Ron Carter – Bass

Ronald Levin Carter (born May 4, 1937) has appeared on 2,221 recording sessions make him the most-recorded jazz bassist in history. He has won three Grammy Awards  and is also a cellist who has recorded numerous times on the instrument. In addition to a solo career of more than 60 years, Carter is well-known for playing on numerous iconic Blue Note albums in the 1960s, as well as being the anchor of trumpeter Miles Davis’s “Second Great Quintet” from 1963-1968.

Carter went to the same school as Paul Chambers, the bass player from the “First Great Quintet” although, he told me that he didn’t have that much contact with PC as he was studying classical cello then (he took up the double bass after he left school) and PC was 2 years older than him (an age when you are in your teens). When I asked him what it was like following PC into the Miles band, he told me that he wasn’t thinking about it, he was just learning the material as fast as he could. I interviewed Ron for my book ‘Mr. P.C: the life and music of Paul Chambers’ and I have to say he is one of the nicest men you would ever want to meet.

This is Carter’s bass complete bass part for ‘Sister Chery’ from the first Wynton Marsalis album, imaginatively titled ‘Wynton Marsalis’. The album came out in 1982 and featured Carter, pianist Herbie Hancock and drummer, Tony Williams, who had all been members of the Second Great Miles Davis Quintet. In fact, Marsalis toured with the three other musicians as a member of the Herbie Hancock Quartet and recorded with them under Hancock’s leadership in 1981.

The bass part is not over challenging to play but I had never done it before as the subtleties of the note choices were difficult to follow in the original mix, particularly given Carter’s fluid intonation and idiosyncratic use of slides and slurs. The Moises software allowed me to bring the bass much higher in the mix so I could find those details.