George Coleman (tenor sax), Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass) and Tony Williams (drums). From the album Maiden Voyage (1965).
Ron Carter is an American jazz bassist and cellist internationally recognized since the 1960s. He won a Grammy Award in 1993 and another in 1998. He is the most recorded jazz double bass player in history and a brilliant rhythmic and melodic performer who uses all kinds of techniques: full and thick prominent notes and tones, walking lines, small fragments of melodies and buzzing and strumming effects. His bowed solos are almost as impressive as those he does with his fingers and has participated in commercials.
He has also played with symphony orchestras around the world and is exclusively an acoustic musician, only playing the electric bass in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Carter began his musical career playing at the Eastman School’s Philarmonic Orchestra and after graduating in 1959 he moved to New York and played in the Chico Hamilton’s quintet with Eric Dolphy.
The musicians play a theme with several changes at medium tempo. Hubbard’s solo is suggestive and playful introducing meteoric phrases that only a master like him can play and special effects that can only be done with the trumpet. Then Coleman enters playing long, balanced sentences with an impeccable sense of rhythm. Then Hancock arrives with an intelligent and slightly accelerated speech, and finally the group reexposes the theme.
