Newport Provides James Carter’s Blue Note Debut

from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording

At the end of last month, saxophonist James Carter (now 50 years old) made his debut on Blue Note Records with an album entitled, James Carter Organ Trio: Live From Newport Jazz. The tracks, whose durations run between six minutes and twelve minutes, were recorded at the 2018 Newport Jazz Festival. They all follow up on Carter’s interest in the music of gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, which dates back to the release of Chasin’ the Gypsy (which involved a much larger group that included two guitarists and Carter’s cousin Regina Carter) in 2000. At Newport, on the other hand, Carter was joined only by Gerard Gibbs on a Hammond B-3 organ and Alexander White on drums.

I know I am showing my age when I declare that I can remember when Blue Note was the way to get an education in listening to jazz. This involved not only the artists recording for Blue Note and the tracks they recorded but also what we now call the “metadata,” text about recording details and the content of the tunes themselves. I came by the tracks for Live From Newport Jazz through a download that was absolutely void of metadata; and, when I checked the Amazon MP3 page for downloading this album, I was not surprised to see that this was a tracks-only release. As a result, the only background information I was able to gather (including the members of the trio) came from a Web page on the Blue Note Web site created on August 2 and announcing the release of the album.

As might be guessed, that Web page has its shortcomings. For example:

The program includes six tour de force takes on compositions written by or associated with Django Reinhardt.

I have yet to find an indexed summary of the entire Reinhardt corpus; so I have no idea how to sort “written by” and “associated with,” let alone identify the associates.

The good news is that “tour de force” is not an exaggeration. Carter’s takes on Reinhardt are indisputably dynamite, so much so that they blow any sense of Reinhardt himself out of the receptive field of auditory perception. In other words, it is sufficient to accept that Reinhardt inspired Carter without digging into any details about the sources of inspiration.

Indeed, Carter has such a brash, unabashed, in-your face delivery that any association with the Hot Club de France or the quintet that Reinhardt formed there in partnership with Stéphane Grappelli is immediately dispatched from primary consciousness. If it’s Reinhardt you want, there are plenty of ways to find him on Amazon. Carter’s approach is an entirely different aperitif; and, when I listen to his improvisations at their wildest, I think more of his past affiliations with inventive musicians like Lester Bowie than I think of club life in Paris during the swing era.

In other words, this is an album that definitely merits serious listening attention. Those who commit will definitely be well rewarded. However, when it comes to looking under the hood to learn more about why these tracks have so much to offer, expect to be disappointed.