Jazz Legend Ron Carter: A Life in Music – From Coltrane to Miles Davis

0:09Ron Carter: So you prefer, so a tourist is not a negative for you, you prefer the tourists in a way towards the aficionados? Yeah, yeah.

0:18Mathias Döpfner: Whatever their title is.

0:21Ron Carter: Yeah, yeah.

0:22Mathias Döpfner: Resident, tourist, just get there. And if they get there, they're mine.

0:37Ron Carter: jazz and jazz history you are the most recorded bass player of all times in the guinness book even you have played with all the legends of jazz history it's harder to find people that you didn't play with than to name those you you performed with and recorded with you have influenced music history and jazz music history big time and gave it a lot. What did music give to you?

1:08Mathias Döpfner: Friends, dear friends, close friends in high places, responsibilities, obligation, and a very small ego.

1:17Ron Carter: I mean, small ego is not the first thing that you would associate with a world-class performer on stage that has to reach out to an audience, has to build her or his career through artistic excellence and charisma. How have you been able to keep that groundedness, that low ego? What's the secret?

1:52Mathias Döpfner: I don't make those definitions as to where I am in the sphere of jazz hierarchy. I've been told I have done these things, and I'm responsible for this, and I appreciate that level of being lauded for a career. but I don't see that how to say this that reign that location in the jazz community's hierarchy one of the reasons I go to work every night is to get better and I'm not so sure people who have the title of being great do that but would you say

2:31Ron Carter: that it is just a given that it is in your kind of DNA or is it also something that you almost trained or that you worked on to keep that kind of low ego and not kind of develop a big ego.

2:46Mathias Döpfner: I'm just a low-key person. I'm just a shy person. I'm not...

2:50Ron Carter: You're shy?

2:51Mathias Döpfner: Yes. I'm not making the point to ignore being famous. I just don't walk on the street, carry a sign. Mm-hmm. You know? I think one of the things I tell my kids, my students, who are starting to get busy in the world. They say, Maestro, when we get a call to do a record date, what should we do? What would you take to the date? I said, we should probably take three things. One, a spare pair of ears so you can hear the whole environment. Two, leave your ego at home and be on time an hour early for the date. You got to do those three things. And I'm known for that.

3:39Ron Carter: Would you say that the real kind of big artists that you worked with had also small egos, or would you rather say that's an exception in the music industry?

3:52Mathias Döpfner: First you had to give me some names. I can respond.

3:55Ron Carter: Miles Davis, Wayne Trotter.

4:01Mathias Döpfner: Wayne Eagles and Curtis Fuller. Those guys are, they were made to have egos by the press. and all those things that Miles Davis is giving credit for, being off the bandstand, behavior patterns, I never saw those. I've never treated it the way he is rumored to have treated other people. I can only relate to what our relationship was. I can say that Benny Goldson, he belongs in John Coltrane's class, whatever that is. But he's not. It's just Benny Goldson who wrote some nice songs. But he's up there with that kind of level of greatness, however we define that word. he's not as, he's not, he's almost egoless, like I kind of am that way.

4:48Mathias Döpfner: I think our point, if I could speak for many of the rest of this, so our point in music is to find people or have them discover us as a person or as a part of an industry who's able to communicate our feelings through something called an instrument. This instrument has the title of being a jazz instrument in this case. We thrive on people who come to hear us and walk away feeling it. So, this is jazz. When people ask me how to be fined, they come to my gigs. If you have plenty of time, and you can afford to come back to New York every week, wherever you're living into October, I'm there for a whole month in the club.

5:35Mathias Döpfner: With four different groups, by and large. all playing my music and some other composers' music as well, but primarily my music, my arrangements. They all have their own platform. They have their own personnel. They have their own library. They have their own temple. Probably their own songs. And I'm leading these four concepts all within a month.

6:01Ron Carter: What makes a great band leader? I mean, if you compare some of the people you worked with from, I don't know, Stan Getz to Herbie Hancock of course Miles and others what would you say are the most important personality aspects that a great band leader needs? It cannot be only low ego and modesty because you have to lead.

6:28Mathias Döpfner: That's necessary though Yeah. If you come to hear any of my bands, I'm not the domineering leader the word implies. I'm not the band leader who determines that they have the longest solos or that the band only plays their songs.

6:48Ron Carter: No, that would be a good soloist, not a particularly good leader.

6:51Mathias Döpfner: Well, it depends on what you look for and the person who's going to lead you. Because you play a great solo doesn't mean you're necessarily a good leader.

6:59Ron Carter: So who was the most impressive leader for you among the...

7:02Mathias Döpfner: Me. me. I picked up bits and pieces from each guy. I learned what not to do from certain band leaders. I'm like when they treated me as a sad man. I thought we were equal despite our age differences and despite me being a bass player that's supposed to be in general behind a palm tree. But I have a voice. I have ideas to do. I have a sense of developing a line, a story. And because you play a great solo and you ignore what I'm doing doesn't mean that you're a great band leader.

7:35Ron Carter: From whom did you learn most?

7:40Mathias Döpfner: It's a composite picture. I learned something from all those people.

7:44Ron Carter: Is there any specific moment, any specific story that you could share where you really, in that moment, had an epiphany and said, wow, that's something that I really realize now and learn now?

7:55Mathias Döpfner: I think if I do that, that means that all the other chances I had to get better, I blew because I didn't see them. Why I recognize them. And I don't want, you know, these questions when they are asking me to pick out a specific event, which means I'm naming a specific person and ignoring everybody else. It's like when you ask me, what's my most favorite record? Okay, well, I'm on the most 20 or 300 records. If I pick two or three, the other people who are on those other 2 ,000 and odd numbers, they're going to call my house. I said, wait a minute. I thought that I was on your favorite record. I'm not going to do that.

8:36Mathias Döpfner: It's not fair. I guess it misses the point that so many factors involved those decisions, that no one can name them all and have everyone of those remaining 2 ,103.5 records available to say, oh, okay, we're still friends. I'm not going to go to that. Wait, wait, wait. not going to step into that limited hole. What I can tell you is that for all those distinctive records, for all those records that I'm on, whoever the producer was, whoever the band leader was, whoever made the concept of recording this item called music, whoever those people in charge of that decide that whatever music they're playing, whatever size the band, I want this bass player, of all I've heard, who helps this project get to another level for me because he brings whatever it is to the day.

9:38Mathias Döpfner: Now, they may not express it in those terms, but New York is a place where all the best players show up. And New York's only, it's only six hours from California, it's only seven hours from Europe. I mean, if you want a guy or a gal to play in your band, you can get them here. So that they would stop and Brendan spent a$3 subway ride to their gig, and Brendan spent$4 ,000 for a person coming to New York just to do two, six bars of an ad-in for a record that didn't work without this item in the middle. Well, that's what their choice is. But given that broad view of my presence and the band leaders who influences me, or has influenced me, I consider all the records I'm going to free class I'm going to school free because they all bring something to me that I can only learn in this class

10:38Ron Carter: to ask you what is your favorite record would be unfair a little bit like asking what is your favorite kid so I'm not doing that but out of the 2 ,221 records that you have recorded so far would you be able to say which one is most likely the most impactful to jazz music history? No. No? Because you don't want or because you simply can't?

11:05Mathias Döpfner: I don't make those kind of decisions. I just trade a music and someone else defines them. I may not agree with what their ultimate decision is. I'll give you an example just to get this off the table. I made a record called Brandenburg No. 3. And what I had done for six months or so taking the Brandenburg score and I know the music from playing along and decided that this is the kind of piece that I could do something with just because of it's a well-known piece it's a famous piece in orchestral literature it's a great chamber piece and I thought that based on the harmony and chords that I understood I could make this have a whole nother vibe a whole nother impact on people who are resistant to jazz and classical being on the same page, to those who cannot imagine Bach sounding like this piece, or to the conductors who say, well, how could you take it that fast or that slow?

12:05Mathias Döpfner: I say, well, unless Bach walks in and tells me it's too fast or slow, I'm going, I like my view. To those bass players who only know the part that they've written all night, all week, who play the same random burps for every Thanksgiving, there's a chance for these unfortunately narrow-minded bass players to see another approach to the music that they've been playing in their life was to play good and the same every night. Their job is to play the same notes in the same order that Bach wrote them whenever he wrote them. My job is to understand what he did to make it work. And with my ingenuity, my concept, my experience, I take this war horse, that's a good word, of peace and make a sound that was written like yesterday.

12:57And this is important for me, just to have this need for some people to try to mix jazz

13:08Mathias Döpfner: and classical as this, who don't have the tools to make this happen. I have some of those tools, whatever they take. And this Brandenburg is a good example of my effort to show what jazz and classical can really mix if you have certain elements. One of them is a good bass player in this case.

13:29Ron Carter: The personality and psychology of a bass player is a very special one. There is a famous, a very successful book in Germany written by Patrick Susskind. It's called The Double Bass. And it's basically about a bass player from a classical orchestra. And the book is dealing with his inferiority complexes that he is never in the forefront of attention, that he's always in the background. Now, you could say that is a disadvantage. You could also say that is, if you embrace that, a wonderful precondition in order to become a very good leader. What would you say? What is the specific opportunity, but also perhaps the specific risk of being a bass player and dealing with these issues of ego?

14:26Mathias Döpfner: Is this a book that you mentioned? Is it translated into English?

14:30Ron Carter: I'm pretty sure that it is translated in more than 30 languages, yes.

14:34Mathias Döpfner: I don't need that. I just need one.

14:35Ron Carter: You should read it. I will send you a copy. It's amazing. It was published many years ago, so it's not a recent book. I read old books.

14:43Mathias Döpfner: A classical player who feels like that, like he's not a very important cog, if I can interpret your description of this bass player's feelings, and I'm trying to translate that to a jazz bass player. As highly different as they are. First of all, as a bass player in an orchestra, you have seven bass players, eight bass players in an orchestra. The first chair bass player, he's responsible for how the other bass players play. He gives instructions on the fingering, to bowings, dynamic, the kind of bass you have, whether you have four strings or five strings, what kind of bow you use, how you turn the pages for your stand partner, do you sit or do you stand, or what's your view of the stand height?

15:43Mathias Döpfner: One person determines those factors. In the jazz group, each note I play determines the following factors. the form the pitch of the band the tempo of the band the groove of the band the volume of the band and the presence of this one person who's playing all the time to make all these choices instantly for a period of time in his life. I've been doing these things like you did for almost 75 years. There's not one classical bass person playing the bass and orchestras that long who's able to sustain his job of being able to do these six things I mentioned to you. Not just average, but with a special personal flavor that makes him able to work when or wherever he wishes with a variety of people, with a variety of concepts, with a variety of money, amounts of money.

16:59I wish those people who this bass player has written about

17:05Mathias Döpfner: could have seen me within the past year. My vocabulary got so good, I could explain to him that there are a lot of reasons why you're where you are. Certainly once you get that job in the orchestra, unless you're really an asshole, you're going to be there for a long time. And they limit who can take his place. Someone decides, okay, he's had enough, or he's acted out, he's acted terribly, let's find somebody, we'll have an audition for that. The jazz situation, if the bass player is going to be replaced, the band leader, he decides that, wherever he or she is. Well, I've been in that place. I needed a placement in my band as the leader so what I did I had an audition I had four or five guys come by my studio I kept doing music in advance I prepared audition for them and who I thought was the best person to be in my band as a bass player had to have certain conditions that were part of what I do when I'm the side band I'm on time I know the music My bass is in good shape.

18:16Mathias Döpfner: I play in tune. I don't mind not soloing all that stuff. Stuff like that, do I expect whoever's going to be hired by me to do that? And in an orchestra, they just want a guy who's going to follow this person forever, whoever this band leader, whoever this first chair bass classical player is. As a jazz bass player, there's always this level of enviousness in the jazz community because there's only one bass player per band. And they want to be, how come they're not getting this one bass player again? Well, there's a lot of factors besides saying you don't play good enough. That's an obvious answer.

19:03Mathias Döpfner: But you have habits people don't like. Not on time. You don't want to wear a suit. Whatever it is. idiosyncrasies are that make you not the person for this job. And playing good enough is not enough. In an orchestra, playing good enough is generally enough. Maybe enough.

19:21Ron Carter: So it's a different thing.

19:22Mathias Döpfner: Yeah.

19:22Ron Carter: When I was a kid, I was particularly attracted by the bass, and it became my favorite instrument because of the low frequencies and the fact that you could physically feel it and the combination of the sound and rhythm that had a kind of magic. What attracted you to this instrument? What was it? What started that affair? Well, it was not the same thing that attracted you to it. By and large, a public who was now a bass player.

19:59Mathias Döpfner: The reason I was attracted to the bass is that when I was playing cello, and I was very good, the high school where I went to they were part of a school system

20:12Ron Carter: they did not accept you because of

20:14Mathias Döpfner: no no listen to my story and every twice a year they have these great conferences where they would hire a local orchestra one of the orchestras from school to be what I call play wallpaper music during conferences and my school player when I was playing cello, I was a really good cellist. And when they came to pick up people from each orchestra, someone did, whoever's choices they were, I didn't get the call. And I thought that I played good as these kids and these fellow orchestra members. How come I'm not getting these jobs? While this was taking place, they only had one bass player in the chamber group.

20:57Mathias Döpfner: And he was going to be going to New York at some point. And I'm pretty good at math. You have one minus one is zero. So if I'm going to be playing this classical music, like I've been playing since I was 10 years old, as long as these white kids have, if I'm the only guy playing bass and he wanted bass, I'll have to make him call me. If you see, I still have that chip on my shoulder. A little smaller, but I still have it. I didn't get to where you described your feeling for the bass until I accepted that I couldn't be a classical cellist in orchestra.

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22:13Ron Carter: Please visit THENWSN.org and donate today.

22:24Ron Carter: So, but in the end, it was a little similar to the experiences that Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Nina Simone made. They all wanted to become classical musicians. Different. And they were rejected because of racism. Would you say that is?

22:45Mathias Döpfner: Listen to me. It's not the same. None of them had a classical job.

22:50Ron Carter: They wanted it, and they didn't get the chance. Nina Simone didn't even get accepted because of her skin color.

22:57Mathias Döpfner: That's not the same. I was in the classical orchestra.

23:00Ron Carter: Yeah.

23:00Mathias Döpfner: I was the first African person of color to be in the Rochester Philharmonic, who was the host of several—

23:06Ron Carter: But not for the cello.

23:08Mathias Döpfner: No. No. I was playing bass already in this group.

23:14Ron Carter: Because the cello didn't work out, and that was not because of lack of talent. The cello didn't work out.

23:21Mathias Döpfner: The hiring places, the hiring policy didn't work out. Someone thought that these white kids played better than me. And I wasn't buying that, man. I played as good as they did. I have paper to prove it if I want to go through. Yeah, trust me. Whoever was hiring the people to play at these conventions, they thought that I wouldn't fit for whatever reasons. And I told them I was going to make them hire me even if I wasn't playing cello, which I had grown up desiring to play as a classical cellist. I didn't decide to be a classical bassist because I knew that I'd have to hire a wrote-to-find, but if I could play this bass, I could make myself good enough to get hired.

24:07And maybe somewhere along the way, if I got these accolades

24:14Mathias Döpfner: and the approval of those people who do the hiring, they say, look, maybe it's time for us to stop narrowing our view and let whoever plays good get this fucking job. Having said that, that's still not the case.

24:29Ron Carter: I wanted to ask, do you think we have made progress? No.

24:33Mathias Döpfner: If you look at the same pictures of the orchestras 15 years ago and today, the proportion of minorities, people of color, But today, they're still not much better than it was 20 years ago, because classical schools are still turning out black players.

24:54Ron Carter: But don't they do blind auditions, meanwhile, that you have to play behind a curtain and they cannot see you?

25:00Mathias Döpfner: You're asking me the answers of those people. I can't answer for what they do, man. I stepped out of that worry long time.

25:05Ron Carter: I mean, European orchestras, it is a rule. You play behind the curtain. So that gender doesn't play a role, that age, I mean, that skin color doesn't play a role.

25:13Mathias Döpfner: I cannot answer for them. But you look at the pictures. You tell me that if you had, like, schools that have 15 or 20 people of color playing in the school year, and you have Creighton, Philly, Austin, New York, L.A., All these orchestras have a minimum amount of people of color in them. But the schools have turned out 25 or 30 kids every year. We're there for four or five years to be good enough to get in any orchestra. You mean to tell me that things have gotten better? No.

25:48Ron Carter: So you would still see a lot of kind of implicit racism in the classical music scene? Would you also see it in the pop and jazz music scene or not really?

25:58Mathias Döpfner: I'm not in those scenes, but my guess is no. But if you play good, you get the fucking job, man. Classical music, I'm not sure that they may espouse those words, but I'm sure that it seems to me that they will still sacrifice this much of God playing this much better. There's an excuse that he's not playing this good, so he's not quite ready for the orchestra.

26:20Ron Carter: Why are there relevant... I mean, you still play classical music. You play Bach and other composers. It seems to be very meaningful. Also, you play cello. Nevertheless, there are very few musicians in the world who really made a career in classical and jazz music. Wynton Marsalis is probably the most successful example, but there are very few. Why is it still so separated, although it's music in the air?

26:48Mathias Döpfner: Yes, no real person. Yes, you have to have those people who dictate that situation.

26:54Ron Carter: You have a theory?

26:56Mathias Döpfner: Yeah, they don't, black people, they think black people are equal to the job. They have their own biases. They have their own looks at who's going to look great in the orchestra. If someone who's at the group show are funding the orchestras, the ballet, the chamber series, if they think that black people don't play good enough classical music to keep the tradition going, then they're going to do what they do.

27:22Ron Carter: Perhaps there's any involved that people realize that the most influential music of the 20th century and the 21st century is music that did not derive from white people's culture. That was what jazz and rhythm and blues did to the development of modern music history. And maybe there is this jealousy and an effort to protect the old classical music field for white people. Could that play a role?

27:51Mathias Döpfner: I cannot answer for them. What you should do, if you feel this way, you should ask those people who are now involved in Lincoln Center because it wasn't myself just playing jazz on me outside.

28:04Ron Carter: I'm still shocked that you are basically saying that over the decades, I mean, you are now for 65 years an active musician following the developments in the music scene, that you're basically saying there's not much progress with regard to racism. It's still very bad today.

28:20Mathias Döpfner: All you got to do, man, is go to the picture books on Google and look at the pictures of workers going back every five years and mean to tell me that classical schools don't turn out enough good players of color to fill those roles of the guys who are real past retirement. Really?

28:44Ron Carter: But why don't you have a little more kind of, how shall I say, almost pride? Because I would say black culture was winning the last hundred years of music history.

28:54Mathias Döpfner: Really?

28:55Ron Carter: Yes, absolutely.

28:57Mathias Döpfner: Why would you say that if you look at the philharmonics? Plural.

29:00Ron Carter: Classical music is in decline. Jazz is listened by more people than ever. I think 400 million people are listening jazz music. The peak with regard to percentage to jazz listeners in population were the 50s and 60s. But through streaming, jazz is more popular than ever. The whole pop music that derived in a way from blues and rhythm and blues and jazz music is the most influential cultural expression of our times. It's not Stockhausen or Zimmermann. definitely not. The contemporary classical music has a tiny little audience, whereas black music made it.

29:46Mathias Döpfner: Now we're getting to this item now. You speak of jazz music, black music with a big palette. I'm not speaking of the jazz music as the jazz music. The jazz music, not the hip-hop, not the rap, not the...

30:02Ron Carter: Yeah, but that comes from it.

30:04Mathias Döpfner: I'm asking you catalog music differently to get this discussion resolved once and for all in your head. Yes, classical music is, it may have six viewers less just to get a discussion going. But they still are turning out 20 to 30 players per year of the major music schools to plan the orchestras. those schools that have jazz programs, they have the jazz programs so the school has a body count to get grants and stuff like that. Not because of their music value necessarily. School's a business. And the more money, the more students you have, the better your business, like corn. The most potatoes you have, you get better prices for your good.

31:03Mathias Döpfner: To us, for me, for U.S. but how can I not feel that because jazz is, as you quote it, is more heard than it was 20 years ago and that I'm still saying to you that the classical music is as biased as it is. I turn on the radio and I can hear classical music somewhere even in the smallest town. Well, people buy the product of that radio station but they're listening to it. When I go into record shops, they've got Strauss fans in the background. When I turn on the equivalent of WQXR, which is a New York station, I don't want to hear anything but ROMs, because that's where I can find it. Jazz, as you listen, you talk to BMI or ASCAP, which are the agencies who collect royalties, they would say that the jazz market is about only this much.

32:07Mathias Döpfner: The jazz market. Not the hip-hop market, not the rock and roll, not the pop. This much. And it hasn't grown since this much, despite how much you think that the balance is now classical and jazz.

32:24Ron Carter: Let's say jazz in its purest sense and classical music in its purest sense are elitist phenomenons. They have, compared to popular music phenomenons, a smaller audience by nature, because they're more complex, more intellectual, more sophisticated. So you cannot expect that neither jazz nor classical music is reaching mass audiences. But if you look to the music, the popular music that people were listening to, let's say, 150 or 100 years ago, that was very much a development, a simplified development of classical music, of orchestra music, symphonic music that was played in the elites. It was white.

33:11Ron Carter: It was culturally and structurally white music. If you listen to the popular music today, you mentioned hip-hop. you worked at the intersection of classical music, jazz music and hip-hop music hip-hop is a big cultural trend for years and decades now. It derived out of rhythm and blues and you could say the scat singing of Ella Fitzgerald and other stuff indirectly were kind of roots out of which this popular music developed and then it became the defining trend of our contemporary culture, or a defining trend of our contemporary culture, and that's a trend that derived from black culture. So there is a shift.

33:59Ron Carter: You could say there's a big culture shift from white to black, if we want to put it that way. You can say that. I'm not saying that. But do you think it's wrong what I'm saying?

34:10Mathias Döpfner: I think it's not accurate. Wrong is right.

34:12Ron Carter: So why is it not accurate? I mean, you know better. I just tried to practice anti-USI.

34:17Mathias Döpfner: I would consider jazz being equally important to the classical community when the classical audience goes to Blue Note or Berlin to sing me play. The jazz community has often gone to classical concerts. They want to hear the library. They want to hear composers. They like the sound. They just swamped with this 100-piece orchestra. That's a great sound. They want that. but you won't find the same audience numbers. Would that mindset come into smoke? Would it be a vanguard to see, what does this other music do? What do people like? What's the attraction? I think jazz players are not playing this music

35:07despite classical music.

35:09Mathias Döpfner: They're playing this music because they have a story who, in the classical music industry, by a large, is not willing to have this specific item. Jazz are part of their culture, part of their household music, to be a part of their tracks that they play in grocery stores. You know, we call those things. You hire a service to give you music in the background at the grocery stores. I think for many years, the jazz community, the aggressive speakers in the jazz community would swear that one of the reasons that the jazz community is downplayed as an importance is that the white community was afraid of the black man.

36:01Mathias Döpfner: Who was afraid of the results of this black music on their culture. you know and I'm not sure that's completely died out and I'm sure that the quality players of either race, they cannot be equal cannot, they are equal playing either the musics, however the classical music has been known to discourage jazz players who were going to those schools that they didn't want to hear that school music in their schools literally don't practice in the music room don't take no jazz concerts unless you gotta we struggle for the jazz department. They're not necessarily involved in the classical department because they don't see them as being equal.

36:43Mathias Döpfner: One of the things I'm constantly fighting for is the concept that a jazz player, a jazz bass player, and a classical bass player, if you exchange them for, if you have the jazz bass player take one semester of classical and one semester of jazz, that's wonderful for him. And I posit to you that that's a waste of time for most people because they're so different and require a certain high level of skill that the jazz player has to master before he can get a gig. The classical player must master playing the same notes that my teacher played 40 years ago or 50 years ago or 60 years ago. Talking about influence on musical developments, would you agree that the popular music, the mainly white popular music of last

37:45Ron Carter: century or even the century before, used to be very much driven by melody and harmony? whereas over the last hundred years we have seen a shift where rhythm became the most relevant parameter of music that has been influenced by blues by gospel by jazz music transformed then into rhythm and blues, funk, hip-hop, techno, all these developments where rhythm, rhythm group, bass, drums play a bigger role, where even, as we can see it in this famous biopic about James Brown, even the trumpets, the saxophones, the trombones become rhythm groups, play very rhythmically, because rhythm is the most important parameter.

38:47Ron Carter: And could it be true that that is rooted in black culture and not in white culture? You have set examples of that where suddenly, you have set examples where suddenly the trumpet player or the saxophone player didn't play solos. The solos happened basically in the rhythm group with drums and bass.

39:08Mathias Döpfner: I think rhythm was not the most important factor of that group being as effective as it was, whatever you decide that effect was. One of the early real books, fake books, that analyzed those records for the real book process, for the real book industry, they had often had the wrong chords because they didn't understand the harmony, not the rhythm. They didn't understand that my bass note was not the root. that Herbie was placing his chord, his process, on this note that he could play with the root with the left hand was not the root. It had been the third. He's got to revoice his harmony. And by doing that, the chord has another sound.

39:54Mathias Döpfner: And with this sound that leads to the next chord, it must also be different. And the next sound, it must be different now because these two chords are also now different. I think one of the effects on that band was how we're able to reharmonize the music and maintain the structure of the song. You know, you got drums, of course you got rhythm, man. You got bass drum like this all night. You got her hitting, jabbing. Yeah, of course rhythm was part of it. But it wasn't only rhythm that made it do whatever it ultimately was decided that it did. It was what harmony we decided to put and how that affected the direction of the intent of the music.

40:40Mathias Döpfner: These chords now being not only different chords without alternate changes, but they were voiced differently. The harmony was so tight like this that there wasn't a guy playing F all the time for F7 down here. It made these notes, man, important. Because this is the first note you heard. A, the third. Or this note, the fifth was the fourth. Not the F, that's somewhere in here, man. And those guys didn't understand that. Whoever the original transcribers were of those six years of music, so to speak. They gave everyone the wrong idea that really, of course rhythm is important. You've got to go like this, man.

41:16Mathias Döpfner: Chick, chick, lang, chick, lang, chick. And I'm doing this. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Of course there's rhythm there. But what we did with the rhythm was maintain these two things, the beginning and the end. What were these chords in here? When did they come in? Did they say the tune stopped here and started here? No, no, the tune's still this long. It still had the start here and the double bar here. Our job, it seemed to me, if you have to get this analogy, was to make the harmony be so impactful because we heard different shit. We're not relying on chang-a-lang, chang-a-lang, chang-a-lang, chang-a-lang, chang-a-lang.

42:02Mathias Döpfner: We did, depending on this stuff here, with this note being the forecaster of what this is going to sound like. The harmony, not the pure rhythm. Of course there's rhythm. And I wouldn't say that that rhythm was least of the two important. I'm not going to narrow it that much. But one of the things that made classical music different as the time progressed was they used different harmonies. Debussy. It wasn't the long notes he played rather than quarter notes. It was how he voiced those chords and who he gave the most important notes to that made it. The songs were more languid. They weren't just all like this.

42:45Mathias Döpfner: Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. They were this kind of stuff in here. I was thinking about this today, yesterday. I was listening to the Brandenburg No. 3, and I couldn't understand why the Shostakovich got so much interest, because this is where the harmony was starting, man. These chords that Bach wrote and the progressions, and he changed keys within two notes. He's got a whole new key center over here, man. And he's still playing fucking quarter notes. I didn't understand how that got ignored by a public who was making those definitions. You know, press a kid, press a chair.

43:26Mathias Döpfner: That's rhythm. It's not this.

43:29Ron Carter: Yeah, Shostakovich particularly. Yeah, you know. How much time do you spend with classical music still today?

43:37Mathias Döpfner: I spent the day listening to Brahms 4th all morning.

43:41Ron Carter: As a listener and as a performer?

43:43Mathias Döpfner: As a listener.

43:44Ron Carter: Yeah. More time as a listener, of course.

43:47Mathias Döpfner: The classical music doesn't consider me a classical player.

43:50Ron Carter: Yeah. And Bach remains your god, or who are the other gods in classical music?

43:58Mathias Döpfner: I'm not sure god is the right word.

44:02Ron Carter: Most inspiring composers?

44:04Mathias Döpfner: Yeah, God is not a word I'm going to use with music. They haven't earned that right yet for me. There's several people who, several composers that I would listen to, just because I like Elgar. I like his voicings. You know? Bator. You know? The early 16th century. El Baloney. I liked their harmony senses at the time. To analyze what they were doing, the 7 or 6-5-3 and the flat-6, flat-3 chord, I understand that harmony. And I would like more of the current jazz players just to go back a minute and see how those harmonies were used back in the earlier days but less focused on how fast I could play it or necessarily the scale shit, you know?

45:03Mathias Döpfner: Okay.

45:03Ron Carter: Would you say that classical music and composers of classical music inspired and basically defined your style as a double bass player in jazz music?

45:15Mathias Döpfner: No, they were a part of my awareness of what it would take to make it work, but they didn't necessarily inspire me to do that. Okay. My desires inspire me. My experience is different people's music, their language skills, their physical skills. They inspire me.

45:34Ron Carter: You're teaching young people, young musicians for decades now. What are the mistakes that young talent is making?

45:43Mathias Döpfner: They haven't gotten to be students anymore.

45:45Ron Carter: Because they think they know it or too much self-confidence, would you say?

45:50Mathias Döpfner: I think that no one tells them that they don't sound good.

45:53Ron Carter: because they play too much? There's too much ambition, too many notes?

45:59Mathias Döpfner: Whatever the teacher may feel is the negative part. I'll give you an example. One of the reasons that kids, I call them kids, because I'm going on, I'm this far from 90, and they're like 25, 27. They want to know how I play on certain tunes. How do I manipulate the bass to cover the sound and the intensity of the beat and stuff like that. I say, well, you know, I can't show you how to construct a bass line until you understand where the notes are. Or you have a sound so people can hear whatever it is you're trying to do. So it makes three or four months until you understand that do, do, do, do.

46:41Mathias Döpfner: You won't get to that point until you go do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. And where are those notes? When I first got, when the footprints first got famous, man, young players just had to learn that kind of stuff, you know. And so a couple of them came by my house at some point and said, Mr. Carter, I got this song called Put Prince. Can you show me the changes? I said, well, play this. I said, no, well, stop. I said, but they're the right notes. I said, yeah, I'm not playing them here. I'm playing them here. And once you get to understand that you can play them here, then this all opens up for you.

47:13Mathias Döpfner: So my concern with these people is that you've got to know the instrument. You've got to know where these notes you think you're hearing are available. And from that point, you get all these other choices. So the hard part is not what the choices are, but when you play them. They belong here, they belong real over here. So that's why I'm spending my time showing them it isn't just the results of what I do. It's my process to get to these results.

47:47Ron Carter: It seems to me that discipline played an incredibly important role in your career. Yes. Is that also something that you try to teach young people that discipline hard work are just a requirement?

47:59Mathias Döpfner: Yes. I'm just mandatory. I give them an exercise, an etude in one of my books. And if you can't play this exercise, preface it three times in a row, you don't know it at all. You're unsure of the fingering. You're unsure of the pitch. The time is uneven. And you can't do it three times in a row like you have to do to get this job.

48:21Ron Carter: A couple of decades ago, you could partly outsource these skills to a synthesizer and sequencer. Now you have a completely different level of possibilities to basically delegate that precision and the result of hard work to machines, namely to artificial intelligence, which is able to produce, to perform incredible music. What's your take on that? How is that going to change music?

48:53Mathias Döpfner: AI is how old?

48:56Ron Carter: Older than people think. Decades.

48:58Mathias Döpfner: Now, just give me a number. Two years, three years?

49:00Ron Carter: Well, the LLMs and the role that agents play and all these kind of tools that came up in that context, that's a phenomenon of two to three years.

49:10Mathias Döpfner: Okay. Now, if you're trying to tell me that AI can come to a baseline based on three or four years' experience that's competitive with my baseline after 75 years of trying to find the right fucking note. You have sadly mistaken.

49:28Ron Carter: We can have a debate how deep it's going to be. We can discuss soul and emotion, but if it's about the pure technical capabilities, then I have to say that I'm pretty impressed what AI-generated music can achieve.

49:51Mathias Döpfner: Well, if you were playing me an AI tune and asked me what I thought about it, I could show you, I don't know the song you're going to pick, but at least 12 different ways to harmonize it. Based on my son's last years of playing the right and wrong shit.

50:06Ron Carter: But sophisticated, I can even fake imperfection.

50:11Mathias Döpfner: I'm not looking for that.

50:14Ron Carter: Okay, I get it. You're not looking for that. But nevertheless, I'd be curious what your prediction is as a almost 90-year-old legend of music history. What is it going to do to the developments of music? Is it going to make music better? Would Miles Davis have been an even better Miles with the possibilities that AI provide or worse? And will that lift creativity up to a new level or will it destroy creativity and musical skills? Okay, I'm sorry.

50:49Mathias Döpfner: What is it providing for me? How do I say providing anything for me?

50:55Ron Carter: You mean something that is meaningful for you? a song that is...

50:59Mathias Döpfner: Well, if you want me to compare AI, a music, a song, and say, well, now, Mr. Carter, what were you doing with the same melody? And you tell me AI has a better melody than mine. Really?

51:11Ron Carter: Well, sometimes the music that is generated with Suno, for example, could even kind of double up on the Ron Carter specifics. It could sound almost more Ron Carter like a Ron Carter does. which could make it at a certain point predictable and boring. But those are the possibilities today.

51:34Mathias Döpfner: Not a chance, man. I can tell you bass players who sound like me, but they don't sound like me. They aren't picking my note choices. They aren't picking my note lint. They aren't picking my intonation. They just got a sense of what I do. I'm okay with that, man. That's how stuff gets better. You can tell me AI can do that kind of deal. No, I'm not.

51:55Ron Carter: So you're betting on the charisma of the human being and you think that art is going to remain something that is irreplaceable by machines.

52:07Mathias Döpfner: From that AI, yeah. I'm not saying that computers don't work. Or Josephine of lying on the synthesizer would sound better on a Beethoven piano.

52:24Mathias Döpfner: But Josephine thought about it when he thought about it. and he had the skill level to find out where it belonged. And then he's always looking for this kind of skill, like I am, man. AI is what it does, whatever that's ultimately defined as, but to think that it's going to have, write the kind of melodies that I could play or that I could write a bass line, no, I'm not. That can't be, man.

52:50Ron Carter: It's interesting. You seem to be rather on the conservative side also with regard to the fact that you never really, I mean, you played bass guitar briefly, but not really, and always focused on the double bass. Was that also because of the physicality of the instrument? Or why that? Why not the electronic bass guitar?

53:12Mathias Döpfner: I was already playing the upright bass. The electric bass came along at the time, thanks to Monk Montgomery, Westman, Pernsville, who played with Lala Hampton with a band. and whoever heard that sound finally figured out this is another way to make the bass louder in that band. And the guys, when I was coming up, if you say that, to take 60, 65, that kind of, they'd already figured out some things to do with it. I'm with this acoustic band trying to figure out how to make the bass sound good and what notes make the band do this and what's the rhythm designation. I like that kind of power if I can figure out how to do it.

53:51Mathias Döpfner: where are these notes located if I don't move like this? Where else are the kind of, what notes are available to me if I don't do like this all night, man? I can't. Are they here somewhere? Look at the sound of bass, man. On Monday it sounded this way, and on Friday, well, that sound, the bass owns me for tonight. That can't be, I have to figure out. I was into that. And there was guys who were already developing electric bass for whatever they could hear. I don't want to have to put the bass aside and feeling like I couldn't get to do what I thought I could do because I had all these choices, man.

54:25Mathias Döpfner: You know? It's only because I'm hearing something else. I had already spent part of my being investigating in my laboratories. If I stay on the D-string all night, would it sound better tomorrow? And if it does, can I make a different order of notes? The youth mental health crisis is growing, and social media is a major driver. Kids are spending up to nine hours a day on screens, often unsupervised, and studies show a direct link to anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. That's where Gab comes in. Gab offers safer phones and watches for kids with no social media, tailored to every age, offering the right tech at the right time, or tech in steps.

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55:43Ron Carter: you are turning 90 next May so what are your plans for the future and what are you particularly planning for your 90th birthday another birthday concert series I assume what else

55:58Mathias Döpfner: I'm open 1991 that's what I'm planning for my birthday I just saw I'm enjoying getting there I'm meeting new friends. I'm understanding more and more. And I use the word power with small caps, with the small letters. The power of the bass. And I don't mean volume, because it's getting better now with the pickups and the amplifier. But the power of the right note in the right place. The power of deciding the form of the song. This is the bridge. And I have never by the band believe it and not worry about, So I, well, man, I thought, no, no, this is, that's the power of the bass. If the bass player turns a little soft, is the band going to step back because his volume is a little different for a musical reason?

56:49Mathias Döpfner: Is he picking this tempo? Is he playing at this kind of angle so the beat still has a bump to it, but it's so grown up? I want the bass to be the man, the only man in the sandbox. You know? I want to control the note. I want to control the length of that note I want to control the place of that note I want to control the limitlessness of this note I want to control the color of this note I want to control the volume of this note and am I getting all that right? Thank you

57:34Ron Carter: So perhaps at your 100th birthday, there will be still progress on that. Yes.

57:43Mathias Döpfner: I still go out to work every night, man, trying to find that.

57:45Ron Carter: What's the secret that you are so incredibly fit and active and, I mean, performing every other night and interested in everything? And what's your secret? What can we learn from you? Well, I was, I've had a personal trainer for a really long time.

58:10Mathias Döpfner: First, I was a weightlifter. I was picking up the bass and the amp, walking down the street. I knew I couldn't do that without some kind of personal help to do that. So I had a weight trainer for 10, 15 years. We'd come to my house two days a week, and we would do this. We would do our workouts at 5 a.m. in the morning. and then when we separated after what's six years ago I have a Pilates person who comes three days a week at 5am I don't care what happens up till 4.45 but again

58:48Ron Carter: this incredible discipline have you always been that disciplined you never did silly things no drugs no

58:57get up early

58:59Ron Carter: work hard stay physically fit?

59:02Mathias Döpfner: Yes. I keep looking for the right notes way back there.

59:05Ron Carter: Curiosity?

59:06Mathias Döpfner: Absolutely. A determination not to be the guide behind the palm tree.

59:12Ron Carter: And perhaps the ability to listen? I mean, very often when you speak about music, you speak about the necessity to listen.

59:20Mathias Döpfner: That's my ultimate guide. What am I hearing? What am I listening to? What am I listening for? What am I listening to instead of? All these things. I tell my kids, you got to start listening in stereo, not just to the drums or not just to the piano player. You get to decide which of these information or formats is commanding your attention for what they help you play better.

59:52Ron Carter: your ability to listen, to which degree did music change your ability to listen to life?

1:00:03Mathias Döpfner: I think it was an integral part of it because life is what we do, man. You observe, you watch, you make your decisions as quickly as you can to the benefit of your neighbors, to help the people in the street, the people who need some help in the street, you feel what they do as part of it, feeling like it's part of you. And I think when you end a band of, in this case, a quintet, all those guys are depending on you to deliver to them, for them. And listen to me to deliver to them my gift, whatever it is, my sound, my notes, whatever it is. my honesty, wherever it is. And they know that when I deliver this item to them, it's another plat for them, which they can operate on and depend on me to get another one tomorrow night.

1:01:02Mathias Döpfner: And I think life is about these kind of challenges, man. You know, one of the things I'm having a difficult time getting, not doing like this too, is where the world is right now with the homelessness. I just can't, it's hard for me to rub my head around that, you know. And I get concerned that I can't fix it. I can fix a band that can't play. I'm there because I can help them sound better now. I just can't fix, I can't walk on the street and see homeless people. And I think one of the things I inadvertently try to do is make other lives around me.

1:01:45Ron Carter: Do you think you should have done more on other levels outside of music with regard to your…

1:01:50Mathias Döpfner: I think music is my arms ray to doing those kinds of things.

1:01:56Ron Carter: The German jazz trumpet player Till Brunner once said to me something that left a lasting impression on me. He said, we all have only 100%. Now, if we have a special talent, let's say music, jazz music, playing jazz trumpet, and that is an overproportional part of our personality and of our gifts, then that takes perhaps 80 % out of our 100%. And we may miss something on other levels, or we simply may not perform and succeed in private life or in society or whatever. Do you feel that sometimes, that music was so dominant in your life that you missed out or did not deliver to your own expectations on other areas and other levels of your life?

1:02:53Mathias Döpfner: I don't think music blinded me to those other options, whatever they are. Music has opened my eyes to them. This helped me to respond to them that if I had not had music in my head, I would have missed it. I think music is my doorknob to the other part that I've got to be a part of. And I think that when I step through this door, I'm into another mindset just because this music is open this set of feelings, this set of understanding about things that I correct on the bandstand that I can't correct on the other side of this door. I'm now aware of them because this music process I'm going through.

1:03:41You know, one of the things that's interesting is that part of my job as a bass player is fixing shit.

1:03:52Mathias Döpfner: You know, fixing the rhythms. Excuse me. Fixing the form. Dictating the changes of who's not clear with these avenues. and because I'm in the fixing business with this doorknob called music. When I open this door and see this thing, I try to do the same process I do on the bandstand because I see the results of my ability to fix stuff. And speaking of that concept, now that I'm so more available on the social media platforms, I'm running into people who know me for the past 75 years who say, Mr. Carter, I met you when I was a junior in college, or I met you at a concert, you know, and you just spent 12 minutes just talking to me outside, you know, and you changed my life.

1:04:49Mathias Döpfner: And I find that stunning. I'm at a concert, I'm at a gig, I'm teaching, whatever that, And whatever my contact with them, whatever circumstances around it, whether I was busy, whether I was distracted, whether I was between sets, I was in an airport, you know, at a train station. Whoever had this contact with me X number of moments ago or years ago, it impacted them enough that when they said, I see this guy, I got to tell him what he did for me. Okay. That's just out there in the base, but that's the avenue. That's the door opener.

1:05:31Ron Carter: Very last question. For the next ten years, one crazy thing that you'd like to do, that you haven't done so far? One project?

1:05:43Mathias Döpfner: I'd like to be able to walk down the street

1:05:49Mathias Döpfner: near a grocery store. Okay. And they have a basket full of dollars of whatever denomination. And give them to people who are going in there who don't know whether they can afford to buy what they need. I live uptown and there are these food lines, you know, and they stretch for blocks at a time. I like to be able to go to one of these lines with a basket. I said, now look, I'm not trying to embarrass anybody and I'm not selling anything, but I have something that will help the next couple of days for you. Not so difficult. I can't tell you what to do with it. I'm not trying to govern your intake of food, but I think these are difficult times and I just happen to be in my place in my head and my personal possessions that I can do this right now for you.

1:06:50Mathias Döpfner: I hope you will take this with what is meant and it's not a sermon just because this lets you write your own menu for however you want to do that and then you'll spend it, I don't care but this will be able to give you that you make your own menu for as long as you can do it that's my goal

1:07:10Ron Carter: thank you very much for that conversation really enjoyed it thank you

1:07:14Mathias Döpfner: alright