Carter, Rollins and Blakey join other BMI jazz legends inducted in previous years, including Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Art Tatum, Clark Terry and Freddie Green.

“They are fundamentally the same. Jazz composition is the floor that the carpet, which is improvisation, lays on top of, basically,” explains bassist Ron Carter. “It’s hard to say this and not have it sound so simple that anyone can do it because it’s pretty complex.

“What jazz composers bring to the plate that classical composers don’t: They rely on the player of that song to interpret it every night, to bring something new to the plate. Jazz composition is as dependent on the composer’s skill to write a nice piece as it is the performer’s ability to interpret it every night.

“Take Benny Golson’s ‘Stable Mates’: you hear Miles’ version of it, you hear Javon Jackson’s version of it, you hear my version of it. They are all different versions based on the same wonderful melody, and they are all valid.”

But for the typical listener it is the soloist who makes the performance; band members are noticed only in their individual roles as soloists. “Absolutely,” agrees Carter, “especially the rhythm section. They see the guy out front and they’re happy with that. They don’t know what it takes to make that work.”

Carter, who turns 70 next spring, began studying cello as a lad and switched to double bass in his teens. A member of the Eastman School’s orchestra, he graduated with a B.M. in 1959.

Did studying classical cello make him a better jazz bassist? “Probably not. I’m a pretty disciplined person with a focus on what it takes to make things better,” replies Carter. “If I had started out as lamp maker, I would have been just as good a bass player.”

He wasn’t inspired by other bass players but by baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne, who came up when the scene was dominated by Gerry Mulligan and Harry Carney, yet developed a distinctive voice, and trombonist J.J. Johnson, who found a whole series of notes without stretching past the bell of his horn. “J.J. made me aware of all the possibilities on the bass so that I didn’t have to jump up and down like a rabbit,” explains Carter.

Carter moved to New York, joined Chico Hamilton’s quintet and enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music, graduating with an M.M. After Hamilton moved to the West Coast, Carter performed and recorded with Don Ellis, Eric Dolphy, Thelonious Monk, Cannonball Adderley, and Bobby Timmons. He spent only a week in Art Farmer’s group before Miles Davis hired him to join Tony Williams and Herbie Hancock in the rhythm section of his classic quartet.

After that band broke up in the late ’60s, Carter began a career as a freelancer and occasional leader, performing with an encyclopedic list of jazz instrumentalists as well as non-jazz acts as diverse as Aretha Franklin, Laura Nyro and A Tribe Called Quest.
Carter’s next date, after this interview, was a live recording with pianist Steve Kuhn and drummer Al Foster, who was to fly in from Europe the day of their opening at Birdland.

With no rehearsal, how do you make it sound like a working band? “What it takes to sound like a rehearsed band is, in this case, three guys who are aware of each one’s presence and what the music can bring out of each one of them, to make the trio sound like three people playing together rather than three guys that just walked in. As a freelancer, that’s my job, to sound like I belong there.”]]> 2006-10-05T18:00:00-05:00 http://www.bmi.com/news/entry/334791 Artists, Bryant, Del, Carter, Ron, Conyers, John, Type, Legislation John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Ranking Minority Member of the House Judiciary Committee and Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, was the guest of honor at a recent fundraiser hosted by BMI at the Friar Club in New York City.

Comedian Freddie Roman, BMI's Fred Cannon, Congressman John Conyers, former NYC mayor David Dinkins, jazz artist Ron Carter and BMI's Del Bryant

Among the more than 50 party-goers celebrating with the 40-year legislative veteran were BMI President & CEO Del Bryant, BMI Government Relations Senior VP Fred Cannon, the Honorable David Dinkins, former mayor of New York City, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and BMI jazz artist Ron Carter, who sat in on a few tunes with the performing jazz trio.

Minority Chief of Staff & Counsel Perry Apelbaum, BMI's Fred Cannon, Congressman John Conyers, BMI's Del Bryant, lobbyist Mike Remington, and former Register of Copyrights Ralph Oman

An avid jazz fan, Congressman Conyers is a long-time supporter of BMI's efforts in protecting the rights of songwriters, composers and music publishers in all genres of music.

BMI's Fred Cannon, Congressman Kendrick Meek (D-FL) and BMI's Del Bryant

Born with the century - the 20th century, that is - the most uniquely American of music forms is finally getting its own month, a full hundred years into a history as lively and complex as the nation that spawned it.

April marks the first annual national Jazz Appreciation Month, a project launched by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, backed  by a hefty group of partners, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Department of Education, MENC: The National Association for Music Education, the International Association of Jazz Educators, the Grammy Foundation and the U.S. Department of State. BMI is a sponsor of Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM for short), as is the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation.

"Every April, I'd love to see the country riff, swing, boogie and bop to the syncopated strains of jazz,"says John Edward Hasse, curator of American music at the museum. As Hasse explains, the month of April was chosen to honor the birthdays of such jazz legends as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Tito Puente, Charles Mingus and Gerry Mulligan, among others. "Jazz is a great national treasure - arguably our greatest cultural export to the rest of the world and one of the things that future centuries will judge best about America in the 20th century."

That's a key reason Hasse sought to create Jazz Appreciation Month, which arrives a year after the Louis Armstrong centenary and the marathon broadcast of Ken Burns's epic documentary Jazz. Throughout April, the museum will spotlight jazz through concerts, programs and museum collections. Schools, colleges, museums, concert halls, libraries and public broadcasters will be encouraged to observe the month with programs of their own. SmithsonianJazz.org has been launched, bringing attention to a diverse range of jazz programs and archives at the museum, as well as complete events scheduled for Jazz Appreciation Month.

The Smithsonian's role in archiving and promoting various elements of jazz history has been crucial to the music's legacy. The National Museum of American History is home to the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, more than 100 oral histories of musicians, composers and others, and 100,000 pages of Ellington's unpublished music. The archives host such totems of jazz lore as Ella Fitzgerald's signature red dress, Dizzy Gillespie's oddly tilted trumpet and Benny Goodman's clarinet. "Thirty years ago, [critic and curator] Martin Williams put together the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, which became a cornerstone,"Hasse says. "The Smithsonian runs the world's most comprehensive set of jazz programs."

Stressing the non-commercial, grassroots nature of the event, Hasse hopes to encourage local initiatives that will make Jazz Appreciation Month not merely a focus for the museum, but a true nationwide celebration. "We hope that jazz societies, libraries, museums and performing arts centers will add related programming to their lineups in April,"he says. "Symphonies could get involved that are looking for more diversity in their programs. What music is more culturally diverse than jazz?"Hasse adds that one reason for April was to give high school ensembles time to develop and rehearse concerts that can be tied into the event. "We really wanted this to be during the school year,"he says. "Our goal for the first year is to build awareness of the event, and our core for doing that is jazz educators and music educators."

The concept of jazz appreciation is at a ripe moment, but Hasse knows it will take time for the event to develop. "I was deeply admiring of Black History Month (which is February), and all the good it has done for its subject. It became a model. But when Carter G. Woodson initiated it 75 years ago, it was known as Negro History Week. It's really grown."

Observes Ron Carter, the esteemed bassist who was part of Miles Davis's great 1960s quintet, "It's a necessary event. All the different musics get a chance to show what they do in a much larger format than jazz. We take what we can get. When I was young, Black History Month seemed like it was only one or two days. And that was 40 years ago when there was no e-mail. Given the proportion of new media going around, hopefully there will be enough [coverage] of Jazz Appreciation Month events to heighten people's awareness."

Adds soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom, "Anything - anything that brings attention to the performance of jazz is a good thing. We're struggling. If this is what it takes to do it, yeah, let's make a month out of it. Make it semi-annual! It's just the beginning. All these organizations can put their heads together to create momentum. You can't just expect people to automatically become interested in jazz, you have to lobby them."

Hasse lauds BMI's involvement in the event, which he views a wholly appropriate. "We're delighted that BMI, which has such a large and important involvement in jazz, is a sponsor - and was an early and enthusiastic sponsor."

As a musical director for BMI's Jazz Composer Workshop, pianist Jim McNeely is often at the center of debates about the music's history and its future. And while he's wary of efforts to make the music somehow sanitized or official - the problem a lot of viewers had with Burns's 19-hour Jazz - he sees the effort as a another positive step toward giving jazz its due. "To get a whole month at the Smithsonian, it's a great boost for the music,"he says. "Ironically, it's a great boost for the musicians who are no longer with us, the people who invented this stuff."

Tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman, who presides as artistic director for San Francisco's SF Jazz spring concert series, finds the concept of Jazz Appreciation Month to be a timely one. "The public has been primed a little bit, especially over the past year. The idea of jazz, while it's not on the tip of people's minds, is no longer in the deep recesses," he says. "More and more, you're seeing established, major arts institutions embracing jazz and starting to program jazz in their communities. The more that happens, the better it's going to be, and the more we can get the music to the people."