SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
FALL, 2018
VOLUME SIX NUMBER TWO
ARETHA FRANKLIN
Featuring the musics and aesthetic visions of:
SMOKEY ROBINSON
(October 6-12)
THE TEMPTATIONS
(October 13-19)
JOHN CARTER
JOHN CARTER
(October 20-26)
MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS
(October 27-November 2)
RANDY WESTON
(November 3-9)
HOLLAND DOZIER AND HOLLAND
(November 10-16)
JELLY ROLL MORTON
(November 17-23)
BOBBY BRADFORD
(November 24-30)
THE SUPREMES
(December 1-7)
THE FOUR TOPS
(December 8-14)
THE SPINNERS
(December 15-21)
THE STYLISTICS
(December 15-21)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-carter-mn0000810946/biography
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-carter-mn0000810946/biography
John Carter
(1929-1991)
Artist Biography by Chris Kelsey
John Carter
was one of the very few free jazz players to concentrate exclusively on
clarinet, and one of not very many to place an emphasis on the music's
composed elements. Carter studied alto saxophone and clarinet early in his career. He played with fellow Fort Worth native Ornette Coleman
in the late '40s. In 1949, he received his bachelor's degree from
Lincoln University in Jefferson City, MO. In 1956, he earned a master's
degree from the University of Colorado. He taught in Fort Worth Public
Schools from 1949-1961 and in the Los Angeles school system from
1961-1982.
In 1964, while living in Los Angeles, Carter formed the New Art Jazz Ensemble with trumpeter Bobby Bradford (who would also work with Coleman). The next year, he conducted a program of Coleman's music at U.C.L.A. In the late '60s, he played and recorded with pianist Horace Tapscott and saxophonist Arthur Blythe, among others. Carter switched to clarinet full-time in 1974. He recorded as a leader for the Flying Dutchman, Moers Music, and Revelation labels in the late '60s and early '70s.
In the '70s, Carter became an elder statesman to a group of young Los Angeles free jazz musicians who included multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia. In 1983, Carter formed a school for improvisation called the Wind College with flutist James Newton, bassist/tubaist Red Callender, and saxophonist Charles Owens. Carter's activities in the '80s included participation in Clarinet Summit, a multi-generational, multi-stylistic quartet with David Murray, Alvin Baptiste, and Jimmy Hamilton; the group recorded for India Navigation and Black Saint. Carter's major focus during his last decade was, however, a five-part set of multi-movement compositions entitled Roots and Folklore: Episodes in the Development of American Folk Music. The first suite was recorded for Black Saint, the final four for Gramavision.
As a player, Carter comes very much out of the free jazz melodic tradition of Coleman, Bradford, and Dewey Redman. He navigated the notoriously difficult B-flat clarinet with extraordinary fluidity and a rare certainty of execution. Carter had a comprehensive technique and a prodigious imagination; in his compositions, Carter harnessed the looseness of collective improvisation without compromising spontaneity.
http://www.darktree-records.com/en/artistes/john-carter
John Wallace Carter was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on September 24, 1928, and was a childhood friend of Ornette Coleman and drummer Charles Moffett. He earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1949, and a master’s degree from the University of Colorado in 1956. He taught in public schools in both Fort Worth then moved Los Angeles in 1961, where, with Coleman’s encouragement he formed a band, the New Art Jazz Ensemble (NAJE), with trumpeter Bobby Bradford in 1964.
Carter conducted orchestral versions of Coleman’s work at UCLA in 1965, and he was initially a follower of the saxophonist’s “harmolodic” approach to composition and improvisation. On the NAJE’s 1969 album Seeking, he demonstrates great facility on alto and tenor saxophones, as well as clarinet.
The NAJE continued as a group until 1974 and released a total of four albums on the Revelation and Flying Dutchman labels. After the NAJE disbanded Carter played clarinet exclusively, and progressively came into his own voice as an improviser and composer.
In the late 1970s, he played in a group called Wind College with flutist James Newton and bassist Red Callender, and was the subject of a documentary, The New Music: Bobby Bradford and John Carter in 1980. He played at clubs and festivals in Europe and the United States, both as a leader and as a sideman, with groups that frequently included Bradford, Newton, and Roberto Miguel Miranda. In the 1980s he led the clarinet quartet Clarinet Summit, with Alvin Batiste and Jimmy Hamilton and with David Murray on bass clarinet. As an improviser, Carter came to share affinities with the work of other free-jazz clarinetists, such as Perry Robinson and Theo Jörgensmann.
In the 1980s, Carter focused increasingly on composition, starting with Dauwhe, an octet he recorded in 1982. The piece would become the first part of Roots and Folklore, and reveals his evolving approach to both instrumentation and creative improvisation. With focused interplay and overlapping of tones and ideas, Carter’s clarinet takes an omnipresent position.
Carter and Bradford’s musical relationship was not unlike that of Coleman and Cherry in their pianoless quartet. In this setting, Carter and Bradford embrace the composition’s pastoral, evocative voices of tribal Africa while the sleekness and idiosyncratic horns swirl like apparitions above the manic, even brooding rhythm. Both experimental, yet familiar, Dauwhe augurs many of the ideas Carter later explored in the remaining volumes of his history: clashing cultures, forces of myth and predation, lust, and unadulterated beauty amid the chaos. Neither free music nor swing, this album shows elements of both, and has layers of ensemble work similar to massive conductions of Butch Morris.
Carter’s compositions, intriguing in their varied instrumentation, draw on the folk wisdom of country blues, the sophisticated dances of swing, the figured bass of bebop, and the violent clashes of free jazz, all combined in careful doses. The five parts of Roots and Folklore explore deep feelings about the African diaspora, starting with Dauwhe, named for an African goddess of happines. This is followed by meditations on imprisonment in Castles of Ghana, the middle passage on Dance of the Love Ghosts, chattel slavery on Fields, and the youthful exuberance of Harlem between the World Wars in Shadows on a Wall. The works vary in instrumentation, and are both expressionistic and impressionistic.
Carter employed equal parts roots and folklore in his explorations of African-American historyhis attachments to what came before looks forward in both style and quality of style. Carter’s work is articulate and allows for a sinister wilderness to penetrate even his most designed pieces, all of which are a statement about Africans who became African-Americans, and the immense losses in between.
John Carter, recorded the final chapter of Roots in 1989, and died of lung cancer in Los Angeles on March 31, 1991.
▶ BOBBY BRADFORD & JOHN CARTER QUINTET NO U-TURN – Live in Pasadena, 1975 DT(RS)05
https://markweber.free-jazz.net/2012/05/29/the-coda-interview-with-john-carter-1976/
In 1964, while living in Los Angeles, Carter formed the New Art Jazz Ensemble with trumpeter Bobby Bradford (who would also work with Coleman). The next year, he conducted a program of Coleman's music at U.C.L.A. In the late '60s, he played and recorded with pianist Horace Tapscott and saxophonist Arthur Blythe, among others. Carter switched to clarinet full-time in 1974. He recorded as a leader for the Flying Dutchman, Moers Music, and Revelation labels in the late '60s and early '70s.
In the '70s, Carter became an elder statesman to a group of young Los Angeles free jazz musicians who included multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia. In 1983, Carter formed a school for improvisation called the Wind College with flutist James Newton, bassist/tubaist Red Callender, and saxophonist Charles Owens. Carter's activities in the '80s included participation in Clarinet Summit, a multi-generational, multi-stylistic quartet with David Murray, Alvin Baptiste, and Jimmy Hamilton; the group recorded for India Navigation and Black Saint. Carter's major focus during his last decade was, however, a five-part set of multi-movement compositions entitled Roots and Folklore: Episodes in the Development of American Folk Music. The first suite was recorded for Black Saint, the final four for Gramavision.
As a player, Carter comes very much out of the free jazz melodic tradition of Coleman, Bradford, and Dewey Redman. He navigated the notoriously difficult B-flat clarinet with extraordinary fluidity and a rare certainty of execution. Carter had a comprehensive technique and a prodigious imagination; in his compositions, Carter harnessed the looseness of collective improvisation without compromising spontaneity.
http://www.darktree-records.com/en/artistes/john-carter
JOHN CARTER
John Wallace Carter was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on September 24, 1928, and was a childhood friend of Ornette Coleman and drummer Charles Moffett. He earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1949, and a master’s degree from the University of Colorado in 1956. He taught in public schools in both Fort Worth then moved Los Angeles in 1961, where, with Coleman’s encouragement he formed a band, the New Art Jazz Ensemble (NAJE), with trumpeter Bobby Bradford in 1964.
Carter conducted orchestral versions of Coleman’s work at UCLA in 1965, and he was initially a follower of the saxophonist’s “harmolodic” approach to composition and improvisation. On the NAJE’s 1969 album Seeking, he demonstrates great facility on alto and tenor saxophones, as well as clarinet.
The NAJE continued as a group until 1974 and released a total of four albums on the Revelation and Flying Dutchman labels. After the NAJE disbanded Carter played clarinet exclusively, and progressively came into his own voice as an improviser and composer.
In the late 1970s, he played in a group called Wind College with flutist James Newton and bassist Red Callender, and was the subject of a documentary, The New Music: Bobby Bradford and John Carter in 1980. He played at clubs and festivals in Europe and the United States, both as a leader and as a sideman, with groups that frequently included Bradford, Newton, and Roberto Miguel Miranda. In the 1980s he led the clarinet quartet Clarinet Summit, with Alvin Batiste and Jimmy Hamilton and with David Murray on bass clarinet. As an improviser, Carter came to share affinities with the work of other free-jazz clarinetists, such as Perry Robinson and Theo Jörgensmann.
In the 1980s, Carter focused increasingly on composition, starting with Dauwhe, an octet he recorded in 1982. The piece would become the first part of Roots and Folklore, and reveals his evolving approach to both instrumentation and creative improvisation. With focused interplay and overlapping of tones and ideas, Carter’s clarinet takes an omnipresent position.
Carter and Bradford’s musical relationship was not unlike that of Coleman and Cherry in their pianoless quartet. In this setting, Carter and Bradford embrace the composition’s pastoral, evocative voices of tribal Africa while the sleekness and idiosyncratic horns swirl like apparitions above the manic, even brooding rhythm. Both experimental, yet familiar, Dauwhe augurs many of the ideas Carter later explored in the remaining volumes of his history: clashing cultures, forces of myth and predation, lust, and unadulterated beauty amid the chaos. Neither free music nor swing, this album shows elements of both, and has layers of ensemble work similar to massive conductions of Butch Morris.
Carter’s compositions, intriguing in their varied instrumentation, draw on the folk wisdom of country blues, the sophisticated dances of swing, the figured bass of bebop, and the violent clashes of free jazz, all combined in careful doses. The five parts of Roots and Folklore explore deep feelings about the African diaspora, starting with Dauwhe, named for an African goddess of happines. This is followed by meditations on imprisonment in Castles of Ghana, the middle passage on Dance of the Love Ghosts, chattel slavery on Fields, and the youthful exuberance of Harlem between the World Wars in Shadows on a Wall. The works vary in instrumentation, and are both expressionistic and impressionistic.
Carter employed equal parts roots and folklore in his explorations of African-American historyhis attachments to what came before looks forward in both style and quality of style. Carter’s work is articulate and allows for a sinister wilderness to penetrate even his most designed pieces, all of which are a statement about Africans who became African-Americans, and the immense losses in between.
John Carter, recorded the final chapter of Roots in 1989, and died of lung cancer in Los Angeles on March 31, 1991.
▶ BOBBY BRADFORD & JOHN CARTER QUINTET NO U-TURN – Live in Pasadena, 1975 DT(RS)05
https://markweber.free-jazz.net/2012/05/29/the-coda-interview-with-john-carter-1976/
John Carter at home, 3900 Carol Court, Culver City 90230 | August 31, 1976 (during the CODA interview) | Photo by Mark Weber
MARK WEBER: Ornette’s early music sure caused a stir, how did you observe that? Looking at it now it’s obvious how blues based it is.
JOHN CARTER: Yes it’s real folksy music. Well in 1960, the post bop period, the jazz crowd generally catered to the organ trio, which grew out of the club owners’ efforts to hire three people instead of four, the organ kind of cut out the bass player. So the characteristic group was tenor, drums and organ. That was just one thing that was going on in the sixties. In an art sense, you know the evolutionary process hadn’t quite come around yet so that there was an acceptance of what Ornette was doing. The sound was too revolutionary, and people just hadn’t come to a point of even wanting to understand what that music was about. By the mid-sixties things were a little better, more musicians were playing that kind of thing and people were beginning to listen a little more.
Mark: Recently I was
reading a treatise on “tempered intonation” and “just intonation.” Now I
was led to believe that “just intonation” is like the way a piano is
tuned, 440 cycles per second at A above middle C. And “tempered
intonation” is like the way Ornette plays, just color it, take it up a
little….
John: Ornette’s intonation is what this music has been about all the time. For one thing, this music stems so much from African music that it’s very difficult to establish guide lines for criticizing the music. What the’average western “critic ” does is to apply western standards to the music, where the intent is not always completely western. Now I don’t mean that jazz is not a western art form, I mean that some of its roots go back to eastern sources. You read in books about the blue 7th and so on, now I don’t even know what that is. Eastern music is taken from different scales, from scales that are different than scales generally used in western music that make the music sound a certain way, so when you start to justify this or that which has its roots as eastern by western standards, well then you run into a lot of problems. And western critics used to, and some now, say that jazz is one of the illegitimate forms of music. The fact that musicians don’t play in tune, you know? And musicians are playing what they want to play, so that it is very properly in tune. But not in tune to what they, the critics want to listen to.
Mark: For my own
edification; when you play a tune you’re not necessarily in a key,
right? You improvise on a theme or “head arrangement”? Like what Bobby
(Bradford) says in a previous interview that harmonically it’s not in
any one key, what structure do you work within? What’s the harmonic
base? Is it fluctuating?
John: Well, there’s no structured harmonic base. Well academically there’s no harmonic base. If there are three or four people playing, the harmonies that come together are extemporaneous harmonies, they come together at that particular time, generally they are not intended harmonies, generally players do not set about to listen to see if such and such harmonies come about. Like when we started to play, the night I sat in with The Art Ensemble of Chicago, and the three of us came out (Roscoe and Joseph), well, we had gotten together on what we were going to use as material for a head before we came out and we adjusted as we went along to suit ourselves, but here again the harmony was extemporaneous, we didn’t sit down and say we’re going to play the Bb major chord and the Eb6th and so on and so forth, we just said we’re going to use this certain set of ideas, the harmonic base of which would be free.
Bobby Bradford Quintet | April 14, 1979,
Pasadena City College | Glenn Ferris – flugelbone; John Carter –
clarinet, Bobby Bradford – cornet, Bert Karl – drums, Noah Young – bass |
Photo by Mark Weber
John Carter sits in with the Art Ensemble of Chicago | June 26, 1976 | Studio Z, Slauson Blvd, L.A. | Photo by Mark Weber
James Newton Wind Quintet + koto | @ Pasquales, Malibu, California | September 28, 1980 | John Nunez, bassoon; John Carter, clarinet; James Newton, flute; Red Callendar, tuba; Charles Owens, oboe & English horn; Alan Iwohara, koto | Photo by Mark Weber
Mark: Did you set up any kind of bar structure?
John: No, you see that music wasn’t written. Now if we were to go back and listen to that and structure it all out, it would be pretty difficult to write the solo parts but it could be done. That (the head) wouldn’t be hard to write at all, because of the way it was put together. All you do in that situation is figure out what note each of the musicians is playing and put that in big whole notes and put a hold on top, that would only take about five minutes. But now other things are much more difficult to do, you know of course that the Art Ensemble perform some very difficult music and some of Bob’s music, and some of mine gets to be very intricate, like the thing we did on the first Flying Dutchman record, Call To The Festival is a very intricate piece of music. We must have taken a dozen takes on that one just to get the head played correctly. Even though we played it all of the time, very intricate. I was commissioned to write that music. Commissioned! (laughter) The only music I was ever commissioned to write.
Mark: What festival was that for?
John: During that time I was working for the Studio Watts Workshop, it was one of the post-riot things they had set up, like the writers’ workshop and the teen-posts that were like community centers, and other pacifying activities for the youngsters to get into so they wouldn’t be out on the street fightin’ the policemen. Now this thing we were doings’ emphasis was on art; pottery, painting and music. So as part of the studio outlet the workshop coordinator, Jim Woods, set up the Los Angeles Art Festival, the first year it was music and the second it was dance. Most of the festival was done at Shelley’s Manne-Hole, we played there three nights, and were paid through the studio. One of these days I’ll be commissioned to write some more music. I hope.
Mark: How’s your new record coming along?
John: The music is ready. We’re going to record Echoes From Rudolph’s Suite. I would like to record Plantation Songs From The Old South, I think that’s a good suite too.
Mark: You seem to have more unrecorded music than recorded.
John: Well all my music is new, because nobody’s heard it. Material is no problem, the problem is elsewhere.
Mark: Have you thought about recording or performing solo?
John: Yeah, I’d like to record an album of ballads, of free ballads, solo. I’m going to record one ballad on this latest thing solo, well ninety percent of It’s going to be solo, everybody else will come in on the end.
Mark: A Little Dance, Boy more or less throws you into a solo position.
John: Yeah we might not record that, 1 haven’t figured out how to put that into a good record format. Actually there are two pieces in there that I was going to re-write, A Little Dance, Boy and At The Big House. At The Big House is a duet for two basses, actually I’ve written four duets for basses, and none of them have ever been played, really. I wrote a couple for Henry Franklin – it was going to be a duet but Henry was going to play both parts, you know? Over-dub the second part for an album he was going to do last spring but it never came off. My thinking now is, I feel very strongly about putting out a record myself.
Mark: From your early days in Texas, do you remember any blues players around Fort Worth or any of the popular records of the day?
John: There were a good many blues singers and guitar players during that time, but not any players that would be nationally known. As far as records we listened to all of the regular things, Bird, Diz, Lester Young, Ellington and Basie.
Mark: How about this Red Connor that Ornette talks about in his early interviews?
John Carter & Buddy Collette (Red Callendar in background) | September 28, 1980 | Photo by Mark Weber
John Carter & Gerald Oshita | February 13, 1981, San Francisco | Photo by Mark Weber
Vinny Golia & John Carter listen to a playback during recording Vinny’s album SPIRITS IN FELLOWSHIP | October 18, 1977 | Photo by Mark Weber
John: Yeah, we went to high school together, played in the high school bands, and played at the local clubs, all of that. We were very good friends, all of us that were coming up together. The reason Ornette is always talking about Red is because he was so much farther along than most of us were, although we were all about the same age. Like when we were in high school he already knew the blues form, the 32-bar form, the I Got Rhythm type of thing and all of that, and was just about to go into the early bebop things, while the rest of us were still playing high school-type music. He was really on the threshold of professional-type things. He would show us the things he knew about playing, this riff here and how that one fits, and this is the 12-bar form rather than so and so, so that years later when all of us had started to find out what it was all about, Red was already a really fine player.He died – in the mid-fifties, at the hospital where my wife worked. He had just used his body up, he was about 29, and he had just dissipated and used his body up. I would go out and visit, and he was doing fine, we’d laugh and talk about what he was gonna do when he got out and the pretty nurses who were passing the medicine and, you know, things like that that cats would talk about, and one day he died, just flat out. But he was quite a player. Played with a number of blues bands, stuff like that. Played with a fellow named Bobby Simmons, he and Red were really good friends, he was a trumpet player. Bobby’s still alive and used to come around to our concerts at Rudolph’s (Fine Arts Center). He moved back to Arizona or something like that, Bobby even played with Bird for a little bit. But Red, man listen he would have been one of the finest players that you would have heard in your life, you know what I mean? Of all the fine players that you listen to, he would have been one of those players, one of the finest that you would have heard in your life.
John Carter checking the time | Rudolph’s Fine Art Center | June or July 1975 | Photo by Mark Weber
John Carter Trio | June or July 1975 |
Rudolph’s | Stanley Carter, bass; William Jeffrey, drums, John Carter,
clarinet & soprano sax | Photo by Mark Weber
John Carter Trio | June or July 1975 |
even though this is quite fuzzy I wanted you to get a picture of what
the recital room looked like at Rudolph’s Fine Arts Center, 3320 west
50th Street, Los Angeles (near Crenshaw) (around the corner from Horace
& Celia Tapscott’s home) | I was between cameras at the time and was
using some cheap Instamatic job, in fact, even though I trained in
photography in 1970 I had had no eyes for photographing jazz | I only
took these as a memento because we had been attending so many of these
Sunday concerts at Rudolph’s to hear John’s trio | these represent very
nearly the first photographs I took of jazz players at work (the first
being a Stanley Crouch ensemble in May 1975) | Note the little table
with the wine & cheese! | Sunday afternoon jazz concerts were a
tradition in Southern California those years | This was bassoonist
Rudolph Porter’s place | Photo by Mark Weber
Mark: Charles Moffett was in those groups?
John: Yeah, at that time Moffett and Red used to play together, we all used to play together from time to time, have jam sessions and that kind of thing. Back in those days there were really true jam sessions, where musicians just came together and played. We were a little beyond the cutting contest era of the ’20’s, ’30’s and ’40’s, but still basically the same kind of idea, you know? If you pulled your horn out and got ready to play, it’d be good if you kind of knew what you were going to play, (laughter). And so at one time or another we would all play together, Ornette, Red, Lasha, “Ditty” Moffett and Dewey Red-man, and earlier LeRoy Cooper, who did not live in Fort Worth. LeRoy plays baritone sax with Ray Charles, he used to play alto, I can remember one time I heard him play How High The Moon beautifully on alto. David Newman who lived in Dallas used to get over sometimes too. So eventually we all played together.
Mark: Do you know anything about when Ornette was with PeeWee Crayton?
John: Well PeeWee would come through there from time to time, he tried to get me to go with him one time. Red Connor played with him one time, and Bobby Simmons. He was always trying to get good saxophone players to go with him.
Mark: From what I’ve
read PeeWee took Ornette around 1950 right after Ornette got back from
being stranded in New Orleans by a carnival. Then PeeWee stranded
Ornette in Los Angeles after firing him.
John: Yeah I don’t know the conditions surrounding Ornette’s playing with him, but I know it probably had to be like that. I wouldn’t be surprised, Ornette probably was not playing what PeeWee wanted to hear. You know PeeWee lives here in L.A.? It was very difficult to be on the road with a blues band, living conditions were bad and the money wasn’t very good, whatever money there was wasn’t definite. You know it was very difficult to find places to stay back in those days because you just didn’t go to a motel. If you went to a little town that didn’t have a Black motel, then you wound up sleeping at the hall or with somebody, at somebody’s house, and you would have to eat at little hole in the wall cafes, things like that.
Mark: Did you do much touring like that?
John Carter entering The Little Big Horn, 34 N. Mentor, Pasadena, California, USA | October 31, 1976 | Photo by Mark Weber
John Carter @ Little Big Horn | January 1977 | Photo by Mark Weber
William Jeffrey, drums; Chris Carter, bongos; John Carter, clarinet | @ Little Big Horn | September 5, 1976 | Photo by Mark Weber
William Jeffrey, drums; John Carter, clarinet | September 5, 1976 | Photo by Mark Weber
Bobby Bradford, flugelhorn; John Carter,
soprano sax?; Roberto Miranda, bass @ The Little Big Horn | November
28, 1976 | Photo by Mark Weber
John: I did it, but I didn’t like it very much (laughter), so I didn’t do it very much. Between the years ’45 and ’49 I was in college and when I came out I began to teach, so I didn’t have to go on the road with a band. During the time I would have been on the road, say between the years ’45 when I got out of high school and the early ’50’s I was doing something else. I left Kansas City with a band once, on our way to New York City. We were going to work all of the middle part of the country, that was the time of the territory bands. So we left for the first job, and the station wagon was using oil so badly that they had to.. .well they didn’t have enough money, so the guys were ripping off the oil when we stopped at the stations. So we finally got to Omaha and got a place to stay, our accomodations for the night. We were going to be there three days it seems to me. But the club owner wouldn’t let us play because we were late, so we had no way to pay for our motel. So we went back… now I remember this place as having a porch all around it, with windows leading out to the porch, (laughter), stealing our own stuff, right? (laughter), so we wouldn’t have to walk past the desk, because we didn’t have the money to pay.Then we got into the car and left for Wichita, Kansas. But I went home that summer, eventually. That group was led by a guy named George Baldwin, out of Kansas City. PeeWee used to be or is one of the old style Kansas City blues shouters, it seems to me I’ve seen him do battle with Big Joe Turner. Those guys in the blues cutting contests would stand up and sing one verse after another, oft times just making verses up as they went along, and listen man, those were really blues singers! Boy they don’t sing blues like that any more. That’s a Kansas City type blues. Kansas City used to be quite a crossroads for the music.
Mark: What about your teaching Julius Hemphill?
John: I was not really teaching him “jazz” as such, at that time. You see I had just got out of college and was nineteen and I remember Julius as being one of those first people that I was teaching. I was teaching him at the junior high level.
Mark: When did you meet Bobby Bradford?
John: I met him when I got out here, about ’65, Bob was living in Pomona and teaching out there, and I was teaching out here (L.A.). I was very frustrated with what I was doing. I had come here in 1961 and had aspirations for playing my music and I thought I could get as much studio work as I wanted to do when I got out here, that’s what Frank Kofsky talks about in his book (referring to “Black Giants”, The World Publishing Co.). I play good lead alto, tenor, soprano, good flute and clarinet of course. I can play oboe and bassoon, all well enough to do session work. And as I said in that interview, the same is true now, playing well isn’t what it’s about, not only do you have to be a really fine player, but ah… the right people have to know you.
Mark: You work exclusively on clarinet now, and some soprano saxophone.
Lester Bowie, John Carter, unknown, Bobby Bradford | June 25, 1976 Los Angeles | Photo by Mark Weber
Left to Right: John Carter, Bobby Bradford, Rudolph Porter, Lester Bowie | June 25, 1976 | Photo by Mark Weber
John Carter, clarinet; James Newton, bass clarinet | Century City Playhouse, Los Angeles | August 7, 1976 | Photo by Mark Weber
John: Yes. I think that certain personalities go with certain instruments. While I have known that all along it took me a long time to associate that with myself – because it takes a long time to try and see yourself, and I’m still trying. Like I know that I am not a tenor player, but I’ve spent a lot of time fooling with the tenor saxophone. I played tenor in college because that was the only way I could get into the dance band. In those days I couldn’t read as well as other fellows could but I could solo better than they could so they needed me in the band for that, (laughter) So I got in on tenor.
Mark: Where was that?
John: Lincoln University (Jefferson City, Missouri).
Mark: Was that the celebrated jazz band school?
John: You’re thinking of North Texas State, I went there too. They were one of the first schools and one of the few now to offer a degree in jazz performance. Man, they have all kinds of bands there, the one o’clock band, the two o’ clock lab band, the thursday night band, all kinds. Their musicians regularly go from college into the big time bands. At any rate, during my first years here in L.A. I was trying to get somebody to play with me, you know I wanted to organize a group but the cats were playing other things, they weren’t interested in playing the kind of music I was going to play. So in a conversation with Ornette about it Bob was mentioned. Bob had been with Ornette up to ’62, then went back to Texas and taught for a couple of years, and then moved out here. Well so Bobby really wasn’t doing anything either, on any kind of regular basis so we got together, it was very natural for us to try to get a group together. We got hold of Bruz (Freeman) and Tom (Williamson) and started to get it going.
Mark: I was reading last night that Bruz played with Bird, Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins.
John: And Sarah Vaughan. Oh man, he was playing good way back, Bruz was one of the first really free players. One of the forerunners of the free drum thing.
Mark: You conducted for Ornette at the UCLA Pauley Pavilion in 1967.
John: It was a suite that Ornette had just done for the Guggenheim Grant that he had just got, whatever year that was. A very difficult piece. The band was in the festival house orchestra, whoever was playing brought along their charts and we played them. Carmen McRae was on that and Clark Terry. Ornette’s piece was written for big band against his quintet.
John Carter & Oliver Lake | solos
& duets concert Tuesday, January 3, 1978 @ Century City Playhouse |
Photo by Mark Weber
Bobby & John at Smudge Pot, Claremont Colleges — November 17, 1978 — photo by Mark Weber
Mark: How big was the group?
John: Full group, five trumpets, four trombones, five reeds and a full rhythm section, and violins and cellos. He played that music a lot of times, he played it with the San Francisco Symphony, he played it in Europe and back in New York.
Mark: About 1973 you went to Europe, how long did you stay there?
John: Only about three weeks, 1 did a lot of running around and some playing there. When I got to London Bob came over and we played several places, played with all of the guys who played with him on that record he did for Emanem. You know Trevor Watts and John Stevens and those guys. I think Trevor and John are probably two of the real free players that I heard around London, both fine players. Then in Paris I played a couple of times, the highlights of that were one night when I sat in with Jaki Byard and one night with Kenny Clarke, strictly bebop. Or I just played what I could play, they probably didn’t think it was bebop, but we had a good time.
Mark: And when you got back from Europe you met Rudolph Porter to form the Art’s Center and your Sunday concerts.
John: Yes. We did that for two years before we had to move on, now of course we have Bob’s place (Bradford’s 34 N. Mentor, Pasadena).
Mark: Burt Lancaster even came down to Rudolph’s once, how did he like the music?
John: He really liked it. We were very surprised, we walked in one day and there he was with his skippers cap on and looking like Burt Lancaster. Oh, quite a few people used to drop by from time to time. During the first year Black Arthur Blythe used to drop by quite often. He and I have played a lot together over the years.
Mark: Do you make very much money off your records?
John: Very little. Made a little off the Revelation records this year. Never made any money off the Flying Dutchman records. Just got some front money, but that wasn’t supposed to be all, we were supposed to get a regular percentage of the records as they were sold wholesale.
Mark: How do you straighten out things like that?
John: Well, you have to be where the record company is, and you have to get a lawyer and a CPA and you have to request to audit their books, and it has to be done at a certain time during the year. So you see there are very few cats who can do that. Once you have done that you’ve got to sue, and you have to pay the CPA, and the lawyer. Well the average performer does not have the time or the inclination to do that, and then on top of all that you cannot be sure that they will show you the correct set of books anyhow.
Mark: There has to be a
way that artists in this country can be subsidized regularly on a
federal basis, because you cannot rely on the public to follow the
artists exploring music on the vanguard and therefore getting enough
money into their hands so that they can further develop and sustain
themselves and their families. If people treated it like the “commodity”
that it is, things would be a little different and so would their
lives.
John: Well the government is doing a little better, I mean a little more than they used to, but I haven’t seen anything myself. There are the grants, the NBA and the states are giving a little more, probably led by New York state. So the government is starting to help out a little bit but it’s still far from really setting out to develop an artistic climate, far from it.
Interview taken August 31, 1976 at John’s
Culver City home, a suburb of Los Angeles where he and his family have
lived since 1961 when they moved here from his birthplace Fort Worth,
Texas.
John Carter at home, 3900 Carol Court, Culver City 90230 | August 31, 1976 (during the CODA interview) | Photo by Mark Weber
John Carter & son Chris | @ The Little Big Horn, 34 N. Mentor, Pasadena | either December 1976 or January 1977 | Photo by Mark Weber
Gloria and John had 4 children: John Jr, Stanley, Karen, and Chris | here’s Chris, Gloria, Karen, and John Carter visiting my little alley pad in Upland, California | October 23, 1976 | John had drove out ( I lived an hour east of Culver City) to drop off one of his Porsches with my brother, who was his mechanic) | we also were discussing his album ECHOES OF RUDOLPH’S which was then in production | Photo by Mark Weber
John Carter at home, 3900 Carol Court, Culver City 90230 | August 31, 1976 (during the CODA interview) | Photo by Mark Weber
The interview was taken from CODA Jazz Magazine Issue October 1977
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/05/arts/john-carter-s-case-for-the-clarinet.html
Archives | 1981
JOHN CARTER'S CASE FOR THE CLARINET
The
clarinet, Benny Goodman's beloved ''licorice stick,'' practically
disappeared from jazz with the advent of Modernism in the 1940's. Its
place in the jazz ensemble was usurped by the saxophone, which is also a
reed instrument but projects a more powerful sound - at least that's
what most jazz histories tell us. But musicians sometimes suggest
another reason for the clarinet's sudden demise and the saxophone's
ascendency: the saxophone is an easier instrument to master. Modern
musicians have stayed away from the clarinet not only because there were
few contemporary clarinetists to serve as role models, but because the
instrument makes such difficult demands on both the lip and the mind.
Why
the mind? The saxophone has an octave key that automatically raises low
C to middle C and middle C to high C. One standardized fingering works
in each of the instrument's ranges or registers. The clarinetist plays
C, presses the octave key, and gets a G. He uses different fingerings
according to the range he is playing in; as the saxophonist Ornette
Coleman recently put it, ''On clarinet, you'd have to use your head like
a computer just to keep making the same mistakes.'' It isn't surprising
that when contemporary saxophonists play the clarinet as a second
instrument, they are rarely convincing. The clarinet requires
dedication, and only a handful of younger musicians - Perry Robinson is
the noble example - have dedicated themselves to it wholeheartedly.
But
the clarinet offers ample rewards for the serious player, as two recent
albums by John Carter indicate. Mr. Carter, who was born in Fort Worth,
Tex., in 1929 and now lives in Los Angeles, began his jazz career as a
saxophonist. Together with Bobby Bradford, a trumpeter from Fort Worth,
he recorded several albums for the Revelation and Flying Dutchman labels
in the late 60's and early 70's. Then he was bitten by the clarinet
bug. He began to neglect his saxophones and flutes, and by the mid-70's
he was a full-time clarinetist, with an admirable control of the
instrument and a fresh, personal style. He performed in New York City
two years ago with a big band led by the saxophonist David Murray, but
for the most part he has stayed in the Los Angeles area, where he
teaches. His albums ''Variations'' (Moers Music 01056) and ''Night
Fire'' (Black Saint BSR 0047) are the first recordings to effectively
present his case for the clarinet's continuing relevance in modern jazz.
On
an earlier album, ''Echoes From Rudolph's'' (Ibadan IAS 1000), recorded
in 1976, Mr. Carter grappled with the clarinet but did not quite
overcome it. In relatively inexperienced hands, the instrument sounds
shrill in the upper register and turns to squeak and snort in the lower
register, and from time to time Mr. Carter's work on ''Rudolph's'' fell
victim to these problems. ''Variations'' and ''Night Fire,'' recorded in
1979 and 1980 respectively, are another matter.
On
both albums, Mr. Carter led quintets that featured his longtime
sidekick Bobby Bradford on trumpet and James Newton, one of the most
formidable jazz soloists to have emerged from Los Angeles in recent
years, on flute. The instrumentation suggests a kind of chamber jazz,
and Mr. Carter's themes and scoring, as well as the improvised
interaction between the musicians, do suggest influences from
contemporary classical music. But Mr. Carter and Mr. Bradford were early
associates of Ornette Coleman in Texas, and their roots, like his, are
in more directly expressive brands of music such as rhythmand-blues.
They play Mr. Carter's thoughtful, refined, music with an attractively
gutsy attack and inflection.
Mr.
Carter's solo on ''B.L.'s Delight,'' the opening selection from
''Variations,'' makes the clarinet's peculiarities work for him rather
than against him. One problem that has confronted every musician who
improvises on the clarinet is the extreme dichotomy between its upper
and lower registers. In the upper register it has a high, keening,
penetrating sound; in the lower register it is mellow and woody. Some
modern clarinetists, Jimmy Giuffre, for example, have skirted around
this problem by confining their work to the lower end of the instrument.
Mr. Carter's ''B.L.'s Delight'' solo jumps skittishly from lower to
upper register and back again; he uses the dichotomy and registers,
which makes many clarinetists' work sound disjointed, as an organizing
principle. His other solos take somewhat different tacks, but each one
is organized around a central idea - rising figures, or growls and
flutters - and each one ranges over the clarinet from top to bottom.
Bobby
Bradford has developed into one of the most inventive and commanding
trumpet soloists in contemporary jazz. It would be easy for a trumpeter
to overstate his case in a group that features relatively soft
instruments like the clarinet and flute, but Mr. Bradford adjusts to
the dynamics of Mr. Carter's quintets with ease. Like the clarinetist,
he ranges easily through the registers of his instrument, creating long
lines that are likely to begin and end almost anywhere but always
demonstrate a certain internal coherence. James Newton plays a
particularly important role in the music because of the remarkable body
and weight of his sound. ''Echoes From Haarlem,'' one of the highlights
of the ''Variations'' album, finds the clarinetist and flutist engaging
in a mercurial dialogue of equals. Both musicians use their voices to
execute sneers and snarls that are beyond the conventional capabilities
of their instruments, but more melodic playing dominates.
Mr.
Carter's quintet music is most successful when it explores the
territory somewhere between chamber music and free-form jazz. The title
tune on ''Night Fire'' is bluesier and less carefully structured than
most of the other music and, although there are some fine moments,
overall it rambles. For the most part, Mr. Carter avoids the other
extreme - over-writing and excessive refinement. Rhythmically, his work
is solidly grounded in the jazz tradition.
James
Newton's latest album, ''The Mystery School'' (India Navigation
IN-1046), is more overtly chamber music. It features a wind quintet that
includes Mr. Carter on clarinet, and while the players are
jazz-oriented, without a rhythm section their improvising tends to be
textural and somewhat static rather than inventively melodic and
propulsive. Much of ''The Mystery School'' is coolly evocative, and it
does demonstrate Mr. Newton's growth as a serious composer. But the
album lacks the sense of play and spontaneity that makes Mr. Carter's
records, and especially ''Variations,'' so appealing.
3/1/2011
by Colin Fleming
John Carter and Bobby Bradford: Mosaic Select 36
If you’re an admirer of saxophonist-clarinetist John Carter and trumpeter Bobby Bradford’s musical union, you’ll surely appreciate the invaluable service provided by Mosaic with this three-disc set. Previously, if you wanted to hear these two West Coast freeboppers, you had to do some searching. Their music has never been easy to come by, something that Carter himself seemed to anticipate if the liner notes for the pair’s second album, Secrets (’73), are any indication.
Carter and Bradford were former Ornette Coleman acolytes turned L.A. visionaries, guys with day jobs-as school teachers-forced to grind away at the business of music-making on the side. This collection includes all of Secrets plus their ’69 debut Seeking, as well as a sizable stash of much-storied unreleased music from as late as mid-1979, a period when the two musicians had abandoned drums and bass entirely.
Seeking isn’t as “out” as one might expect, given the radical-jazz tag that tends to accompany Carter/Bradford talk. It’s a set grounded by Bruz Freeman’s uptempo cymbal work and timely bomb-dropping-a hard-bop fan would hardly be lost here-but it’s also a very painterly session. “In the Vineyard” conjures an open space where the winds-in the form of horns-kick up and blow in alternating directions, a freeform of unimpeded movement.
Most of the unit’s material was composed by Carter. By the time of Secrets, he was also writing for piano, after having ditched a regular rhythm section. Carter and Bradford are in full-on assault mode with “Rosevita’s Dance,” one of the more amped up of all early ’70s pieces. Listening to it is bound to stir pangs of frustration-and some confusion-that these guys escaped the notice of most jazz fans. The unreleased material, meanwhile, is consistently as strong, and bountiful-more than doubling the duo’s commercial output. “Blues Upstairs”-Carter’s homage to his early Texas after-hours beginnings-is a meaty tenor piece, coming on like some swaggering cowpoke not afraid of a tussle. Emboldening jazz, through and through.
Moment's Notice
Reviews of Recent Recordings
John Carter
Echoes from Rudolph’s
NoBusiness NBCD 80-81
A
quarter century after his death, John Carter (1929-1991) remains
woefully underappreciated. He’s a giant as a modern jazz composer, for
his five-album epic Roots and Folklore: Episodes in the Development of American Folk Music,
a reimagining of the Africa to America diaspora that’s Ellingtonian in
its sweep, and utterly original in its sound. (But only the first and
least representative volume, Black Saint’s Dauwhe, is currently
available.) The other revolutionary Carter, the one who concerns us
today, is the clarinetist who rethought the instrument’s capabilities,
and extended its upward range almost an octave.
Carter’s
body of work can be roughly divided into two unequal periods. The
first starts in 1969, when he began recording, mostly on alto or tenor
saxophone, in partnership with cornetist Bobby Bradford, in the
quartet/quintet sometimes called the New Art Jazz Ensemble. The second
period takes in his mature works, including the 1982-‘89 Roots and Folklore series, its unofficial preamble A Suite of Early American Folk Pieces for Solo Clarinet (Moers), and the quintet albums Variations (Moers) and Night Fire
(Black Saint). There is overlap between these periods, not least
because Bradford was involved in everything just mentioned save the
solo album, as well as an occasional duo and quintet. But the rare and
newly reissued Echoes from Rudolph’s, the lone release on
Carter’s Ibedon label, recorded mostly in 1976, finds him on the cusp
of his mature style. It documents the moment when his clarinet
conception bloomed, and other reeds (and flute) became superfluous. In
the years to come, that roughhewn clarinet sound would help him find
his increasingly idiosyncratic voice as composer.
Not
that he was new to clarinet in 1976. He’d played it (and flute) with
Bradford sometimes. From the earliest versions of Carter’s signature
ditty “Sticks and Stones” in 1969, many of the elements of his mature
blackstick style were already in place: the dry-wood timbre, the
teetering sprints across the high and low registers and the register
break, the restless hot-foot motion. He had started to feature it more
by the 1971 concert that surfaced in Mosaic Select’s 2010
Carter-Bradford box. But the extreme high notes weren’t there yet.
Carter’s
two-and-a-half-year weekly residency at the South Los Angeles gallery
Rudolph’s Fine Arts Center seems to have been the watershed. With
Bradford off in London for most of 1973, Carter formed a trio of his
own, with drummer William Jeffrey, who later played on various Carter
and Bradford records, and John’s son Stanley Carter on bass. Until
2015, Stanley’s only other available recording was an obscure LP by
ethnomusicologist Steve Loza and the Cal Poly Jazz Band. But then came
the Bradford-Carter 1975 live NoUTurn (Dark Tree) with Roberto Miranda also on bass. The new Echoes from Rudolph’s
includes the original LP (mastered from a clean test pressing – there
are a few little pops), supplemented on disc two with a 1977 broadcast
by the same trio.
John
Carter liberated the clarinet the way geometric-abstractionists
liberated the grid of the canvas; he made its own inherent textures
part of his subject. The clarinet wants to squeak, and Carter ran with
that tendency.
On
the LP, when Carter began to season his pastoral “Echoes from
Rudolph’s” with fleeting eruptions into the troposphere, he announced
his forceful new style. And when bass and drums leapt in to join in
fierce conversation, he aimed higher still for the sheer roiling
excitement of it all. Carter liked a rowdy ensemble sound years before
the Roots and Folklore octets. Jeffrey drums in waves, and
doesn’t let cymbals wash out his dry textures, and he hooks up well
with Stanley Carter. The latter is a minor marvel on bass, strumming
chords, answering clarinet melodies, keening with a bow. He’s
supportive and independently melodic, sometimes at the same time, in
the tradition of 1964 Gary Peacock. (Alas, not long after Stanley gave
up the bass for more gainful employment.) His groaning arco grounds his
father’s highest flights.
Here
and elsewhere, every once in a while John plays a squeak that sounds
unintended, but not necessarily unwelcome. Carter had discovered the
clarinet’s sturdy upper partials by studying his mistakes. “If I hit a
note that squeaks and it’s a good solid sound,” he said in 1989, “I try
to figure out what note it is, and remember the fingering.” He is not
quite all the way there in 1976. On his altissimo entrance on the
room-rattling roof-raiser “The Last Sunday,” his highs are less steady
and confident than they’d soon become.
His
art song “To a Fallen Poppy” shows the hazards of very slow tempos –
the rhythm players rummage around, just for something to do. But the
distant flat-affect vocal by Melba Joyce (the onetime Mrs. Bradford) is
pleasantly spooky, and presages Terry Jenoure’s occasional vocals in
the Roots and Folklore suites.
John
Carter plays saxophone on “Amin,” but he’s now switched from alto or
tenor to soprano, where the high notes are. But his clarinet style is
too idiosyncratic to allow a simple transfer of conception from
straight-bore wood to conical metal. His soprano voice has a distinct
character, a little sweeter and perhaps more sentimental. It sings in a
more conventional way, but blends less well with the bass’s wood tone.
Sound
quality on the Rudolph’s recording is pretty rough – it was the first
and only album Carter put out himself – but the sound on the newly
issued air check is rougher still. There’s a 27-minute medley of
“Echoes” and “Poppy” where the rhythm players solo at great length;
Carter plays soprano on the latter. More interesting is the 41-minute
suite of five Carter compositions, all but one (a reprise of “Amin”)
unidentified. The first tune partly revolves around a colloquial,
downward sliding figure that Stanley echoes, glissing on double bass –
embracing that fretless instrument’s natural tendencies. Around 15
minutes in, as one piece gives way to the next, John plays clarinet and
soprano solos back to back; you can hear for yourself how much easier
it was for him to break with precedent on the former. Clarinet was a
more open field.
That broadcast was from March of 1977, after the bulk of Echoes from Rudolph’s
was recorded, and it marks Carter’s last recorded saxophone work
(unless Tom Lord’s discography is accurate, and he played soprano on
one track of that Steve Loza LP in 1983, long after the rest of the
album was recorded). That July, he recorded the last piece for Rudolph’s,
the clarinet solo “Angles,” replacing a (presumably lost) soprano
solo. Here he shows off his precise and modulating split-tones, and
full range of action-painter special effects. Carter had a way of
sounding at once hopelessly excitable and thoroughly in control, as he
careened across the instrument’s ever-broadening range. From here, it’s
small steps to his 1979 solo album, and the rest of his golden age.
Again,
it’s no mystery why Carter left saxophones behind. The coarse-grain
sound of his clarinet – to borrow a phrase from Wilfrid Mellers’ survey
of American music, the sound of an axe in the wilderness – could not
be beat. It suited, and prompted, the rustic air of so much of his
music to come.
-–Kevin Whitehead
https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2013/08/09/a-classic-album-by-the-john-carter-and-bobby-bradford-quartet-gets-the-proper-treatment
Friday, August 9, 2013
Jazz / Music / Post No Bills A classic album by the John Carter & Bobby Bradford Quartet gets the proper treatment
Posted By Peter Margasak on 08.09.13
Jonathan Horwich, the fellow behind the superb Chicago jazz reissue label International Phonograph, cut his teeth in the jazz record biz while he lived in Los Angeles beginning in the late 60s, where among other things he was involved with running Revelation Records. One of the most important bands that imprint worked with was the New Art Jazz Ensemble, an outfit later known as the John Carter & Bobby Bradford Quartet. A couple of years ago Horwich compiled and produced an essential three-CD box set of that group's Revelation Recordings for Mosaic Records. Now he's carrying on that work by releasing a beautifully packaged reissue of Flight for Four, a 1969 album cut for Flying Dutchman Records, the label started by producer Bob Thiele after he left Impulse.
Reedist John Carter and cornetist Bobby Bradford were pioneers of free jazz on the west coast, adapting to their own magnificent end the concepts of fellow Texas native Ornette Coleman, who in 1965 happened to suggest their partnership. Their band employed a variety of rhythm-section members over the years, but the one here is probably the best, with bassist Tom Williamson and drummer Bruz Freeman, the elder brother of Von and George Freeman. Williamson is an endless source of energy, loosely tracing forms of each piece with a frenetic yet controlled propulsion that almost seems like the blueprint for what William Parker has been doing the last few decades. Freeman fit in perfectly with the front line in using deep foundations in hard bop and swing to push outward, chopping up time into little self-contained packets of rhythmic counterpoint and vivid asides. Both bassist and drummer supported the structure of the compositions without ever boxing the horn players in.Carter composed four of the five tunes on the album, the cornetist the fifth, but the performances reveal a true collaboration. Bradford is deservedly well-known as one of the most lyric brass players in all of free jazz, and indeed, there are improvised phrases here that were lingering in my memory even though I probably hadn't heard this album in a good ten years. A tuneful up-and-down line he plays on the album opener, "Call to the Festival," emerges from a tightly coiled cluster of notes, and remerges in various mutations throughout his magical solo, especially when he repeats it three consecutive times with marvelous effect three and a half minutes in. Carter, who juggles alto and tenor saxophones here along with clarinet (the instrument he would soon dedicate himself to exclusively), is the angular, mercurial yin to Bradford's plush, melodic yang, hijacking the high-velocity language of bebop into wonderfully jagged, interrelated phrases that arrive in exhilarating rushes. Below you can hear Carter's piece "Abstraction for Three Lovers," where the horn players quickly follow a seesawing arco figure by Williamson with a mirrored steeplechase ascent of their own, opening up to a deft give-and-take that characterized so much of what the group accomplished.
AUDIO TRACK
00:00
06:42
John Carter & Bobby Bradford Quartet, "Abstractions for Three Lovers"
Four of the tracks on Flight for Four were previously reissued in an ugly 1991 package on Novus called West Coast Hot, which paired the music with The Giant Is Awakened, another great Flying Dutchman album by pianist and fellow Angelino Horace Tapscott (nowhere in that Novus release were those album titles even mentioned). The International Phonograph reissue reverts to the original art in a gorgeous cardboard gatefold, with inserts of the original Frank Kofsky liner notes, and a new set by Boston jazz critic Ed Hazell. The digital transfers are fantastic.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/echoes-from-rudolphs-john-carter-nobusiness-records-review-by-john-sharpe.php
John Carter: Echoes From Rudolph's
by
Echoes From Rudolph's captures a pivotal moment in clarinetist John Carter's career, when he abandoned his saxophones and began specializing entirely on the woodwind wand. Reissued from 1977, the NoBusiness imprint has supplemented the original LP with a contemporaneous radio broadcast by the same unit. While there is some noise on the first disc as it was transferred from a test pressing, it's not enough to present a problem. The radio broadcast is slightly murkier, with Carter himself suffering the most. Nonetheless it's clear from the first notes that this is a working group. Once the heads have been navigated, everyone plays an equal role.
Carter possesses a rich full sound on clarinet, but also skillfully exploits the altissimo register, skirling up into bat frequency territory, though he also takes pleasure in scratchy timbral adventure. His son Stanley holds down the bass chair, utilizing amplified acoustic which loses some of its natural resonance but benefits from enhanced percussive flavor. He favors a busy sound whether in rippling pizzicato, plucked harmonics, or buzzing arco. On drums William Jeffrey proves an accomplished practitioner -an inventive purveyor of pulse who rarely settles into time.
Carter introduces proceedings on the title track with a bubbling solo clarinet as if heralding a new dawn, before choppy bass and drums connect to create a garrulous conversational vibe which exemplifies the collective ethos of the band. On the elegiac, restrained "To A Fallen Poppy," vocalist Melba Joyce bewitchingly sings the lyric with delicate murmuring support from the leader's clarinet. Carter makes a bold statement of intent on the unaccompanied "Angles" starting with a clarion call spiraling into the thinnest of whistles, before incorporating multiphonics at a fast simmer, fuelled by circular breathing.
Track Listing: Echoes From Rudolph's; To A Fallen Poppy; Angles;
Amin; The Last Sunday; Echoes From Rudolph's/To A Fallen Poppy;
Unidentified Title 1/ Unidentified Title 2/ Unidentified Title 3/
Unidentified Title 4/Amin.
Personnel: John Carter: soprano saxophone, clarinet; Stanley Carter: bass; William Jeffrey: drums, percussion; Melba Joyce: vocals (2); Chris Carter: finger cymbals (2).
Title: Echoes From Rudolph's | Year Released: 2016 | Record Label: NoBusiness Records
Personnel: John Carter: soprano saxophone, clarinet; Stanley Carter: bass; William Jeffrey: drums, percussion; Melba Joyce: vocals (2); Chris Carter: finger cymbals (2).
Title: Echoes From Rudolph's | Year Released: 2016 | Record Label: NoBusiness Records
Francois Houle 5: In The Vernacular "The Music of John Carter"
byNovember 1, 1998
AllAboutJazz
The Songlines record label is at the forefront of modern jazz vernacular. Excellent releases by Jerry Granelli, Tiny Bell Trio, Chris Speed, Han Bennink and Dave Douglas attest to the vision which is indicative of this label’s charter. Songlines continues to promote sheer goodness with the Francois Houle 5 “In the Vernacular – The Music of John Carter.”
“In The Vernacular”, is a tribute of sorts performed by
the Francois Houle 5 paying homage to the late clarinetist/composer John
Carter. Carter’s African-American folklore series resulted in a deep
rooted classicism that was markedly innovative for its time. Carter’s
concept and execution was spiritually poignant, peerless and acclaimed
by critics.
All but 2 compositions here are Carter originals. Houle and trumpet virtuoso Dave Douglas whip through Carter compositions such as “Sticks and Stones” and “Karen on Monday”. Houle’s interpretations of Carter’s material is vivid and imaginative. More so, Francois Houle’s heartfelt translations of these great compositions serve as living testaments to the unique voice of John Carter. His phrasing, lyricism and superior craftsmanship is astounding. Houle’s atmospheric intonation conjures up thoughts of an angel sitting atop a cloud. The delicacy and at times urgency of his clarinet evokes many moods, typifying the variance of this project. Dave Douglas (trumpet), along with Mark Dresser (bass), Peggy Lee (cello) and Dylan van der Schyff (drums) round out the Quintet and perform in glorious fashion. Houle and Douglas launch some ferocious dialogue while Dresser, Lee and Schyff provide sensitive accompaniment throughout the entire affair. The Francois Houle 5 revives the fascinating music of John Carter in a consummate approach. Houle and Co. breath new fire into the legacy of John Carter. Highly recommended.
https://burningambulance.com/2013/07/31/john-carter-bobby-bradford/
by Phil Freeman
The John Carter/Bobby Bradford Quartet is getting more attention in the past three years than at almost any time in the four decades prior, thanks to the efforts of Jonathan Horwich. In 2010, Horwich—who worked with Carter and Bradford as owner of the Revelation label in the late ’60s—arranged for a three-disc set including 1969’s Seeking, 1973’s Secrets, and several previously unreleased sessions to be released as part of Mosaic’s Select series. And now, he’s reissued 1969’s Flight for Four, the group’s first album for Flying Dutchman, on his awesome International Phonograph label.
International Phonograph is turning into one of the crucial small imprints of the moment. Their first release was Bill Dixon‘s 1967 masterpiece Intents and Purposes; they followed that up with Julius Hemphill‘s Dogon A.D. (with one bonus track appended, recorded at the Dogon session but originally released on Coon Bid’ness), and organist/bandleader Clare Fischer‘s Extensions. Flight for Four is the fourth release, and like its predecessors, it’s a meticulously recreated miniature version of the original LP, gatefold, liner notes and all.
Carter and Bradford, both Texans living in Los Angeles, were recommended to each other by a mutual friend and fellow Lone Star State expatriate, Ornette Coleman, with whom Bradford had played in the early 1960s. They found themselves to be very much kindred spirits, and formed a group with bassist Tom Williamson and drummer Eldridge “Bruz” Freeman, brother of Chicago saxophonist Von Freeman. Originally working as the New Art Jazz Ensemble, they were encouraged to change their name, likely by Bob Thiele, who produced this album.
Musically, the record is breathtaking. Consistently exploratory yet melodic and bluesy enough to hold the attention of any even mildly curious listener, the five compositions crackle with energy without ever erupting into clichéd blare. It’s easy to hear why Ornette Coleman thought these two guys should work together—they’re practically two sides of the same person. Carter juggles tenor saxophone, clarinet, and flute, expressing himself in a lyrical and introspective manner on each instrument. His phrases keen and murmur, enticing the listener to ever greater focus as the tracks go on. Bradford, too, is a clear and forceful thinker on his instrument, the trumpet, never spewing streams of high notes or trilling pointlessly; he’s as suffused with the blues as his partner. Behind them, Williamson and Freeman surge and recede, dance with and around each other, and maintain a rock-solid foundation even as they do some exploring of their own. The album opens with an almost martial drum pattern which kicks off “Call to the Festival,” a piece which recalls Ornette’s work of a decade earlier, but is thoroughly modern at the same time. The hard-charging “The Second Set” and the mournful “Woman” follow, each of the four players exploring every aspect of the collective sound they’re building. On the latter track in particular, Thiele’s production choices come strongly to the fore, particularly his heavily reverbed treatment of Freeman’s drums and the massive, throbbing bass sound, all of which is impeccably captured on this amazing remaster job. And when the full ensemble comes all the way together, as on the passages that open and close “Abstractions for Three Lovers,” you almost can’t believe what you’re hearing. By the time the album ends with the clearly built-for-the-stage burner “Domino,” the only fitting response is to press “Play” again. This is an amazing, joyous record that will reward any jazz fan who seeks it out. And who knows? Maybe Horwich and International Phonograph will reissue the follow-up, 1970’s Self Determination Music, too…
As anyone who regularly visits this space knows, I'm a huge fan of the music created by the LA jazz musicians John Carter and Bobby Bradford, whether together or on their own. In the summer of 2013 the great Chicago reissue label International Phonograph put the classic 1969 Flying Dutchman release Flight for Four (performed by a quartet led by Carter and Bradford) back into circulation, featuring a beautiful restoration of the original artwork within a lovely cardboard package. But most of that particular release had been previously issued on a CD (as was another album reissued by International Phonograph, by fellow LA titan Horace Tapscott). The second album Carter and Bradford made for Bob Thiele's label, however, has never been available on disc—until now.
All but 2 compositions here are Carter originals. Houle and trumpet virtuoso Dave Douglas whip through Carter compositions such as “Sticks and Stones” and “Karen on Monday”. Houle’s interpretations of Carter’s material is vivid and imaginative. More so, Francois Houle’s heartfelt translations of these great compositions serve as living testaments to the unique voice of John Carter. His phrasing, lyricism and superior craftsmanship is astounding. Houle’s atmospheric intonation conjures up thoughts of an angel sitting atop a cloud. The delicacy and at times urgency of his clarinet evokes many moods, typifying the variance of this project. Dave Douglas (trumpet), along with Mark Dresser (bass), Peggy Lee (cello) and Dylan van der Schyff (drums) round out the Quintet and perform in glorious fashion. Houle and Douglas launch some ferocious dialogue while Dresser, Lee and Schyff provide sensitive accompaniment throughout the entire affair. The Francois Houle 5 revives the fascinating music of John Carter in a consummate approach. Houle and Co. breath new fire into the legacy of John Carter. Highly recommended.
Title: In The Vernacular "The Music of John Carter"
| Year Released: 1998
| Record Label: Songlines Recordings
https://burningambulance.com/2013/07/31/john-carter-bobby-bradford/
by Phil Freeman
The John Carter/Bobby Bradford Quartet is getting more attention in the past three years than at almost any time in the four decades prior, thanks to the efforts of Jonathan Horwich. In 2010, Horwich—who worked with Carter and Bradford as owner of the Revelation label in the late ’60s—arranged for a three-disc set including 1969’s Seeking, 1973’s Secrets, and several previously unreleased sessions to be released as part of Mosaic’s Select series. And now, he’s reissued 1969’s Flight for Four, the group’s first album for Flying Dutchman, on his awesome International Phonograph label.
International Phonograph is turning into one of the crucial small imprints of the moment. Their first release was Bill Dixon‘s 1967 masterpiece Intents and Purposes; they followed that up with Julius Hemphill‘s Dogon A.D. (with one bonus track appended, recorded at the Dogon session but originally released on Coon Bid’ness), and organist/bandleader Clare Fischer‘s Extensions. Flight for Four is the fourth release, and like its predecessors, it’s a meticulously recreated miniature version of the original LP, gatefold, liner notes and all.
Carter and Bradford, both Texans living in Los Angeles, were recommended to each other by a mutual friend and fellow Lone Star State expatriate, Ornette Coleman, with whom Bradford had played in the early 1960s. They found themselves to be very much kindred spirits, and formed a group with bassist Tom Williamson and drummer Eldridge “Bruz” Freeman, brother of Chicago saxophonist Von Freeman. Originally working as the New Art Jazz Ensemble, they were encouraged to change their name, likely by Bob Thiele, who produced this album.
Musically, the record is breathtaking. Consistently exploratory yet melodic and bluesy enough to hold the attention of any even mildly curious listener, the five compositions crackle with energy without ever erupting into clichéd blare. It’s easy to hear why Ornette Coleman thought these two guys should work together—they’re practically two sides of the same person. Carter juggles tenor saxophone, clarinet, and flute, expressing himself in a lyrical and introspective manner on each instrument. His phrases keen and murmur, enticing the listener to ever greater focus as the tracks go on. Bradford, too, is a clear and forceful thinker on his instrument, the trumpet, never spewing streams of high notes or trilling pointlessly; he’s as suffused with the blues as his partner. Behind them, Williamson and Freeman surge and recede, dance with and around each other, and maintain a rock-solid foundation even as they do some exploring of their own. The album opens with an almost martial drum pattern which kicks off “Call to the Festival,” a piece which recalls Ornette’s work of a decade earlier, but is thoroughly modern at the same time. The hard-charging “The Second Set” and the mournful “Woman” follow, each of the four players exploring every aspect of the collective sound they’re building. On the latter track in particular, Thiele’s production choices come strongly to the fore, particularly his heavily reverbed treatment of Freeman’s drums and the massive, throbbing bass sound, all of which is impeccably captured on this amazing remaster job. And when the full ensemble comes all the way together, as on the passages that open and close “Abstractions for Three Lovers,” you almost can’t believe what you’re hearing. By the time the album ends with the clearly built-for-the-stage burner “Domino,” the only fitting response is to press “Play” again. This is an amazing, joyous record that will reward any jazz fan who seeks it out. And who knows? Maybe Horwich and International Phonograph will reissue the follow-up, 1970’s Self Determination Music, too…
https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/03/13/the-classic-album-self-determination-music-is-finally-back-in-circulation
Jazz / Music / Post No Bills The classic album Self Determination Music is finally back in circulation
Posted By Peter Margasak
3.13.15
Chicago Reader
As anyone who regularly visits this space knows, I'm a huge fan of the music created by the LA jazz musicians John Carter and Bobby Bradford, whether together or on their own. In the summer of 2013 the great Chicago reissue label International Phonograph put the classic 1969 Flying Dutchman release Flight for Four (performed by a quartet led by Carter and Bradford) back into circulation, featuring a beautiful restoration of the original artwork within a lovely cardboard package. But most of that particular release had been previously issued on a CD (as was another album reissued by International Phonograph, by fellow LA titan Horace Tapscott). The second album Carter and Bradford made for Bob Thiele's label, however, has never been available on disc—until now.
A few weeks ago the British imprint BGP reissued the 1970 album Self Determination Music,
and although the packaging and new liner notes are generic, the music
is so wonderful that I don't care. For this recording the quartet—which
also includes drummer Bruz Freeman, a former Chicagoan and brother to
Von and George, and bassist Tom Williamson—was expanded to a quintet
with the addition of second bassist Henry Franklin, giving the music an
impressively knotty, spindly low end and an extra blast of propulsion.
But as usual the real thrill is the work of the ebullient front line,
which was in the thick of putting its own spin on the sound of Ornette Coleman—an icon whom Bradford had played with, both before Self Determination Music and later for the sessions that produced Broken Shadows.
Carter wrote three of the four pieces, with Bradford composing "The
Eyes of the Storm," an aptly titled burner with extended multilinear
solos on which the highly attuned rapport of the horn players couldn't
be more obvious.
Carter's moody ballad "Loneliness" mixes up the timbre, with Freeman opening the piece with terse xylophone figures over bowed basslines and the muted braid of Carter's flute and Bradford's cornet, the latter of which set the tone before the simmering melody rolls in like a bank of fog. Bradford, playing with a mute, shows off his most tender, lyric side, with Carter shadowing him with gauzy, liquid flute shapes. The high-velocity closer "Encounter" deftly shows off Bradford's agility at a breakneck tempo, pushing into the horn's upper register without losing control of his tart, tuneful phrasing, while Carter delivers a jagged tenor solo that demonstrates there was already far more to his game than Coleman's strain of free jazz, at times sounding closer to Sam Rivers or John Tchicai. Below you can hear the opening track, Carter's "The Sunday Afternoon Jazz Blues Society," which he rerecorded as "Sunday Afternoon Jazz Society Blues" for his great 1989 album with Bradford called Comin' On (Hat Art). I first heard it on the later album, and its spirited, chirping melody has never left me—hearing this version was like running into an old friend.
Carter's moody ballad "Loneliness" mixes up the timbre, with Freeman opening the piece with terse xylophone figures over bowed basslines and the muted braid of Carter's flute and Bradford's cornet, the latter of which set the tone before the simmering melody rolls in like a bank of fog. Bradford, playing with a mute, shows off his most tender, lyric side, with Carter shadowing him with gauzy, liquid flute shapes. The high-velocity closer "Encounter" deftly shows off Bradford's agility at a breakneck tempo, pushing into the horn's upper register without losing control of his tart, tuneful phrasing, while Carter delivers a jagged tenor solo that demonstrates there was already far more to his game than Coleman's strain of free jazz, at times sounding closer to Sam Rivers or John Tchicai. Below you can hear the opening track, Carter's "The Sunday Afternoon Jazz Blues Society," which he rerecorded as "Sunday Afternoon Jazz Society Blues" for his great 1989 album with Bradford called Comin' On (Hat Art). I first heard it on the later album, and its spirited, chirping melody has never left me—hearing this version was like running into an old friend.
THE
MUSIC OF JOHN CARTER: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH JOHN CARTER :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carter_(jazz_musician)John Carter
JOHN CARTER
John Wallace Carter (September 24, 1929 – March 31, 1991) was an American jazz clarinet, saxophone, and flute player.[1]
Biography
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Carter attended I.M. Terrell High School, and played music with schoolmates Ornette Coleman and Charles Moffett in the 1940s.[2][3][4][5]
Carter earned a Bachelor of Arts from Lincoln University in Jefferson, Missouri in 1949 and a Master of Arts from the University of Colorado in 1956. He also studied at the North Texas State and University of California at Los Angeles.
From 1961, Carter was based mainly on the West Coast. There he met Bobby Bradford in 1965, with whom he subsequently worked on a number of projects, notably the New Jazz Art Ensemble. He also played with Hampton Hawes and Harold Land.
In the 1970s Carter became well known on the basis of his extraordinary
solo concerts. At New Jazz Festival Moers 1979 he and the German
clarinet player Theo Jörgensmann performed
on three days. Afterwards Carter received complimentary reviews and
wide recognition from around the world. He and Jörgensmann met again in
1984. The program of the Berlin JazzFest was built around the clarinet. After Carter's solo performance, he and Jörgensmann also played together.
Between 1982 and 1990 Carter composed and recorded Roots and Folklore: Episodes in the Development of American Folk Music,
five albums focused on African Americans and their history. The
complete set was acclaimed by jazz critics as containing some of the
best releases of the 1980s.
A clarinet quartet with Perry Robinson,
Jörgensmann and Eckard Koltermann was planned for 1991, but Carter did
not recover from a nonmalignant tumor. Later that year he was inducted
into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.
DiscographyAs leader
As sideman
With Horace Tapscott
With Clarinet Summit
With Vinny Golia
ReferencesExternal links |
