Picking winners: Guitarist Larry Carlton at Blue Note
By Paul W. Blair
JAKARTA (JP): Those who caught American guitarist Larry Carlton's first set on Tuesday evening at the local Blue Note heard something quite unexpected: three numbers played on an unamplified guitar instead of his customary electric.
The reason was a sudden blowout in a stage amplifier during the course of a slow and rather steamy blues session. The result was a stunning version of the Carlton hit Kid Gloves, the title song from his best-selling 1992 album.
Carlton says that he prefers to play only electric guitar during his live shows these days because he has enjoyed his greatest success with it and because that's what his fans come expecting to hear.
Altogether, there have been a dozen albums issued under his own name since 1978. The three most recent (all available in Jakarta) are on the GRP label. So is his next one, teaming him with Lee Ritenour as co-leader and scheduled for release early next year. Carlton says the pair has already laid down the basic guitar tracks and will return to a Los Angeles studio in the next few weeks to oversee production and mixing of the backing tracks.
The current booking at the Jakarta Blue Note (which ends tomorrow night) marks Carlton's first appearance in Indonesia. He and his band flew into town after a month of shows at three Blue Notes in Japan, where he is a well-established star.
"I've been to Japan fifteen times in the last twenty years and its hard to go back every eighteen months without some fresh energy. That's why I recruited two new band members for this trip."
"John Ferarro, the drummer, has been with me since 1977. But both Rick Jackson, the keyboard player, and Larry Kimpel, the bassist, joined us only a couple of months ago. I met Larry when he was part of a recording project that involved Tom Scott, David Benoit and me. Then he recommended Rick," he explained.
"When I first started going to Japan in 1971, audiences really were quite reserved. There wouldn't be a sound from them until the very last note of a song faded away, then they would applaud politely. Now they're very similar to American audiences, clapping after solos and really getting into the music," he added.
Familiar
Tuesday's Blue Note show included lots of tunes already familiar to buyers of Larry Carlton compact discs and cassettes: Double Shuffle, March of the Jazz Angels, 10:00 PM, Song for Katy (also done acoustically after the amp went down), Minute By Minute (the evenings only song not written by Carlton) and a pleasing ballad called Emotions Wound Us All.
Carlton has four guitars with him on this Asian tour. His primary instrument is a solid-body 1957 Gibson Les Paul Special, a gold-top model much prized by collectors. He says he is using minimal electronic effects -- just a little reverberation and a bit of delay. On several tunes, the band plays in tandem with some rather subtle sound pads (percussion and strings) previously recorded on DAT cassettes and cued during the show by the drummer who dons headphones to hear the pulse tones on the tape.
Among the compact discs by other musicians that Carlton has brought along for his own listening pleasure are a John Coltrane ballad collection, some Joe Pass and two by bluesman Freddie King. Carlton says he doesn't listen all that much to other guitar players. But he is enthusiastic about Robben Ford.
"If you catch Robben on a night when he's really on, every guitar player in the house will be sitting there with his jaw gaping. I've been a fan since 1976 when he was just a kid. He's a very strong blues-oriented player," he said.
Jakartans can judge for themselves because Ford is slated for a show of his own at the Studio 21 Concert Hall on Sunday evening at 8 p.m.
In addition to keeping up a busy recording and performing schedule, Carlton has done lots of outside musical work in recent years. He's produced numerous albums for other musicians, many working in vastly different styles. He was a regular in Hollywood recording studios in the 1970s, playing on movie soundtracks and cutting commercial jungles. He's done quite a bit of writing for TV, too, and recently did the music for an episode of Beverly Hills 90210. It was a real panic situation, he recalls, because everything had to be wrapped up in just three days.
The one film project he was most involved in was Against All Odds, for which he composed, scored and conducted half the music. The entire process consumed three months of his life, but he says he enjoyed the challenge and is ready for similar projects.
"I liked having that responsibility and that degree of control," he says. "Eventually, though, I got pretty sick of doing so much anonymous studio work and acting as a producer for other people. Now I guess I'd rather put that creativity into my own music."