In the Beginning

Ron Carter is remembered as the bass of Miles Davis's classic quintet. But shortly before he took that chair, he recalls, he filled in for one night at the Half Note when Paul Chambers fell ill — the man about to inherit the seat quietly covering the one leaving it.

Ron Carter — now the most-recorded bassist in jazz — was an Eastman student with a 1950 Ford. After a Rochester gig, Miles Davis, Red Garland and Paul Chambers had no ride to the station, so he packed them into the car and drove them there. The future master was just the kid with wheels.

Joe Henderson is remembered as a master tenor and composer. Yet bassist Ron Carter says he never once turned up with enough material — always two songs, ten minutes short — and would ask the band to compose on the spot: 'We're making an LP here, come on, Joe.'

For years the received ranking of Blue Note's tenors put Wayne Shorter on top. But drummer Joe Chambers, who was in the room, remembered it differently: 'Joe and Wayne were equal talents — Joe just had more soul.'

Joe Chambers drummed through Blue Note's mid-1960s golden age — In the Beginning (1965), Mode for Joe (1966), Tender Moments (1968) — and resurfaces half a century later on Deciphering the Message (2021), an album that reworks that same vault, with the original session player still in the room.