Ron Carter

An omnipresent figure on the jazz scene since the early 1960s, legendary bass player Ron Carter has made over 50 albums of his own and played on more than 2,000 recordings by acts as diverse as Herbie Hancock, Aretha Franklin, James Brown and A Tribe Called Quest.

Born in Ferndale, Michigan he initially learned to play the cello before taking up the double bass in high school and studying at the Eastmond School of Music in New York in the late 1950s. He made his first records with bebop jazzman Eric Dolphy, but got his big break when he joined the Miles Davis Quintet in 1963 and played on some of Davis' finest albums including 'Miles Smiles', 'Filles de Kilimanjaro' and 'E.S.P.'. He also kick-started his career as a band leader with early albums 'Where?' and 'Uptown Conversation' but really hit his stride in the 1970s with the Tony Hall collaboration 'Alone Together', the Latin flavoured 'Spanish Blue' and the virtuoso bass masterclass 'Piccolo'.

His elegant, dependable style and all-round wizardry led to him becoming a hugely respected mainstay of the jazz scene, working on classic albums such as Roberta Flack's 'Killing Me Softly', Brazilian boss nova favourite Antonio Carlos Jobim's 'Stone Flower' and guitar picker George Benson's gem 'White Rabbit'. He remained relevant in the 1990s when he played on alternative hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest's album 'The Low End Theory', and later in his career Carter spent over 20 years teaching at the City College of New York and then at the Juilliard School. Still performing into his eighties, he was recognised by Guinness World Records in 2015 as the Most Recorded Jazz Bassist having performed on 2,221 records. He toured with accordion and bandonean virtuoso Richard Galliano, releasing a brand new album 'An Evening With Ron Carter & Richard Galliano' in 2017.