Bassist Ron Carter pays tribute to mentor Miles Davis

Charles J. Gans

NEW YORK — Bassist Ron Carter sometimes wishes he could go back in time to the 1960s and play again with the Miles Davis Quintet — one of the most acclaimed and influential small combos in jazz history.

It’s not that Carter, who turned 70 in May, is overly nostalgic. It’s just that 40 years ago his bass could hardly be heard amid Davis’ trumpet, Wayne Shorter’s saxophones, Herbie Hancock’s piano and Tony Williams’ drums.

Carter still plays the same Czech-made upright bass that he bought for $125 when he came to New York in 1959 to study for his master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music, but today he can take advantage of the special bass pickups, improved amplifiers and other technological breakthroughs that have enabled audiences to really hear the instrument.

“I wish that back in those days the bass would have been as physically audible as it is now,” said Carter, who recently released the CD “Dear Miles” honoring his mentor, who died in 1991. “I could have made an even larger impact on the band … and I’ve learned a lot more music since those days.”

Carter insists on debunking one popular misconception about Davis — that the trumpeter was disdainful to his audience because he turned his back to them. Rather, Carter says, Davis preferred to stand sideways and close to the bassist because otherwise he couldn’t hear the bass.

“I always tell people, ‘Look, when you see Leonard Bernstein looking at you and conducting the orchestra, then you can talk about Miles with his band,’” said Carter, seated at the dining room table in his Upper West Side apartment, which is filled with paintings and sculpture by African American artists collected by his late wife, Janet.

“Miles was very aware of the audience’s responses to the music. … If a song really wasn’t happening and the audience wasn’t responding as he hoped they would … he would adjust the program.”

That’s one of the lessons Carter took from his 1963-68 tenure with the trumpeter’s quintet — an experience he likened to “going into a laboratory like chemists” to experiment every night by mixing different musical ingredients. The band members took a more elastic approach to playing standards and composed tunes that became standards for future generations.

Davis dubbed Carter the “anchor” of the band. Carter went beyond the bassist’s traditional role of rhythm-keeper, prodding the soloists by changing the beats and harmonies and even sometimes playing melody lines.

Since leaving Davis, Carter has made it his mission to take the double bass “out of the shadows” of the rhythm section and prove it can be a legitimate lead instrument.

Carter, a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, may be the world’s most recorded jazz bassist, with more than 2,000 credits. The bassist admits to feeling “flattered” when pop stars like Paul Simon, Roberta Flack and Aretha Franklin or the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest have enlisted his services because they believe “this jazz player can help their project be successful.”

Carter has made some 50 albums as a leader, from the Brazilian jazz of 1999’s “Orfeu” to the jazz-classical blend of “Brandenburg Concerto,” released in 1995. His recordings range from intimate duo sets with master guitarist Jim Hall to sessions with his innovative nine-piece group, which features four cellists and Carter on the piccolo bass, a smaller instrument that is tuned higher than a regular bass, making it easier to play the lead melody. Carter switched from studying cello to bass at his Detroit high school because he saw few opportunities for African American classical musicians in the 1950s.

“Ron has a fantastic rhythmic sense which … knits the whole group together whether it’s a duo, quartet or whatever,” said Hall, who first worked with Carter in trumpeter Art Farmer’s quartet in 1963. “He gets a beautiful sound out of the bass. … We might be playing a tune and he’ll take it suddenly into a place harmonically where it doesn’t usually go and he’ll give me a look ... It makes the music a lot more interesting.”

For years, Carter had been reluctant to jump on the Miles Davis bandwagon by recording his own tribute album.

“I had avoided doing that because I thought that most records that I heard really didn’t understand Miles’ music,” said Carter. “I waited until I could find an environment that I felt would do a service to his name and our relationship.”

Carter could easily have enlisted the other surviving members of the ’60s quintet, Hancock and Shorter, and added a guest trumpeter. Instead, he recorded the CD with his longstanding working quartet, featuring pianist Stephen Scott, drummer Payton Crossley and percussionist Roger Squitero, since replaced by Rolando Morales-Matos.

“I thought the band … would make the audience listen to a rhythm section interpret this music,” said Carter. “I’m not trying to recreate the Miles Davis sound. … It’s clearly a different instrumentation and it gives me a chance to let people know how I feel these songs can be played 40 years later.”

The quartet had already been playing tunes from Davis’ songbook, and recorded the entire CD in one morning, needing only one take for each of the 10 tracks.

With his beard, glasses and curved wooden pipe, the 6-foot-4-inch Carter has a professorial demeanor — he is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the City College of New York, where he taught for nearly 20 years. But his humorous side shines through on the CD’s opening track as the band playfully quotes the “Mission Impossible” theme in the middle of “Gone” — a rarely-played tune Carter adapted for his quartet from the 1958 Miles Davis-Gil Evans “Porgy & Bess” big-band album.

“I enjoy making people’s ears perk up and say, ‘How did that get in there?’” laughed Carter. “Jazz has got a lot of humor … It’s not always dark glasses and a big frown on your face.”

On the CD, Carter gallops through the tempo-shifting “Seven Steps to Heaven,” from his first 1963 recording with Davis. His deep, resonant bass takes the melodic lead on the ballad “Stella by Starlight,” and he deftly interacts with pianist Scott on “My Funny Valentine,” another Davis staple. He closes the CD with his own “595,” which alludes to Davis’ classic “So What.”

In June, the JVC Jazz Festival marked Carter’s 70th birthday with a tribute concert at Carnegie Hall that showcased him in four different ensembles. Carter, who likes to dress as elegantly as he plays, wore a black Nehru-style tuxedo by Japanese designer Issey Miyake and handed out colored silk handkerchiefs to each of his guests.

Carter shared a special camaraderie with Miles alumni Hancock, Shorter and drummer Billy Cobham in an abbreviated set that featured such Davis classics as “All Blues.”

But rather than just looking back at his career, Carter used the occasion to highlight that he’s “still very active and looking for things to do with this music.” He presented three of his current bands: the recently revived duo with guitarist Hall; his drummerless Striker trio with pianist Mulgrew Miller and guitarist Russell Malone; and the “Dear Miles” quartet.

The common thread linking these bands is the absence of any horn player. Unlike Charles Mingus, Dave Holland or other notable bassists who’ve led their own bands that included saxophonists and trumpeters, Carter feels it would be counterproductive to his mission to do the same.

“I made a conscious effort to have groups that I lead not have a horn player in the front line for fear of having him thought to be the leader,” said Carter. “And I’ve missed a lot of work for that point of view.

“I’m comfortable with the idea that I can lead a band that’s musically successful and can attract an audience without needing a horn player. … I’ve tried to maintain a level of musicality where the bass is so important … that it’s difficult for people to ignore your presence.”

(Associated Press)