Basically, ever since my first hearing of 'Mean to Me,' Billie Holiday's been the quintessential vocalist for me, particularly in the musical relationship that she shared with Lester Young,” says saxophone virtuoso James Carter on the eve of the release of Gardenias For Lady Day, his first new album in more than three years and his first since signing with Columbia Records. “To me, vocalists and instrumentalists, particularly horn players, have often shared a history of musical osmosis where we influence each other.”
Billie Holiday's influence on James Carter began with a vinyl copy of The Billie Holiday Story Vol.3, which he remembers fondly as “one of the first jazz albums I started listening to as a musician, and I constantly played along with from beginning to end. She made the template for the vocalists I would eventually seek out for musical dialogue.”
On Gardenias For Lady Day, Carter returns the favor, paying homage to the indomitable spirit of Billie Holiday and the complexity of her musical legacy with a cohesive group of soundworks evoking far more than simply the sublime sadness and haunted turbulence of Lady Day's life and era.
Four of the album's eight compositions -- “(I Wonder) Where Our Love Has Gone,” “I'm In The Lowdown Groove,” “Strange Fruit,” and “More Than You Know” -- are part of Billie Holiday's recorded repertoire while the others -- “Gloria” (recorded by Don Byas), “Sunset” (recorded by Cab Calloway), “A Flower Is A Lovesome Thing” (recorded by Duke Ellington), and “Indian Summer” (recorded by Coleman Hawkins) -- were recorded by contemporaries of Lady Day.
“I always wanted to do those tunes,” says Carter of the Billie Holiday “covers” on Gardenias For Lady Day, “but outside of playing along with the album, never had a chance.” Of the “homage” tracks, Carter believes that songs like “Sunset” and “Gloria” are “...tunes that Billie not only would've dug having in her discography but also would have wanted to perform. 'Sunset' to me depicts a day of hard labor that gives way to lyrics of optimism and better things to come. It paralleled what was going on in Lady Day's life, musically as well as socially.”
Though primarily an album showcasing Carter's instrumental prowess and ability to convey emotional complexity through musical coloration, the “ongoing osmosis” between vocalist and horn player shines during the syncopated and breathlessly sophisticated scat and shuffle of “More Than You Know” and, with startling and visceral clarity on the radically multi-tracked and brutally evocative “Strange Fruit,” one of the album's core spiritual touchstones. Singing with Carter and his ensemble on both tracks is Miche Braden, a friend and colleague of Carter's since the “mid-to-late 80s.” “To me,” says Carter, “she has the essence of an ever-evolving Billie. We've gotten together over the years, at various jam sessions and concerts, and I really dug her style, the spirit that she has.”
Gardenias For Lady Day is produced by Yves Beauvais. Strings on the album are conducted by bassist/composer Greg Cohen (Tom Waits, John Zorn's Masada, Lou Reed, David Byrne, David Sanborn). The tracks “Flower Is A Lovesome Thing,” “Indian Summer,” “Strange Fruit,” and “More Than You Know” are arranged by Greg Cohen. “Greg can do conventional string arrangements, but he also has a penchant for utilizing 'odd' instrumentation, bringing something fresh to the table - just listen to 'Strange Fruit.'”
“Sunset,” “I Wonder Where Our Love Is Gone,” and “Gloria” are arranged by Cassius Richmond, “one of my first musical heroes in my peer group and my teacher's protégé. Over the years I've had the pleasure of playing his arrangements in a variety of ensembles.” “Lowdown Groove” is arranged by Cassius Richmond and James Carter.
Carter's ensemble on Gardenias For Lady Day includes John Hicks (piano), Peter Washington (bass), and Victor Lewis (drums). “It's a new rhythm section,” says Carter, “consummate yet outgoing and fiery.”
“Billie Holiday has permeated my life on a whole lot of levels,” admits James Carter. “Billie's kind of like old home week to me. She just comes home in so many ways, fashions, shapes. She always lets you know there's more than one way to sing the same tune and definitely being true to one's self, too.”
Carter references an interview Billie gave in 1956 for the “Peacock Alley” radio program. “She mentioned that she'd like to have children and own and run her own jazz club,” Carter says. “There were definite signs that she had other things on her mind and that she just didn't have the resources or people in her corner or in her pocket to bring these things to fruition. This (Gardenias For Lady Day) is musically a way of hooking that up or at least acknowledging that. Had she lived longer, her vocals would've been over many a backdrop, it wouldn't have ended with Lady In Satin in 1958. I know she would've been performing in a variety of situations, especially if she had had the supportive network that all artists need to maintain and develop their art.
“If one really gives her a chance,” Carter continues, “Billie can really get in, permeating your soul, giving you a feeling of hope in the midst of adversity, and opening up a spice rack of feelings on you that just won't quit.”
Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1969, James Carter began playing saxophone at age 11, first recorded with a Detroit student ensemble in 1986 and, by 1991, had recorded with legendary trumpeter Lester Bowie on The Organizer and contributed to the 1991 collection The Tough Young Tenors. Mastering a family of reed instruments, from sopranino to contrabass saxophones to contrabass and bass clarinets, James Carter mesmerized the jazz world after arriving in New York City in 1988 to play under the auspices of Lester Bowie.
His debut recording, JC On The Set, released in Japan when Carter was a mere 23 years old, heralded the arrival of a significant and powerful new musical force in jazz. Recorded at the same session as his debut, Carter's next release, Jurassic Classics (1994), found him entering the Top Jazz Albums chart for the first time. It was a feat to be echoed with four of Carter's subsequent releases: The Real Quiet Storm (1995), Conversin' With The Elders (1996), In Carterian Fashion (1998), and Chasin' The Gypsy (2000).
Gardenias For Lady Day is the first James Carter collection since the simultaneous release, in June 2000, of Layin' In The Cut, an electric jazz/funk collective jam session, and Chasin' The Gypsy, an homage to Django Reinhardt. In a review of those two albums, Rolling Stone (August 3, 2000) asserted that “....saxophonist James Carter is as near as jazz gets nowadays to a Young Turk -- not some ironically avant-post-rock experimentalist but a cocky scene stealer with...a knack for coming up with noticeable records.”
Carter has performed, either live or in the studio, with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the late Julius Hemphill, Ronald Shannon Jackson, the Charles Mingus Big Band, soprano Kathleen Battle, Aretha Franklin, David Murray, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ginger Baker, Sonny Rollins, and many others. He appeared in the 1994 PBS telecast of “Live At Lincoln Center” and portrayed saxophonist Ben Webster in Robert Altman's 1996 film, “Kansas City.”
James Carter recently topped Downbeat's annual Critics Poll in the Baritone Saxophone category for the third year in a row.
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