Ron Carter
*Ron Carter was born on this date in 1937. He is a Black jazz double bassist and Cellist.
Ronald Levin Carter was born in Ferndale, Michigan. He started to play cello at the age of 10. His first job as a jazz musician was playing bass with Jaki Byard and Chico Hamilton. His first records were made with Eric Dolphy and Don Ellis in 1960. His first date as a leader, Where,? with Eric Dolphy, Charlie Persip, Mal Waldron, and George Duvivier, and a date also with Dolphy called Out There with George Duvivier and Roy Haynes and Carter on cello; its advanced harmonies and concepts were in step with the third-stream movement.
Carter is also a cellist who has recorded for over forty years. Some of his studio albums as a leader include Blues Farm (1973); All Blues (1973); Spanish Blue (1974); Anything Goes (1975); Yellow & Green (1976); Pastels (1976); Piccolo (1977); Third Plane (1977); Peg Leg (1978); A Song for You (1978); Etudes (1982); The Golden Striker (2003); Dear Miles (2006); Ron Carters' Great Big Band (2011).
He was a member of the Miles Davis Quintet in the mid-1960s, including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and drummer Tony Williams. Carter also performed on some of Hancock, Williams, and Shorter's recordings during the sixties for Blue Note Records. He was a sideman on many Blue Note recordings of the era, playing with Sam Rivers, Freddie Hubbard, Duke Pearson, Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill, Horace Silver, Tommy Flanagan, Gil Evans, Lena Horne, Bill Evans, B.B. King, the Kronos Quartet, Dexter Gordon, Wes Montgomery, and Bobby Timmons, Jaki Byard, Eric Dolphy Cannonball Adderley and more. He was elected to the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 2012.
In 1993, he won a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Group and another Grammy in 1998 for "an instrumental composition for the film" Round Midnight. In 2010 he was honored with France's premier cultural award, the medallion, and the title of Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His appearances on 2,221 recording sessions make him the most-recorded jazz bassist in history.
