Ron Carter – Spanish Blue
Ron Carter – Spanish Blue
Barcelona, 1964.
Ron Carter was on tour with the Miles Davis Quintet. He and Miles were using their free time to explore that exhilarating Northern city, a permanent Spanish cultural and intellectual festival. During one expedition the Americans were interested in satisfying two inner needs, and found an obscure little restaurant in which the Catalan passions for good food and good music were met.
“I don’t speak Spanish,” Carter says, “and Miles hardly speaks at all. But there was no communication problem. I took the waiter by the arm and went back to the kitchen to see what was available. I suppose they could have thrown us out. But the staff seemed flattered at our interest. The result was an incredible fish dinner, followed by two hours of beautiful flamenco. There were two dancers and three musicians, all authentic. I’ve always liked Spanish music. But on that trip I had a chance to listen to hours of it, at the source. I was fascinated by the flamenco players’ uses of time. There’s a different emphasis on the beat. I can’t annotate it or explain it, but it is exciting and very moving.”
Two of the pieces here reflect Carter’s Spanish sympathies. He makes no claim that the works are flamenco or even that they observe traditional Spanish forms. They are compositions distilled from the Spanish style and filtered through the experience and perspective of a master jazz artist. Ron’s goal was to provide frameworks within which he and his musicians could improvise with reference to the Spanish feeling. The passionate solos by Hubert Laws and Roland Hanna on El Noche Sol and the sensuous atmosphere created in the habanera-like Sabado Sombrero attest to the success with which Carter carried out his task, as composer, leader and bassist.
Arkansas is quite another matter. Despite its down home verve, the piece does not grow out of some deep Carterian identification with the music, customs or people of the state. It happened that as he was writing the composition his son was studying a map. He mispronounced the name, as many of us did when we first saw it in print but had never heard it, “Ahr-KAN-sas.” After their lesson in the English language’s pronunciation standards, or the lack of them, Ron returned to his manuscript and decided to call his song Arkansas. By such homely coincidences are titles often decided. Carter’s solo is performed on piccolo bass and is the only overdubbing on the album. His sound on the instrument may remind you of the late Oscar Pettiford on cello. And if you’re not too busy being fascinated by the solo, listen to the “other” Ron Carter’s bass line underneath. It has all the elements that have made Ron (both of him) so popular among listeners and in demand among musicians—strength, swing, superb tone, and a uniquely architectural logic.
“If you had a machine to turn off all but the bass, I’d like you to be able to follow a piece of music,” Carter says of his conception.
But his ability to relate and adjust to his fellow players is equally important. In this album that empathy is remarkable. It is everywhere, for instance, in the rhythmic conspiracies developed by Carter and Billy Cobham.
“He listens with his hands and his ears,” Ron says of Cobham.” Whatever happens, he’ll adjust so that we always come out without losing anything.”
That attitude requires a great deal of giving, and it is a common denominator among the men in this group, all carefully chosen by Carter.
Like All Blues from Ron’s last album (CTI 6037), So What is a Carter expansion on one of the compostions from the seminal Miles Davis “Kind Of Blue” session of 1959. Many players have come to use these pieces as mere blowing vehicles, as if they contained implications no more profound than the harmonic patterns of Idaho or I Got Rhythm. Carter and his men, and it seems to me Laws in particular, understand and accept the disciplines imposed by these deceptively simple sketches. Consequently, the music they create around them is thoughtful, stimulating and rewarding.
Three-fourths of the compositions in this collection are by Carter, more or less the ratio in his previous CTI albums. And he plans to intensify his writing efforts. Pleased that he has achieved a degree of success that may make it possible to maintain a working band, Ron is looking forward to consistently hearing what he writes soon after he gets it onto paper, as Duke Ellington, John Lewis, Charles Mingus, and Gil Evans, but very few other composer-leaders have been able to do.
And he anticipates the day he will be able to afford three seats on an airplane rather than two; one each for him and his bass, of course, and another for the piccolo bass.
“Then I’ll be able to do in clubs and concerts exactly what I do on records, with a taped bass line for the piccolo bass numbers.”
As for this record, the exacting Mr. Carter is pleased.
“It’s nice to finish a project and know that everything came out just as you wanted it.”
High praise for Ron Carter. From his toughest critic.
- Doug Ramsey
A1-El Noche Sol
A2-So What
B1-Sabado Sombrero
B2-Arkansas
Billy Cobham – Drums
Jay Berliner – Guitar
Ralph MacDonald – Percussion
Roland Hanna – Piano
Leon Pendarvis – Piano [Electric] (tracks: B2)
Creed Taylor – Producer
Album design by Bob Ciano
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