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With appearances on over 2,500 albums, Ron Carter is easily one of jazz music’s most-recorded upright bassists. I began to grow a deep appreciation for his trademark playing style from the work he did with Miles Davis’ second great quintet – the expression and tone he coaxes out of his upright is unmatched. Below is a track off a 1970′s Japan-exclusive recording of the Herbie Hancock Trio… he, Hancock and Tony Williams played a stripped down set that allowed each musician to shine.

My love for jazz music is reverse-engineered. I grew up on hip hop and alternative rock, but didn’t begin to listen to jazz until my college years. It was only through curiosity of the samples that various producers used that I was able to begin discovering the music that inspired so much of the east coast golden-era hip hop sound.  A few years ago, I realized that I had heard Ron Carter’s playing in middle school before I even knew who he was. It was no secret that Ali Shaheed Muhammed and Q-Tip leaned heavily on jazz samples for the group’s beats, so it was entirely fitting that they invited Ron Carter to play the bassline on “Verses from the Abstract” from Tribe’s legendary album The Low End Theory. That’s where it all came full circle for me: I was a fan of jazz before I was a fan of jazz.