker 4: have it also, you know, and they would like to
Speaker 4: think that the band over here, they're strong enough in
Speaker 4: their personal beliefs or they're saying to kind of let
Speaker 4: this not be so important to their performance here, but
Speaker 4: still color it because it's part of the emotional life
Speaker 4: they're living. You know, I did a record call when
Speaker 4: skys are Gray come my first blat and jazz record
Speaker 4: that that really is nice record. Harvey and Mason, Steve Crouhan,
Speaker 4: Steven Scott on a Monday, the Sunday before I had
Speaker 4: done a memorial for my late wife, and these guys
Speaker 4: understood what I was literally I was coming from. And
Speaker 4: to say they had my back is kind of crude, crude,
Speaker 4: And it wasn't that they had not back. They just
Speaker 4: had my sensitivitiy or tuned up so high that you
Speaker 4: know that they trusted my choice. If they would want
Speaker 4: to argue, they had said, no, it's not the right time. Yeah, God,
Speaker 4: trust this guy because he's hearing some stuff over here.
Speaker 4: They help me maintain a separation of this event and
Speaker 4: this performance. Your friends out there, they don't understand how
Speaker 4: they have impacted. Your choice is over here. Only you
Speaker 4: understand that you plural have to understand that they don't
Speaker 4: know the difference. They don't know you have choices they
Speaker 4: and there's no year there m They will accept by
Speaker 4: and large what you give them because they expect you
Speaker 4: to give them a good menu. Your job is to
Speaker 4: pick the menu and what things you wanna really serve
Speaker 4: them that you're really comfortable with, given their tastes are
Speaker 4: not sophisticated. I mean that can give you y. You
Speaker 4: don't get them a test that's over there that you
Speaker 4: me do this. I that's no. You wanna have them
Speaker 4: lead this gig to me to hurt our friend Don
Speaker 4: that hadn't hurt in a very long time. He sounded wonderful.
Speaker 4: Your job is given them right things from this menu.
Speaker 4: So you gotta turn this off, turn this down h
Speaker 4: long enough to be able to fulfill your responsibility to them. Also,
Speaker 4: these guys, M it is not that it is not
Speaker 4: an easy thing to do, you know, and and know
Speaker 4: that we're confronted with these two emotions daily. M. It's
Speaker 4: something that we all quietly fight. We all quietly, uh
Speaker 4: try to find a balance. Now somehow we don't. We
Speaker 4: musicians don't really discuss this kind of process that we
Speaker 4: use because we have an image of ourselves being kind
Speaker 4: of above the fray. You know, you feel that you
Speaker 4: feel down, Let's play the blues whatever things. We're kind
Speaker 4: of kind of given, uh more credit than is due
Speaker 4: of maybe a pull over inst about these doul drums,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean we love the imagery of being
Speaker 4: a guy who does this, you know, and the fact
Speaker 4: that the band is doing this because they're following your lead.
Speaker 4: You've got to accept that responsibility and take care of it.
Speaker 3: Man, do give rituals.
Speaker 4: I try to have quiet before I go to work.
Speaker 4: My tech guy didn't understand that.
Speaker 3: At first.
Speaker 4: We were driving. He picks me up, you know, drive
Speaker 4: turn the music. I'm not turning music off, No, no, no,
Speaker 4: I just need to clear my head from these things
Speaker 4: that are in a way.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I don't listen to music from come nowhere. I drive
Speaker 4: to my car, turn the music off like a sponge man.
Speaker 2: We all are.
Speaker 4: Everything affects us. I try to limit those affecting events
Speaker 4: as much as I can to to it. No music
Speaker 4: in the car, don't talk to me. Talk to me
Speaker 4: after the set because I'm still here and what I'm
Speaker 4: trying to do for this next hour and a half.
Speaker 4: And then make some strange looks occasionally, and then some
Speaker 4: people get offended, and I'm sorry that they feel that way,
Speaker 4: but as much better to feel that way. And now
Speaker 4: didn't feel that way this way because I didn't do
Speaker 4: my job.
Speaker 1: You do you find by taking that much time to
Speaker 1: sort of before before you go to work, to clear
Speaker 1: your head and kind of adjust your intent, so to speak.
Speaker 1: But does that create any anxiety as well?
Speaker 4: Like is it I'm there because I belong there? Anything
Speaker 4: in any anxiety may have maybe that someone touched the
Speaker 4: baseball office out there, someone food with the knobs, you know,
Speaker 4: physical things that I can't control and I accept, you know, Uh,
Speaker 4: well it cracks me up. Man. When we were at
Speaker 4: the club called Sweet Basil, uh seventh Avenues down and downtown,
Speaker 4: the way we were set up, the audience had to
Speaker 4: walk by the bandstand to get to the restroom, and
Speaker 4: invariably on the animation someone wo walked by going to
Speaker 4: the bathroom and hit the cymbals or do you like
Speaker 4: to hold the piano? They had to see what they
Speaker 4: had to They had to had to be a part
Speaker 4: of the thing, man, you know, and uh yeah, you're
Speaker 4: not a part of this. You're a part of this
Speaker 4: part of the equation. Yeah, yeah, you get the guy
Speaker 4: draws the line, you know.
Speaker 3: When you you mentioned like physical distractions, do you ever
Speaker 3: find you you've been playing the same base for decades, right,
Speaker 3: sixty years? Does it feel different like another instrument some nights? Yes,
Speaker 3: what is that? Well, you know, the base is a box.
Speaker 4: It's a box, a wooden box that's held together, that's
Speaker 4: separated by a stick. It's called sound most about that
Speaker 4: sound post. It would do like this just because the
Speaker 4: pressure of the strings. It's also the fact that the
Speaker 4: weather it affects the basis expanding contraction a small, small degree.
Speaker 4: But you feel in the strains got off someome. You
Speaker 4: get tighter, you know, the certain gigs that I don't do.
Speaker 4: Because the bases land for an hour between sets and
Speaker 4: a window and the windows kind of cold air, it's
Speaker 4: gonna pick up the base. The base is literally freezing.
Speaker 4: And now that turn the heat on. Now the base
Speaker 4: which whitch got which got this way because there's been
Speaker 4: cold there? And that goes like this and my hands,
Speaker 4: my hands no difference right away, said oh man, I
Speaker 4: got to play harder because the strings are so tight.
Speaker 4: Now because of this, you know, my body's warm. The
Speaker 4: lights are on. All these factors change the instruments physical
Speaker 4: response because it's going like this ever so slightly. And
Speaker 4: as they do this, the strings go higher as well.
Speaker 4: You know they they stand there, but the strings are
Speaker 4: moving just because this activity is going on. You know,
Speaker 4: and it's always you know all it's just cracked me up, man,
Speaker 4: and said, we go offrom the parking lot to the bandstand,
Speaker 4: there have no chance to get warmed up, so to speak.
Speaker 4: The bass didn't been walked into four blocks and in
Speaker 4: the rain going to the gig, you know, going to
Speaker 4: literally to the bandstand, you know, and uh, but that's
Speaker 4: kind of the physical thing real we're we were looking
Speaker 4: in every night, and I think the most we can
Speaker 4: do is to be aware of there certain things we
Speaker 4: can't control. We've got to be aware of that it's happening.
Speaker 4: Though we can't say I didn't know what that. I
Speaker 4: don't know what happened. How can you not know? Man?
Speaker 4: You just walk four blocks in the rain, there was snow,
Speaker 4: the basis cold, the heat's on on the badstand. How
Speaker 4: could you not know that's going to affect this box
Speaker 4: some kind of way. I think if they understood that,
Speaker 4: they will have a less a little lower level of frustration,
Speaker 4: and they would play it different because they understand they
Speaker 4: got it. They warmed up, as the bass does physically
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 3: When you play in a theater, and especially with modern
Speaker 3: sound systems, where they got the subwolfers projecting out the
Speaker 3: thing and it comes bouncing back at you, and the
Speaker 3: drums come bouncing back at your thirty milliseconds later. How
Speaker 3: do you deal with that?
Speaker 4: Well, I try to have the band not rely on
Speaker 4: that relies so singly on the they all those things,
Speaker 4: the monitors. Yeah, yeah, I want them to guy and
Speaker 4: rely us. Must they can on what they hear immediately.
Speaker 4: If I can get them to trust the band's sound
Speaker 4: without this other stuff, this delay of the beat doesn't
Speaker 4: take them so far out, so to speak. You know,
Speaker 4: when you have your own monitors, guys, I think each
Speaker 4: guy once says loud like it's just them more hard practice, piano,
Speaker 4: soft pedal that you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's shift up from one said. You mentioned Tayo Macero.
Speaker 3: You've worked with all the great producers, the legendary producers.
Speaker 3: You Creed Taylor, you worked with Bob Field, Alfred Lyon.
Speaker 3: I'm wondering, you know, from a Blue Note perspect to
Speaker 3: certainly what made Alfred's records different. You happen to be
Speaker 3: on the best records that I think are in our catalog,
Speaker 3: from Speaking No Evil and Maiden Voyage and stuff with
Speaker 3: Bobby Hutcherson, Real McCoy, all all the things she did
Speaker 3: with McCoy. The players changed, but you're on all of
Speaker 3: the best records. I think that's a strong testimony as
Speaker 3: a like working with Alfred as opposed to other producers.
Speaker 4: Alfred understood just a feeling, he would say, it's got
Speaker 4: to say, it's got to say. He understood that emotion.
Speaker 4: He didn't know anything else, by anything else. He didn't
Speaker 4: know notes. He couldn't really know that he hit him
Speaker 4: in the head on the subway, but he knew that
Speaker 4: this thing didn't have the element he recognized. And the
Speaker 4: band who understood how little Alfred knew about music. He
Speaker 4: understood this primals, that God work, this this primal instinct
Speaker 4: of swing. And when he said that, the band just
Speaker 4: stopped in their heads, detegrating this guy and understood that
Speaker 4: he was telling them that this stuff is not happening
Speaker 4: because he can't feel it, and that's all he has
Speaker 4: to tell him. And that was important to the bands.
Speaker 4: All of those guys, man, all of them will say,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, okay. The fact that he said that he
Speaker 4: understood his limitations were telling them that wherever they were
Speaker 4: it was the wrong place for this.
Speaker 3: Because he he wasn't intrusive, then.
Speaker 4: Helps him. He made sure we had lunch before, He
Speaker 4: made sure that that's what the physical details and maybe
Speaker 4: maybe maybe rehearsal sometimes there was none, you know.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: His his his ability to put together the best set
Speaker 4: of guys was another. It was a whole different kind
Speaker 4: of skill that most producers don't have. Forever reason, you know,
Speaker 4: my favorite player, but does he sound good with this guy?
Speaker 4: Or who's gonna pull this state together? Who can we
Speaker 4: trust to be the lynch pin? You know, who's gonna
Speaker 4: those He had that sense of combinations that a lot
Speaker 4: of producers don't happen to have. For another set of reasons.
Speaker 3: M you know it's a casting director. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a big skill. Yeah who w wh Which producers
Speaker 3: do you think? What with the the best th th
Speaker 3: that she worked.
Speaker 4: Was fit almost too many of the name cause y
Speaker 4: you never know who they are until it's all over.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And and unless I hear the the to foind a product,
Speaker 4: I I don't have that chance to track down most
Speaker 4: of those sayings.
Speaker 3: So I do.
Speaker 4: I don't know who did their job better than somebody
Speaker 4: else did. That's the other that's the courtion right now. Yeah, yeah, uh,
Speaker 4: I just think that that they would call me for
Speaker 4: their projects. They thought I could be a guy who
Speaker 4: could help them do something that they thought they wanted. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and I admire that skill. I admire them. Haven't heard
Speaker 4: enough music during that kind of choice.
Speaker 1: Duke Pearson was another person who was important at Blue
Speaker 1: Note and was a player, but also.
Speaker 4: He also play trumpet.
Speaker 2: Man played, Yeah, great player, but also produced records. Yea,
Speaker 2: how was he as a.
Speaker 4: He he's a player who knew how to produce, not
Speaker 4: the producer who played a little bit. That's not a
Speaker 4: bit different. Yeah, and he played good too. By the way,
Speaker 4: my footnote of that story is that Oran was trying
Speaker 4: to get him to make he wanted to make one
Speaker 4: more record. He moved on to Atlanta and all that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff, and I was working in California, and
Speaker 4: I ended up in Berkeley, which is where the Fantasy
Speaker 4: Studio was a nice studio man and the good engineered
Speaker 4: Jim Starn And and somehow Duke was ailing. But I
Speaker 4: didn't understand that, and I think Orn didn't understand that either,
Speaker 4: because no one really said why he was ailing, but
Speaker 4: what it was. And then they come up to much later.
Speaker 4: And anyway, Duke finally got got some kind we got
Speaker 4: to California for this recording session with me and him.
Speaker 4: You know, cause Duke has did a lot of duels
Speaker 4: in New York when he was in New York and
Speaker 4: Bradley's the the Lions here whatever they were, he kind
Speaker 4: of had them hire me and him to do a
Speaker 4: duel thing. Bradley's uh nick a blocker. I Anyway, when
Speaker 4: Duke finally got out to the to California to make
Speaker 4: this record, we were I was working at night with
Speaker 4: who maybe my band, but I was at free during
Speaker 4: the day. So we spent two or three days all
Speaker 4: day hoping Duke would feel better enough to complete the
Speaker 4: tune or something. You know. Uh, I'm not sure it
Speaker 4: had on our efforts. You know, ultimately he passed away
Speaker 4: from multiple scrosses who understood, but no one nailed that
Speaker 4: as the cause of him having the physical dift of
Speaker 4: the physical difficulties he was experiencing. And maybe I'm just
Speaker 4: repeating the room I heard. I'm not sure, but ultimately
Speaker 4: he couldn't finish cause he was in so much discomfort.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 4: Uh, but what what a you know, even the names
Speaker 4: of the people who I knew who are who are
Speaker 4: no longer. I call him left the concert and I
Speaker 4: look around, man, and and I'm the when the last
Speaker 4: guy's standing, and it's just I just get chills thinking
Speaker 4: that I can't count on those guys to be there
Speaker 4: wherever there is, you know, I can't count on those
Speaker 4: guys to call him up and say every birthday, you know,
Speaker 4: or I can't count those guys say now you stop that,
Speaker 4: get out of here. Come on, as I've been known
Speaker 4: to say, the guys who are getting in my nerve,
Speaker 4: you know, my last nerve. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 4: I miss those guys.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 4: I'm some guys saying, man, how did you do that?
Speaker 4: And I can't hear that from those guys, a lot
Speaker 4: of them, so subject it calls me to sit back
Speaker 4: and reflect on uh lonjevity.
Speaker 1: Do you do you do you call a lot of
Speaker 1: your old friends that are still around Sonny Rollins or
Speaker 1: Herbie Hancock.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, I just feel the spirits. Okay, I call
Speaker 4: those guys, you know, I talk. I call that called
Speaker 4: h A couple of guys doing their birthday and I
Speaker 4: just have your birthday for him, you know, And it
Speaker 4: tracks him up that I was stopped. Of course I
Speaker 4: was stopping my day.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 4: He's not that important in my life. Come on, it is,
Speaker 4: that'stuff whatever it is, you know.
Speaker 3: G let's talk about Wayne for a second. Yeah, one
Speaker 3: of the kind. Yeah, how do you think about him?
Speaker 3: How do you think about playing with him?
Speaker 4: And when I first met Wayne, he was playing with
Speaker 4: manon Fergus's band and uh his friends second tend I guess,
Speaker 4: I don't know, doing them doing occasional arrangements, you know. Uh,
Speaker 4: that's my first meeting with him. And also later I
Speaker 4: met his brother Alan, who played a little bit trumpet,
Speaker 4: you know, when they won the Avant guarde guys at
Speaker 4: the time when not travel with the psop or Miles
Speaker 4: is bad. My My my job was to do two things.
Speaker 4: Not let Wayne buy too many books and uh kind
Speaker 4: of translated what he said to the interviewer, you know
Speaker 4: an and uh Wayne left at both of those jobs.
Speaker 4: You know, He's gonna buy his books and he's gonna
Speaker 4: say what he's gonna say, you know, and he's gonna
Speaker 4: also write what he could write. And it's just a
Speaker 4: g a great writer man. Yeah, he he I think
Speaker 4: he understood, n not that the guys didn't. He understood
Speaker 4: that the base sound was important, not specifically the note choice,
Speaker 4: but of course that's part of it. M that's a B,
Speaker 4: that's a not specifically to rhythm or not specifically maintain
Speaker 4: the forum. He thought for him, the sound of the
Speaker 4: base was so important that they made the band work
Speaker 4: for him, if for another reason because of that, the
Speaker 4: others were important to him. He wrote, stuffs off them.
Speaker 4: They're kind of changes, different kind of form, different temple.
Speaker 4: Of course they were important to him, but for him
Speaker 4: that song was critical to his being in the band.
Speaker 2: And critical to his compositions.
Speaker 4: And t Wayne to Wayne, two more questions and I'm
Speaker 4: getting emotional hairs and that's kind.
Speaker 3: Of okay, let's talk Let's talk about let's talk about
Speaker 3: Ron Curter. Universe is one of the most remarkable things.
Speaker 4: Amazing. Yeah you said that too, Yeah, ask me how
Speaker 4: they did it all. I can tell you, man that
Speaker 4: people came by two nights ago with found at seventy
Speaker 4: five more records to the universe. Yeah, I'm just stunned.
Speaker 4: And this guy that's got that kind of like, guys,
Speaker 4: who's you see them? The pizza shop just being guys.
Speaker 4: But to be able to conceive of that and and
Speaker 4: and put that in the form that it can be
Speaker 4: added to as you discover them just mind boggling.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: People should check it out. It's it's a Ron Carter
Speaker 3: universe if you if you search Ron Carter Universe dot com. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then the club I spelled the form are in
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's just stunning, man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean every I was going to say
Speaker 3: it would be great if everybody could do it, but
Speaker 3: everybody can't do it because you've played on so many records.
Speaker 3: No one's got that kind of repertoire or the discography
Speaker 3: where but I could spend hours on it.
Speaker 4: And the more you find, the more other combinations you find,
Speaker 4: the personalities and what record this is on the dates
Speaker 4: and you get to a ten second on YouTube. But
Speaker 4: it it just Yeah. Fortunately, you know, when I talk
Speaker 4: to guys, I'm standing up otherwise so far off my
Speaker 4: head sitting down. Let's say you guys be quiet.
Speaker 3: And l le let's also talk about all the all
Speaker 3: the books you write. Y, you're a great educator, mentor figure.
Speaker 4: Well, Y, you know, I I think my age group
Speaker 4: has responsibility, so that the next generation doesn't realize that
Speaker 4: these people before them really impacted what they're trying to
Speaker 4: do now, you know, And and I think, what what
Speaker 4: what I've tried to do with my books, especially to
Speaker 4: the bass players, gave them my head start on what
Speaker 4: it takes, what tools it takes to do what they
Speaker 4: think they hear with help from my processes and my books. Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, don I I've always felt that unless the
Speaker 4: bass player gets in the bands, the band really can't
Speaker 4: cover a lot of different territory, because this is the
Speaker 4: guy who does everything, you know. And I explain to
Speaker 4: them my name's gets stunned, you know, I say, this
Speaker 4: is the only guy in the band who plays every note.
Speaker 4: He plays every beat, He pays every form, he plays
Speaker 4: every groove, wherever it is, he plays every presence and
Speaker 4: his his his, this his bareness for every beat of
Speaker 4: every song. Forever woe. Players pay three courses and they
Speaker 4: sit down and go to the bar beyond. Players clean
Speaker 4: their fingernails during the base so long. Trummer's always doing
Speaker 4: this fix or something. This is the only guy who
Speaker 4: does every note, and unless he improves, he can't help
Speaker 4: them grow. And most most badly, most members don't really
Speaker 4: know how to help him, and they don't know how
Speaker 4: to tell him what he needs to make him more
Speaker 4: efficient with them. And it's not just louder man. You
Speaker 4: know what about the note choice? How are you gonna
Speaker 4: mark the form for us? How you gonna get us
Speaker 4: in tune? You know? And I tell these guys said
Speaker 4: that whenever A Miles will be at the stage, he'd
Speaker 4: come back back in. He had two notes, he said,
Speaker 4: run sharper flat, say too high man, cause the hard
Speaker 4: got cold. All this you know deal, you know you
Speaker 4: check check check me out because he trusted my sense
Speaker 4: of this is a pitch man. I'm telling uh Russell
Speaker 4: sharp man, let's go man, cause it hurts my hand.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to find out exactly what the my base
Speaker 4: wants me to play the note in the same place,
Speaker 4: night in the night out. These guys don't allow it
Speaker 4: to happen. They're playing sharper flat as as they will fine,
Speaker 4: you know. So I think these are something on the
Speaker 4: base player's responsibilities. Once he understands what they are, the
Speaker 4: driver is to go somewhere someone who can help him
Speaker 4: sharpen these skills that he needs.
Speaker 1: To have.
Speaker 4: To not just be a member of the band, to be,
Speaker 4: but to be an integral part of the band, not
Speaker 4: just sin I'm in the band, in the band, yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, the QB.
Speaker 4: Yeah on my playlist right here, man, there's the changes.
Speaker 4: Wait guys, sorry, yeah, good one more.
Speaker 2: One more yeah. Well. Two studios.
Speaker 1: There's many great studios, but there's two studios where some
Speaker 1: of my favorite records have been made. One was Van
Speaker 1: Gelder's Place in New Jersey and the other's Columbia thirtieth
Speaker 1: Street Studio. And I've always been fascinated by Columbia thirty
Speaker 1: Street because I can't go to it.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, that's not fores ye. But one of my
Speaker 4: favorite studios were Clinton.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 4: And then right now it's a it's a flat flat
Speaker 4: the surface. There's nothing there at all. Man, there's the
Speaker 4: fence around it. It's gone. I've been gone about ten years.
Speaker 2: Where is it?
Speaker 4: Forty sixth Street and tenth Avenue. Right across the street
Speaker 4: was a pottery shop called Muddy Fingers, and down the
Speaker 4: street was the Old Folks Home. And there's two great
Speaker 4: great rooms. And I made some wonderful sounding record that's
Speaker 4: just see. The base was in charge that day.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And when you get to record right, you own that sucker, man.
Speaker 4: I have a record called All Along, That's what it is.
Speaker 4: It's all alone, just me and the base sounded great
Speaker 4: that day and Rudy captured the greatness of the sound
Speaker 4: of the base. So all my stereo guys wanted to
Speaker 4: check their guy out this record, just to tell you
Speaker 4: how low it can sound good. It's just a wonderful
Speaker 4: sounding disc. And Columbia had that came down the sound
Speaker 4: weft the hall another one of my outdates with Miles.
Speaker 4: Like Gil Evans, it was a great sounding room, just
Speaker 4: because the air then then have a debase from vibrating
Speaker 4: to it's optimum.
Speaker 2: But thirty Street wasn't necessarily available to everyone. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: many good records there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It really really set the standard.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 4: Fortunately they have able them been able to get the
Speaker 4: historical landmarks so that they can't tear it down and
Speaker 4: put a co op or a mom and pop store there.
Speaker 2: They did get the historical land Yeah, they did get that.
Speaker 4: A lot of work, a lot of paperwork, but they
Speaker 4: had to wherewithal and and and never give up up
Speaker 4: to them this to get the sucker done. And I
Speaker 4: applaud them every hour because Rudy's Rudy's monument. It's necessary
Speaker 4: to still be standing. It's not this, it's this. Can
Speaker 4: you imagine these guys just taking the one master tape
Speaker 4: and for the raise cutting it to edit distant. What
Speaker 4: kind of skill is that man? He didn't miss He
Speaker 4: nails an East one man. I'm telling you, yeah, incredible.
Speaker 4: Here's a really good Wherever you are, Ludy, I take
Speaker 4: my hat off to you.
Speaker 2: Earned it many Thanks so much for doing this, mister Carter.
Speaker 4: Thank you, my friend, Thank you, my friend.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much to Master Ron Carter for opening up
Speaker 1: to Don and me about his early life in music
Speaker 1: and some of the friends he made along the way.
Speaker 1: You can hear our favorite tracks written by or featuring
Speaker 1: Ron Carter on a playlist at broken record podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also listen to this interview and other recent
Speaker 1: episodes at YouTube dot com. Slash Broken Record podcast goes
Speaker 1: all some video episodes.
Speaker 2: Up there too.
Speaker 1: Follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record PI. Broken
Speaker 1: Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing
Speaker 1: help from Derek Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: ben To Holliday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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Speaker 2: By Theme Music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond,