Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Blindfold Test: Buster Williams
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Playing with European guitarists indebted to Django Reinhardt stuck with saxophonist James Carter.
(Photo: Jimmy & Dena Katz)On a temperate night in April 2017, James Carter was veering dangerously close to the intemperate. Jamming with other saxophone stars onstage at the State University of New York at Purchase, he seemed a man possessed—his tenor saxophone by turns wailing and whimpering, bleating and braying with a musicality so muscular it threatened to consume him.
It never did. Carter, a big man with a big heart, is by nature a maximalist. And the vehicle at hand—Sonny Rollins’ aptly titled “Tenor Madness”—seemed attuned to his more-is-more aesthetic. Among such distinguished players operating at full tilt—Jimmy Heath, Joe Lovano and Ravi Coltrane were part of the mix—Carter’s search for new sounds fit the moment, even as its urgency set him apart.
“I think it’s going to be a perpetual search,” he said between bites of quiche at a Manhattan pâtisserie this June.
At 50, Carter remains relentless. A child of Detroit and builder of the modern jazz scene in that city—where he still lives when not holed up in a pad on New York’s Upper West Side—he retains a reputation as an iconoclastic seeker of truth for whom each rush of air through his horn both aspires to rebellion and respects tradition.
“There are certain people God puts something extra in their pot; he’s one of them,” said violinist Regina Carter, his cousin and sometime collaborator. “But he definitely worked for it.”
In a career that’s encompassed symphonic collaborations, solo concerts and nearly everything in between, Carter’s expansive art has never quite settled into a comfort zone. Nor has the restless saxophonist sought one. But he has returned to a few subjects repeatedly—none, perhaps, more productively than Django Reinhardt (1910–’53).
First turned on to the iconic gypsy guitarist as a teenager by the programming of Detroit radio host Jim Gallert, Carter today is reimagining Reinhardt’s work for the second time. The project is one in which he and his bandmates—Gerard Gibbs on Hammond B-3 organ and Alex White on drums—incorporate rhythms and riffs from contemporary culture into songs associated with Reinhardt. The resulting sounds, in Carter’s words, give Reinhardt “a ’hood pass.” Fresh even by Carter’s high standards, those sounds hold the promise of wide appeal.
“This particular hybrid could be made available and relevant to new listeners,” he said.
The project has been gathering steam, generating excitement at both the 2017 Monterey Jazz Festival and last year’s Newport Jazz Festival. The upshot, Carter said, is that Blue Note Records, which had been weighing an in-studio Reinhardt album, decided instead to release James Carter Organ Trio: Live From Newport Jazz (produced by label head Don Was). The program includes five tunes by Reinhardt—including 11-minute renditions of both “Le Manoir De Mes Rêves” and “Mélodie Au Crépuscule”—and one by his contemporary Auguste “Gusti” Mahla, all recorded at the 2018 festival.
The new album, on which Carter plays soprano, alto and tenor saxophones, has its roots in an earlier encounter with Reinhardt, documented on Carter’s sixth album, 2000’s Chasin’ The Gypsy (Atlantic). For that project, he employed some of the more obscure horns in his considerable arsenal. Among them: the F-mezzo soprano saxophone and the bass saxophone, on which he rendered gems like “Nuages” and “I’ll Never Be The Same” with a lyricism that offers striking evidence of his ability to coax the most unlikely sounds out of the most unwieldy instruments.
That album’s debt to Reinhardt is clear in the way its two acoustic guitars, accordion and violin evoke the deep and sometimes dark colors of wartime Paris. Yet Carter’s imprint is unmistakable in the twists and turns the treatments take as he shapes his sonic world within Reinhardt’s universe. In a series of structured colloquies, for example, James and his cousin Regina recall the heat of Reinhardt’s interplay with violinist Stéphane Grappelli—while also molding the melodic contours in a manner that reflects a risk-it-all, Motor City sensibility.
“When you’re playing with James, you have to lose any preconceived expectations of what you think the music is and be willing to trust and hear James’ vision and put yourself out there,” Regina explained. “It can be uncomfortable because it’s so different.”
“What I got from Percy was the dignity of playing the bass,” Buster Williams said of Percy Heath.
Aug 26, 2025 1:53 PM
Buster Williams, who at the age of 83 has been on the scene for 65 years, had never done a Blindfold Test. The first…
Don and Maureen Sickler serve as the keepers of engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s flame at Van Gelder Studio, perhaps the most famous recording studio in jazz history.
Sep 3, 2025 12:02 PM
On the last Sunday of 2024, in the control room of Van Gelder Studio, Don and Maureen Sickler, co-owners since Rudy Van…
The Free Slave, Cosmos Nucleus and Sunset To Dawn: three classic Muse albums being reissued this fall by Timer Traveler Recordings.
Aug 26, 2025 1:32 PM
Record producer and “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman has launched his next endeavor, the archival label Time Traveler…
Butcher Brown, clockwise from top left: Marcus Tenney, DJ Harrison, Morgan Burrs, Corey Fonville and Andrew Randazzo. (Keyboardist Harrison couldn’t make the gig, so special guest Jacob Mann sat in with the band at the Reno Jazz Festival.)
Aug 19, 2025 12:41 PM
The band known as Butcher Brown has enjoyed the last half-decade basking in the glow from the twin engines of critical…
This year’s Jazz em Agosto set by the Darius Jones Trio captured the titular alto saxophonist at his most ferocious.
Aug 26, 2025 1:31 PM
The organizers of Lisbon, Portugal’s Jazz em Agosto Festival assume its audience is thoughtful and independent. Over…
