Ron Carter
Pick 'Em

Two hands that seem to embrace a double bass, almost like two lovers in the throes of a strong love ecstasy: this is the first image offered to us by this album. Not a face, nor any other instrument: only long and slender knobbly fingers reminiscent of tree branches of the same color as the double bass are there to testify to the absolute intimacy of that gesture, as if musician and instrument were one and the same. What they are playing is yet to be revealed to us...
On the side of the cover, two other small clues: "Pick'Em," the title of the 1978 album, and above all a name, Ron Carter.

A name that carries with it an entire history of jazz and a certain way of conceiving the double bass within the rhythm section that has now become a school; a history that began to be written in the orchestras of Eric Dolphy in the early '60s, passed through Thelonious Monk, found its peak with Miles Davis during the 1963-1968 period, and still lives at seventy years of age (in every sense) every time this musician decides to pick up his favorite instrument.

But one does not live by double bass alone, Ron Carter knows this well, and indeed starting from the '70s, aside from his favorite instrument, he decided to use another instrument he invented and perfected: the piccolo bass, a kind of double bass but with smaller dimensions and tuned an octave higher. The sound is truly curious, very bubbly and sharper compared to a regular double bass, as if we were listening to a cello more muffled and with... a cold! It is thanks to the piccolo bass that we can grasp Ron Carter's true voice on "Pick'Em," not only in his solo moments but also during the accompaniments: a very warm voice, deep, full of groove and imagination, in constant dialogue not only with his instrument and the rest of the musicians but above all with the listener, who, in my opinion, will have the very impression of having the American musician in front of them playing with his instrument, as happens, for example, in the solo piccolo bass track "B And A".
Accompanying the bassist in this adventure, we find a string quartet of cellos alone: Carter's intention, in fact, was to make classical instruments coexist within the jazz idiom, exploiting the possibilities these instruments offered. Even if the experiment was certainly not new in this area, the result is excellent: far from being mere background, the atmosphere created by the quartet is functional to the pieces, sometimes romantic and slightly melancholic as in "Tranquil", or more lively and country in the title track (enhanced with delightful harmonica solos). Completing the lineup of musicians involved in the project, we find Kenny Barron on piano, Buster Williams on double bass (but only for accompaniment), and Ben Riley on drums: all musicians of value, naturally, but here put too much in the background, so much so that only Barron manages to carve out some small solo moments.

The focus, therefore, is all on Carter and the string quartet: two different worlds but absolutely complementary that the great musician managed to unite, treading more convincingly on the debris of that wall which, even today, many would like to erect between the various genres. This album is the testimony of a certain way of understanding music, a concept reiterated among other things by "Super Strings" three years later, an album that will bring to maximum fulfillment the original idea contained in "Pick'Em".

...those hands continue to fly on the strings drawing new geometries: a new caress, another, another one...