A handful of lucky people will have the chance to see Ron Parker, living jazz legend, perform this Thursday. A member of Miles Davis' second quintet, with which he played between 1963 and 1968, the Detroit musician holds the Guinness record for double bassist with the greatest number of recordings, more than 2,000. “They call me for different projects, and if they think that my presence will help take the music where they want, of course I accept,” says the musician in a telephone conversation from Prague, one of the stops on the tour that this Thursday will bring him to the room Paral·lel 62 in front of the Foursight quartet within the Voll-Damm Jazz Festival, a performance that should have been held last year, but was finally cancelled.
Carter has made more than 2,200 recordings with the double bass throughout his career, a figure that is not so surprising if you consider that this same 2023, at 86 years old, he has already published two albums and is always willing to record when asked. , as did one of his former students from New York City College, Ray Gallow, with whom he presents Grand Company this November along with drummer Lewis Nash. “When they call me for a recording I trust that people have done their job and know how I can help them do it better, I want to make sure they have made the right choice.”
A tireless musician on constant tour, Maestro Carter rules out that this will be his last visit to Europe, “I have no plans to retire, thank you.” Throughout his career he has collaborated with the best in world jazz, names like Stan Getz, Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk, Chet Baker and Sonny Rollins, without forgetting his dabbles outside of jazz with Billy Joel, Aretha Franklin and Santana. Although the collaboration that made him most famous was that of Miles Davis, who went to look for him in 1963 at the Half Note Club in New York. Carter played there with trumpeter Art Farmer, but Davis needed a replacement for Paul Chambers, who had decided to leave the quintet to join Winton Kelly. “Mr. Davis came to the club where he was playing and asked me to join his band the next week because they were going back to California,” Carter recalls of that day. “I explained to Miles that he had an engagement with Arch Farmer for two weeks and that he couldn't go unless Farmer released me.” Miles talked to Farmer “and I joined the band the next week.”
In the five long years that he stayed with the trumpeter, Carter learned “one very, very important thing, and that is that every night you go to work you have the opportunity to play wonderful music with four guys that I was in love with,” in reference to the drummer Tony Williams, pianist Herbie Hancock and saxophone player Wayne Shorter, the same group that performed in 1967 at the Palau de la Música, in an evening where Miles Davis was absent at the last minute after arguing with his manager for financial reasons, leading to a unique concert that only a few hundred spectators enjoyed.
The known as Miles Davis' second quintet published 6 works before Carter decided to embark on a solo career in which each partner has become a teacher, "everything is free teaching, those classes, those recording dates, all those concerts They have been like going to school with the different bands that have become my classmates. That's why I learn better, because I'm always receiving lessons.” Already a teacher in numerous music schools, Carter always teaches his students four lessons: “Leave your ego at home, have an extra pair of ears to listen to everything that happens around you, be a professional person and be a great teacher.” ”.
Although his first instrument was the cello, Carter soon switched to double bass because he thought that this way “he could find more work. When they came to my school to form groups, I was not one of those people who called to play, although I thought I played as well as everyone else." His opportunity came when he learned that the bassist of the band was going to graduate, "from January 1954, the school wouldn't have any bassist and I thought, if I'm the only bassist, they'll have to call me.”
An attitude, that of taking advantage of opportunities, that he maintains today and that served as a shock to the racism he encountered in the student music bands, both in high school and at the university, where they always preferred whites to play the cello. . “Racism is still present, that kind of limited view of the value of people and their value to society. He still faces it like everyone else: black or white, green or orange, polka dot or striped. “Unfortunately we live in that kind of world.”
