Ron Carter: Finding The Right Notes
Ron Carter is the connective tissue I never quite appreciated in my musical experiences. His biopic, "Finding The Right Notes,” is (for a few more days) streaming free and available on Amazon Prime Video as well. If you are a jazz listener, musician of any sort, a student of American history or just need a feel-good musical story that is life after “The Green Book” spend two studious hours watching it.
A year of bass lessons covering half a dozen Phish songs and I realize that “jazzy blues” owes more of its history to jazz and the constructed, walking bass lines for which Carter is famous. I can play the notes, certainly, but they are just the notes – I won’t be mistaken for Phish’s Mike Gordon at any point, because the structure, the power, the forward movement of the right notes is still just beyond my fretboard.
My first bass influences were Chris Squire in Yes, Geddy Lee in Rush and Jon Camp from the classic Renaissance lineup. All three progressive rock bassists, Squire steeped in classical and church music and all three relying on major and minor scale patterns that create space and time for the other musicians in their groups - sometimes the bass is in front, sometimes it’s the melodic lead, sometimes it’s back with the rhythm section.
Emir Deodato took the notes of Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra and turned it into a jazz tune, a staple of the Phish canon. The song is a deep-seated memory of my first transistor radio through which a world of rock entered my head space. Ron Carter played with Deodato. Jobim put Brazilian influence front and center in Wave, also with Ron Carter, and the last song I learned with a favorite bass teacher. As a jazz DJ on WPRB-FM, I played hundreds of songs with Carter powering through Sunday morning, an intellectual wake-up before hitting the library. When my current teacher auditioned at the Manhattan School of Music, Ron Carter sat to listen, more imposing than any architectural edifice in New York. As I dig deeper into my musical history and experiences, and I keep finding his name in the liner notes of my life.
My first live experience with Carter was at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, where bassist Sting was the evening headliner but I had significantly more fun watching Ron’s trio romp through a set, his stature so brilliant physically and sonically. You hear him from the back of the tent; you see him and his band mate interactions from clear across the field.
Seeing him up close and personal at Birdland earlier this year, though, was humbling. He is graceful, funny, soft-spoken (as you see in the movie) while demanding professionalism from his band and decorum from his audience. In his biography, Carter talks about making a band leader look good; in the biopic he says he gets gigs because he plays to be invited back. He also calls out musicians who copy others, who play the part the way “it should” be played, rather than their own lines and notes. “Right” notes in this case are very personal; it’s the coupling of musical desire and direction.
Seated a few feet from the Maestro, watching him cover fields of distance on the fingerboard, I briefly thought “I should hang up the patch cord now, as I’ll never be that good, not in 25 years, not in 60 years.” But humbling thoughts lead to desire - where do I want to go, as my private bandleader in my basement studio – to be a better player, to learn those lines and their construction, to find those descending chords and invert the minor keys to gently move a solo along. There is distinct, obtainable happiness in that moment. Carter lets his band take the lead and explore; everyone has space. Watching him with Payton Crossley on drums – a de minimis rhythm section with the simplest kit, using stands and sides of cymbals for the smallest of accents, creates direction and space between the notes. Carter talks about Miles Davis playing the silences, and yet Ron creates those fractional second interludes; the right notes being the next ones to power the song or solo along.
After the Birdland show, my father and I stop to chat briefly with Ron, who graciously autographed books and tee shirts between sets. My experience with public figures has a very high dynamic range – hockey players are genuine, baseball players are thorny, musicians are on their own plane, so I’m not sure what to expect. My concert date and first musical hero - my dad, who introduced me to bebop and Klezmer and show tunes and music tied to our personal histories - got to share a laugh with Ron Carter. I asked Carter to sign my copy of his book of etudes, saying “I’m working through these very slowly” to which he replied, with the subtlety of a passing note “So am I.”
That night was a song of aspiration, full of grace notes, capturing six decades of music desire, played by my heroes. The right notes are waiting to be played, again, by new and old musicians.