Ron Carter Esperanza Spalding - Downbeat

Asked to express his feelings about the Hall of Fame honorific,
Carter replied with characteristic briskness. “To
get this award means that there are enough readers of the
magazine who have done some homework and some history, and
know I’ve been playing this music for a very long time,” he said.
“And, as they’ve listened, over time, they’ve found a level of consistency
that appeals to them, not just in my performance, but my
integrity and my sound. I’d like to thank them for deeming me
worthy of a lifetime achievement, but to know that my lifetime
is still here. If they have a Part Two, maybe I’ll be up for that.”
His manner was somewhat less composed as he formulated a
response to Stanley Clarke’s aforementioned comments regarding
his impact on bass lineage. “I’m embarrassed, actually,”
Carter said. He bent his head, contemplating his cupped hands
in silence for several seconds before resuming: “I’m from a time
when one of the effects of society on African-Americans, especially
African-American males, was to not acknowledge your
success. Not that you couldn’t be successful, but when you were,
you were kind of told not to ‘groove,’ so to speak, on that level
of achievement. It’s taken me a while to get past that. African-
Americans in my age group will tell you about someone telling
them, ‘You can’t do this or that.’ For example, I remember my
math teacher in junior high school told the class, ‘Don’t worry
about studying Latin because you’ll never need it—you’ll be digging
a ditch.’ I told my mom, and she wigged out. All of us got
that kind of response in these situations 60 years ago.
“So when I hear comments like Stanley’s, it floors me that
I’ve had that kind of impact on an industry. I say, ‘Wow, I did
that? All these guys do this because of my presence?’ It throws
me a curve. There’s a list of what they call 10 records that are
milestones of the music, all different, and I’m on eight of them.
When I hear people talk about that, I have to tiptoe out of the
room, because it embarrasses me to hear that my impact has
been rated as such.
“I had my hopes crushed at a very early age. I had peeks of
what it’s like to play in a great orchestra, and to not be allowed to
do that for the simple reason that I’m black ... . To this day, I don’t
understand that fuckin’ mindset, man. I don’t know what that’s
got to do with playing a B-flat blues, or playing a Bach chorale,
or Beethoven, or playing an Oliver Nelson arrangement. But my
family went to church every Sunday. We understood that there is
somebody upstairs who is really in charge of the ball game. I’ve
always thought that I was directed to do this because the Creator
thought that I could be important in this industry. And I have to
trust that he allows me to go out every night and try to find the
best notes I can find. When he tells me, ‘OK, you’ve had enough,’
then I’ll stop.”
That time hardly seems imminent. Carter has done stretching
and free weights with a trainer three mornings a week for the
last 30 years, seems not to have lost an inch from his six-and-ahalf-foot
frame, can still palm a basketball and looks more like a
youthful 60 than 75. “Because I’ve found other ways to play the
notes I’ve been finding—and learned the science of how the bass
works even more specifically—it’s less physically demanding to
cover the bass than it was 10 years ago,” he says. “One of my lessons
is to assign students a blues and have them build a bass line
out of the changes I give them. I’ve been playing the blues a very
long time, and these guys come up with lines that stun me—not
because they’re so great, but that I hadn’t thought about those
lines! Seeing this kind of awareness makes 75 feel like 15, when
you’re just discovering what the world is like. It makes me feel
that I’m just starting to learn the instrument.
“I try not to do stuff just because I can do it—because it
doesn’t impact anybody. It doesn’t make a flower that opens. If I
can make that flower open, that’s my night. I will go home and
watch CNN and have my yogurt.” DB