| Laura Stegman is a writer and public relations consultant in Los Angeles. Her last feature stories for JTO were about David Lasley and Valerie Carter. Her next will be about Kate Markowitz |
By Laura Stegman
 Clifford Carter |
“The first time I ever saw James Taylor in person was during the spring of 1970,” says Clifford Carter. “I was a senior in high school, and I lived near a college, a girls school. They’d have their big spring weekend where they could waste some of their parents’ money, drink beer and listen to music. They hired bands to play, including my band at the time, and Blood, Sweat and Tears, and JAMES TAYLOR. Sweet Baby James was out, and he was really breaking in the United States.
“So he shows up at this college — solo,” Clifford continues. “Just him and his guitar. And he had sandals on, with these real colorful socks underneath. He was singing outdoors in this alcove on this little makeshift stage, about six inches high. He was sitting on a chair, just playing solo. And I’m this high school kid watching him, just standing there like everybody else, enjoying his music.”
| Sound Clips “Nothin’ Left To Do” “Truth” “Walkin’ Into the Sun” |
Flash forward thirty years, and keyboardist Clifford Carter is STILL enjoying James Taylor’s music. Today, however, he’s a part of JT’s band and has been for ten years. Initially he complemented JT music director Don Grolnick’s piano work by playing mainly synthesizer and organ. Since Grolnick’s untimely death in 1996, however, Clifford has handled all the keyboards.
By the time he started working regularly with James Taylor in 1990, Clifford was already a highly regarded sideman, as well as an artist who had performed and recorded over the years on his own and with a group called the 24th Street Band.
Music played a starring role in Clifford’s life from the very beginning. Born and raised in New York, he began taking piano lessons at six and formed his first band at twelve. It’s a little known fact that he first performed in public as a singer rather than as a keyboardist, a role that lasted until he got his first electronic organ when he was 13.
While attending the University of Miami’s School of Music, Clifford started working professionally. An offer to tour with Motown’s legendary Four Tops took him on the road for the first time. After a year, he went back to Miami, joining jazz/R&B artist Phyllis Hyman’s band.
Returning to New York in the mid-1970s, he continued to perform with Hyman’s band, then began doing studio work and playing with other groups. Among the friends he made around this time were Don Grolnick and future James Taylor drummer Steve Jordan. With Jordan, Hiram Bullock, and Will Lee, Clifford formed the 24th Street Band. Clifford was one of the principal songwriters in the band, which made three records, played regularly in New York City clubs and embarked on a successful series of tours in Japan.
After the band broke up in the early 1980s, Clifford continued to write music and perform both on his own and with singer/songwriter Michael Franks. He also free-lanced, working with artists ranging from Patti Scialfa to Brian Ferry. Through engineer/producer Frank Filipetti and his friend Don Grolnick, he played for the first time with James Taylor on a few songs from JT’s 1985 recording That’s Why I’m Here.
The 1990s began with two milestones for Clifford. He began work on Walkin’ Into the Sun, his only solo recording to date, which was described as “one of the most engaging surprises of the year” by Jazziz Magazine and “a showcase for the keyboardist’s excellent musicianship” by Jazz Times. He also joined James Taylor’s band. Since then, in addition to recording, performing and touring with JT, Clifford remains a sought-after sideman, working with Paul Simon, Rod Stewart, Brian Ferry, Natalie Cole, Nancy Wilson, George Benson, Martin Sexton and Roseanne Cash, among others. He’s performed on television programs ranging from Late Night with David Letterman to Rosie O’Donnell’s 1999 Christmas special, and at star-studded music events such as the 1985 reopening of the Apollo Theater (“Motown at the Apollo”), the tribute to Bob Dylan at the 1997 Kennedy Center Honors, the tribute to Willie Nelson at the 1998 Kennedy Center Honors, and Sting’s annual Rainforest Benefit.
Clifford and I talked for several hours over a period of time that began in October 1999 and concluded in early December of that year. We began by focusing on James Taylor’s symphony tour, which was “half-way home” at that time.
LAURA STEGMAN:
I have a few questions about the symphony shows. Who did the arrangements of the songs?
CLIFFORD CARTER:
Tunes we played during the concert as a quartet without the orchestra had already been arranged over the years by James and Don Grolnick and, to some degree, the rest of us in the rhythm section. The tunes we performed with the orchestra were mostly arranged by Stanley Silverman. It was great meeting Stanley, and he was gracious enough to include me in some of his arranging process. For example, “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” was one of Stanley’s arrangements that I worked with him on a bit in terms of what chords we would use, and even some little New Orleans-y piano licks which I showed him that he’d voice out for woodwinds.
LS:
It seemed the audience last night [October 9, 1999, in Baltimore] was extremely receptive.
CC:
Yeah, the reaction has been good. James sounds wonderful, and for ME as a fan, it’s refreshing to hear these standards sung by somebody who gives it the type of treatment that James does, so understated with his beautiful voice.
LS:
It was interesting seeing him move differently when he was singing those songs.
CC:
Yeah. YEAH, because of the different rhythms, the different histories. The world went at a different pace back then, in the 30s, 40s and 50s, so the music would do that to you. For me it’s a real treat to do the symphony shows. And I wish my father were alive, because he was a singer, and this was his thing. He was like a Bing Crosby kind of crooner.
 Clifford Carter |
LS:
Was he a professional singer?
CC:
Yeah. He had a radio show called “A Date with Jerry” where he’d sing all the tunes we’re doing in these symphony shows.
LS:
So it would have been good if he could have seen this.
CC:
Yeah. He died in 1993, so although he heard me play with James, he never heard the orchestra stuff. But I think about him all the time when we play it.
LS:
Tell me about how you got started as a musician.
CC:
Well, in addition to my father being a singer, we had a piano in the house, and my mother played. She says that when I was five, I asked if I could take piano lessons. Apparently I kept bugging her, and when I was six I started taking lessons.
At that point, my father had taken up the upright bass, and he had a steady gig on the weekends at this country club. And even though he was doing a lot of standards, he would do a few things to try to be contemporary, like Chubby Checker’s “The Twist,” so we had these 45s around the house. When I was sick and stayed home from school, I would be sitting there playing these records over and over and over, dancing around by myself.
But my real inspiration was the Beatles. I was mesmerized by them, so when I was in 6th grade I put a little band together. It was very embarrassing (laughs). We had about two or three tunes, and basically they were Beatles tunes, but I guess it was like a Weird Al Yankovic kind of group where we would take the songs and put stupid lyrics to them.
(Clifford sings to the tune of “I Saw Her Standing There”)
She was just ninety-eight, bald and overweight, and the way she looked was way beyond compare.
LS
and CC: (laughter)
CC:
And we actually performed in the elementary school gym. That’s my first memory of performing as a “rock band” in front of people.
LS:
Did you have a name for the band?
CC:
The Insecticides.
LS
and CC: (more laughter).
CC:
That’s RE-barrassing. That’s beyond embarrassing, it’s being embarrassed again, so it’s re-barrassing, you know. Anyway, the drummer just had a snare drum, and I just sang. I fronted the band because I didn’t have an electric instrument. And that band evolved. I don’t know what we called ourselves after that, but we started performing at dances and stuff, and we’d have like a whole night of music, early Stones and Paul Revere and the Raiders and early Beatles. And then, with the money I got from my Bar Mitzvah we bought this Ace Tone Organ. That was my first electric instrument, so then I had an instrument to play with the band.
LS:
But you still sang too?
CC:
Yeah, I was the lead singer (laughs heartily).
LS:
I’ve never heard you sing, so I’m not sure why you laughed.
CC:
Well, picture this 13-year-old kid singing (sings) “But don’t play with me ’cause you’re playing with fire.” Little 13-year-old, you know, doing “19th Nervous Breakdown.”
LS
and CC: (laughter)
LS:
That’s hilarious! And did you compose back then? Did you think that’s what you wanted to do, or were you just into the performing?
CC:
I started writing some songs. The first stuff was that Al Yankovic approach (laughs). Then the songs that I started to write were like early Dion and the Belmonts. “Had a girl and her name was Joan, I called her on the telephone.” That kind of thing. That never went anywhere. But in high school, I started playing in bands with guys who were older, and the bands started getting better and more adventurous. I was in a band called the Weeds, and then there was one called Psychosis…
LS
and CC: (laughter)
CC:
And Electric Abraham, real ’60s kind of vibes. We started writing and doing gigs. I was always attracted to bands that improvised and played what was called progressive rock music, meaning freer music that had a lot of improvising. We would rehearse, and we’d always be jamming.
When I was a senior in high school, I was in this band called Wild Field, and it was just keyboards, bass, drums and a woman who sang and played flute. We wrote original stuff, and then we would take other people’s stuff and arrange it for ourselves.
LS:
And what happened after high school?
CC:
I’m reading a local advertising magazine, summer of ’69, before my last year of high school, and it says, “Jazz Piano Instruction, Mitch Farber.” And I was always into learning new things. At the time I wasn’t taking any lessons. I really didn’t know what I was getting into, but I was curious. So I called this guy up, started studying with him, and it was a huge turnaround in my life. We’re still really good friends now. He was the best man at my wedding, and he became a friend and a mentor. He was a professional musician and arranger, and he turned me on to Chick Corea, Miles Davis, Coltrane, a lot of jazz stuff. And he started prepping me for what it would be like to go to college and study music. He’s responsible for me going to the School of Music at the University of Miami. I didn’t even know it existed.
I wasn’t excited about the idea of going to college and doing anything but music. I was expected to go to college, and I had good grades, and I knew I was going to go… that was just what my life was going to be. But I remember having a key conversation with my mother, and I said, “I can’t see going to college to study science, math, blah, blah, blah.” That was my naive view of what college could have been. And she said, “What do you want to do?” And I said, “I want to play music.” So she said, “Well then, you have to go to a music school or a university that’s got a music department.” Which was an amazing thing for a mother to say to a kid, because we all know that a lot of kids that want to go into the arts don’t get that kind of support.
LS:
True.
CC:
So, in the spring of 1970 when I was still in high school, I decided to check out the University of Miami just to see what it was about. I went down there, and I walked into a room, and the director of the jazz program was conducting a band. They were playing and improvising over this kind of South American-influenced piece. And I’m going, “This is school??? This is college??? OK, I’m going here.” I just connected what I heard to the music that I’d been jamming on for years in my basement and doing on gigs.
And that was just the greatest, most intense four years. Every day we were either playing music, practicing, eating or sleeping. Up until then, I had been serious about music in a certain way. It was a big, big part of my life, and it had been for a long time. But being in college is when I learned what it was like to really get serious about practicing. I realized I had work to do. Music is about communication, and your spirit and your emotions, and I felt I belonged on that level as much as anybody else but I didn’t have the chops. So I said, “I gotta get the chops.”
I eventually made the transition from being a student to being a full-time musician, paying my own bills, while I was in college.
LS:
So you worked while you were in school?
CC:
Yeah, and it was great because there was a professional scene in Miami, so a lot of my teachers were the guys that were doing gigs in town at the nightclubs. When they started seeing that I was developing into a good player, they would recommend me to the contractors. There was a club in Ft. Lauderdale called Bachelors Three where all the acts would perform when they’d come through town, James Brown, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Bobby Vinton, Mel Torme, the Four Tops, on and on and on. So you would get called to play the shows, and when you showed up, you’d do a rehearsal and you’d do like a week or two of a run. One day, this contractor, Peter Graves, called and said, “Are you available to play the Four Tops show?”
LS:
Wow!
CC:
And I was like, YEAH, this is great! Because in high school, we were dancing to the Four Tops. Their keyboard player had just quit, so after I played the gig, they asked if I wanted to come on the road with them. And from where I was at that time in my life, and what I thought I’d be doing, that sounded like Japanese to me. So I called my folks, and I remember telling my mom what the money was, and it wasn’t amazing money but you could live on it back then. So my mother said, “You’ve got to do it.” It was like a mother knowing that her kid, who she had put through college, could take care of himself. And so I told them “Yeah.”
I met them in L.A., and we played Disneyland for a week. On my nights off I would hitchhike down to this jazz club, and I was like…
LS:
… in heaven?
CC:
Yeah, I was 22 years old and I was hanging. It was so great! We went to Japan and England, and we played Vegas. I spent a year with them. I also started writing a bunch of tunes, and I wrote some for them. They dug them and recorded two of my tunes. One of them, called “Let Me Know the Truth,” made it to their album Night Life Harmony on ABC Dunhill. And that was exciting.
THE 24TH STREET BAND
CC:
In the summer of ’76, I was living in New York City, and I felt so good because it was the first time in my life that I wasn’t in school, and I had no commitments to anything. I was excited to be in New York, and I knew all these great players. I started doing studio work along with live stuff and played with different bands. One night I walked into a club, and there was this drummer, a young kid who just turned 19, named Steve Jordan, who ended up working with me again as the drummer in James’ band for half of the 1998 tour. Anyway, I met him and we became real good friends.
A year later, in 1977, I became part of a band of four guys — myself, Steve Jordan on drums, Hiram Bullock on guitar, and Will Lee on bass. It was known as the 24th Street Band, and we started playing clubs around New York, original music, and we all sang and wrote. That was a period when Japan became really interested in what was going on in New York City, so people from a Japanese label approached us, and we started making records for Nippon Columbia. We actually made three, and we toured over there a couple of times. We were packing 1,500- to 2000-seat theatres, and it was a great time, really exciting. We also did really well in clubs in New York City.
LS:
Did you meet Don Grolnick around this time?
CC:
I met Don in early ’76 at a club called Russ Brown’s on 96th Street. He walked in one night with bassist Will Lee and their respective girlfriends. Little did I know that that was the start of a long-term personal and musical friendship. You play the same instrument, and you don’t end up on the same gig a lot, unless it’s a two keyboard kind of thing, but on any given night I’d see Don hanging out at the clubs. He wasn’t into the electronic and the synthesizer thing so much — and I was — so when he was doing his own music and he wanted to use those things he would call me, and I would work on some of his solo projects. I just loved Don. I’d go hear him play, and I even played in his band once when he played clubs because he needed a second keyboard player.
 Clifford Carter – “Walkin’ Into the Sun” |
WALKIN’ INTO THE SUN
CC:
In 1989, after I had finished a tour with Brian Ferry, I went into the studio on my own and just recorded a bunch of stuff. Originally it was instrumental music. I used my voice, but for melodies not words, and it was very eclectic, with some Brazilian influences. I shopped this tape for a long time and got nowhere, but eventually I met this guy named Tim Weston who was starting a label. He liked my tape and said he’d like to do something with it, but he asked if I’d agree to trash some of it, keep some of it, remix, and add new tunes. And, he said, “Would you consider singing on the new tunes?” And the thing that was interesting was that when I started out, I wanted to sing, but I didn’t have a bunch of tunes that I really felt good about. But they wanted me to sing, so I said, “Sure,” and I wrote these new tunes, one of which was called “Walkin’ Into the Sun,” which became the title tune. The album became a real eclectic mix of five vocals and five, six instrumentals. It came out in Japan first, and was released in the United States in ’93. You can probably still order it. The label’s called Soul Coast.
MEETING JAMES TAYLOR
CC:
In 1979, the 24th Street Band was playing at the Hot Tin Roof on Martha’s Vineyard, and we were invited to a barbecue at James and Carly’s house, because Carly was a co-owner of the Hot Tin Roof. So I show up there, and James is there, and he had just dented his car on a wooden carport beam. He was trying to reenact the accident by going the other way to undent it — to move it back in the opposite direction. To right this wrong, you know (laughs).
LS:
Did you talk to him?
CC:
Yeah, a little bit.
LS:
Did you really like his music?
CC:
Oh yeah. Steve Jordan and I, not only were we in the 24th Street Band together, but we lived on the same floor. We had adjoining lofts where we rehearsed, so, yeah, we used to listen to James’ music. I remember that Steve, at the time, was trying to orchestrate us getting a chance to play with James.
LS:
Oh, really?
CC:
Yeah, but I said to him, “Why are you doing that, we’re trying to do our own thing.” And nothing ever happened with it. But last summer [1998], I remember laughing about that with Steve as we were riding on the bus during James’ tour. I said to him, “Remember how you were trying to orchestrate it so we could play with James?” And he said, “Well, it took us 20 years, but here we are.”
LS
and CC: (laughter)
CC:
So then another five or six years went by, and when James was working on That’s Why I’m Here [1985], I got a call to come over and play some small parts. Billy Payne had been the main keyboard player on that record. Don was involved a little bit. They wanted me to play on a tune called “Turn Away” and put some synthesizer stuff on the title track. So that was the first time I recorded with him, and that was really great.
LS:
Did you guys hit it off? Or was it just business?
CC:
Well, it’s never just business with James. Whether he’s known you for 20 minutes or 20 years, he’ll treat you the same, with patience and respect. And he’s humble, and you just make music. That left a big impression on me.
But as far as the work we did together, he said, “I have this tune, ‘Turn Away,’ and we’re not sure if we’re going to keep it for the record, so we want you to try some stuff.” Basically the vibe was that they needed a keyboard part to anchor it and pull it together. If it was going to work they would keep it, and if it wasn’t going to work they’d have to re-cut it. But it turns out that it worked, and they kept it.
Years later I found out that James hated that song anyway, but at least it worked enough at that time to go on the record. I always love hearing artists who write such great music talking about something they did that they hate. It’s a good thing to know that people as good as that don’t like certain things, but they don’t let it stop them from keeping on.
DON GROLNICK
CC:
The next year, 1986, Don calls and wants to know if I want to audition for James’ band. And I said, “Cool.” James came over to my house, and we played together, just the two of us. Then we went out to dinner, and lo and behold — or maybe it’s just lo and lo — I didn’t get the gig.
LS:
Oh no!
CC:
And Don said to me — this was SO prophetic — “Don’t take it personally. There are a lot of different spheres of influences that go into making this decision. It’s not about your playing.” Even though it was, like, how can you not take that personally, it was nice hearing that from Don. And then he said, “You never know what could happen in the future.”
I could cry when I think about that, because in 1990, Don calls again and says, “Would you like to do James’ summer tour with me? We’ll have two keyboard players, you’d be playing a supportive role.” And he explained that although James traditionally had two electric guitar players, one of them doubling on pedal steel, this summer they wanted to try just one electric guitar and two keyboards.
LS:
You didn’t have to audition again?
CC:
Right. So I’m sitting on this couch, I know EXACTLY where I was, and James calls. And in his incredible style, he said, “Well, you know, is this something that you think maybe you have time for?”
LS
and CC: (laughter)
CC:
We had really good chemistry together. And I ended up doing that gig and continuing to play with him for all these years. Then Don passed away [of lymphoma], and I became the main keyboard player. It’s just unbelievable. We all know that there are a million great players out there who could come in and do a great job with James and make wonderful music. But Don chose me. And he really went to bat for me. If it wasn’t for Don, sure, I’d be all right, I would be making great music somewhere, and I might have even had some experience with James or whatever, who knows. But because of Don’s BELIEF in me, which came up in different years and for different things, because of his strong belief in me, I’m just unbelievably lucky. What he’s done for me in my life on so many levels, I’m just forever grateful to him. And Don said, in 1986 he said, “You never know what’s going to happen in the future.”
CARLOS VEGA
CC:
Things have changed dramatically since then. There’s a very different tone now, especially because of Carlos’s death. [Vega took his own life in 1998.]
LS:
Because of the personal loss, obviously, but also the artistic loss?
CC:
Yeah. And there’s been a series of different drummers. Again, they’re all great. I feel blessed to be playing with them. But Carlos was dedicated to it and had done it for so long. He was a rare, rare blend of so many different histories — his Cuban background and his experiences in Los Angeles and his love of jazz and Latin music. He was a teacher, as Don was. These guys taught us how to play music by showing up and playing amazingly every day and setting an incredible example that we were forever changed by.
Also, special things happen with musicians that play together over a long period of time. It doesn’t matter how great you are. Of course, wonderful things can happen with people that just sit down and have never played together before. Every situation is special in its own way. But when you play with the same people over a long period of time, things happen that can only happen over a period of time.
LS:
That makes sense.
CC:
Carlos was in some ways an unspoken leader. He was amazingly consistent. After Don passed away, he was the person who had been in the band the longest. He was constantly growing as a player, whether it was studying different types of music or taking lessons. When a drummer’s accompanying a singer, the goal is to give the singer the space to sing and to give the song an identity. Carlos was a master of that. He always had a “less is more” approach, and with that approach, what he played suggested so much more than what he was actually playing. Yes, he was playing drums, but it was as if he was another harmonic instrument in the band. His work ethic, the way he warmed up every night before the show, and his consistency were amazing.
On the bus during our tour, we had some Latin percussion instruments, and Carlos had us start this little Latin group. He taught us how to play Latin music on percussion instruments. I think it started in ’94. It was called (laughs) “Grupo Wa-Wa.”
LS:
What???
CC:
Grupo Wa-Wa. I don’t know how you spell that, but I think in some kind of Cuban or Spanish, it means “bus group.”
LS:
It sounds like Baba Wawa.
LS
and CC: (laughter)
CC:
Basically we were listening and playing along with Latin music, and Carlos would be teaching us what to play on each instrument. One person would play the bongo, another would play cowbells, another would play clave, another would play congas. You’d play for a little while, and you’d switch, so each person would play each instrument.
LS:
Wow.
CC:
In the last year that he toured, 1997, he was learning to play bass, and he had bought a four-string electric bass. So while we were on the bus riding to the next town, he would be in the back playing along with a Bob Marley CD and old Bob Dylan stuff. Then we’d get to the next town, and you’d see him carrying the bass and the amp up to his room so he could practice. He was always learning new things. He had a very specific practice routine before every gig to warm up on his drum pad, and he was a leader. (pauses). It’s just a huge loss. It’s very, very different since Carlos is gone.
And the reality is that other people have stepped in and done a great job, and the music lives on. But there are certain things that only happen in a band due to playing together over a long period of time. Any musician will tell you that. No matter how great the players are, certain things only happen by playing together over a long period of time.
LS:
And you had that with him?
CC:
And we had that with him.
JOINING JAMES TAYLOR’S BAND
CC:
When I joined James’ band in 1990, we all met in the Vineyard. I had been in Japan doing some gigs with other people, and I remember I was learning James’ music in the hotel room in Japan preparing for the rehearsal.
LS:
How did you do that?
CC:
They sent me tapes of the tunes, and I also had CDs. I’d write out a chart and musically notate anything that I thought was an important part of the orchestration or accompaniment, something that I thought I would be asked to play.
LS:
At that point they hadn’t used synthesizers?
CC:
That role had never been played before, so I was making that up. One of the things that I enjoyed was the times when I was left on my own to come up with what my role was going to be. I started playing the orchestra parts on synthesizer, like marimbas on “Mexico,” some kind of glockenspiel bell parts on “Shower the People,” string parts on “Up on the Roof,” and that kind of stuff. I used the synthesizers to imitate the real instruments that had been used in the arrangements on the records
LS:
Did James ever discuss why at that point he decided to add a keyboardist?
CC:
I think part of the reason was that the music was going in a direction where they were starting to use multiple keyboard parts on the records. And while Don was capable of doing anything, really, his love was just to sit there and play the piano and not to have to deal with any electronics or programming. So by having me there, it freed him up to just relax and play the piano, and I could do all that other stuff. I know that that was part of it.
LS:
So that really gave a huge new depth to what you guys were able to do live.
CC:
Yeah. It was a really full sound. Even on traditional James tunes, like “Your Smiling Face” and “Handyman,” with Don playing piano and me playing organ, you had that big rock band thing, that R&B sound. It was fun.
LS:
So, back to joining the band… you all met in the Vineyard?
CC:
Yeah, it was probably a Monday when we started. The rhythm section [Clifford plus Carlos Vega on drums, Jimmy Johnson on bass, Mike Landau on guitar] was there first for a few days, and I think the singers [Valerie Carter, David Lasley, Kate Markowitz, Arnold McCuller] showed up on a Thursday. I remember they were getting their monitor sound together, and they sang something with James. It was just James playing acoustic guitar singing with the background singers, and I said, “Wow, this is an amazing sound!” And it hit me really clearly that they didn’t need us.
LS:
What do you mean?
CC:
What I meant was, yeah, of course they need us. I mean, you’re gonna get up on a big stage and play in front of a lot of people, you gotta have the instruments. But really, the music sounds beautiful with just voices and guitar. So I remember saying to myself that if I play any notes, every note has to mean something. That whatever we do, we need to find the spaces that need color and different types of density.
NEW MOON SHINE
CC:
We recorded New Moon Shine mainly in New York. James had most of the music written, and we went to a studio and rehearsed. I also remember Don and James coming over to my house and kind of mapping out “Shed A Little Light” and discussing how we were going to record it, because it has some tempo changes. But basically we rehearsed as a band and then went into the recording studio and cut the basic tracks.
LS:
And let’s say you’re hearing “Shed A Little Light” for the first time, how do you hear it? On tape, or does he play it live?
CC:
Usually he’s sitting there playing it for you.
LS:
On his guitar? And just singing along?
CC:
Actually, in that case, he wrote “Shed A Little Light” on a keyboard, because he plays a little piano. Then he showed it to Don, and Don showed it to me. Sometimes he’ll have made a very simple little cassette tape of him playing a song, which you can learn from. But a lot of times, it’s just him sitting there playing for you on the guitar. Jimmy and I usually make a little chart — a road map of the song — for ourselves as fast as we can without breaking the flow of the creative process.
HOURGLASS
CC:
Hourglass was different from New Moon Shine. The intention with Hourglass was to get together and record in this rented house on Martha’s Vineyard in a more informal environment. Meaning that James didn’t want to be in a commercial recording studio in a big city where not only was the atmosphere different, in that maybe you had other people coming and going, but you also had to watch the clock because of cost. We were using less expensive recording equipment, too. It was state-of-the-art stuff in its own way, but we were using what people often refer to as project studio recording equipment. It’s less expensive stuff that even laymen can buy to record with instead of a Sony 48-track digital machine and all the bells and whistles of a big city recording studio.
LS:
Isn’t that a little ironic, then, that the album received a Grammy for best-engineered album?
CC:
Yeah. Also, James didn’t want the pressure of saying that we were making a record. He just wanted to spend a couple of weeks experimenting and recording. And if he liked what he got, he would finish it and release it, but there was a possibility that it would just serve as a demo, as preparation for what would come later.
LS:
WOW, that’s interesting!!
CC:
And that was reflected in the recording equipment, the location, and the amount of people that were involved. It was just me, Jimmy, Carlos and James, just a quartet.
LS:
Not even another guitar?
CC:
Not even an electric guitar. There was an engineer and an assistant, and that was it.
LS:
Wow, that’s amazing!
CC:
But James liked what we did. And they took the tapes to New York and transferred them from the DA88 format to the Sony 48-track digital machine, and then overdubbed in New York and L.A.
LS:
Overdubbed what?
CC:
Branford Marsalis on saxophone and more synthesizer and keyboard parts. Edgar Meyer came in and played bass on a song, Yo Yo Ma played cello, Stevie Wonder played harmonica. Shawn Colvin sang backgrounds on “Yellow and Rose.” Then he took the tapes to L.A., Kate, Val, David and Arnold put their background parts on, and Bob Mann overdubbed on guitar.
They mixed in New York, but the basic tracks, the bass and drums and most of the basic keyboard parts, were just what we played on Martha’s Vineyard and nothing more. So while they were overdubbing, they tried to be very conscious of maintaining the space and the simplicity of what we had done.
Another aspect that was different from New Moon Shine was that he hadn’t written that many songs — although it’s hard to put a number on it. We recorded “A Little More Time,” “Line ‘Em Up,” “Enough to Be On Your Way” and “Up Er Mei” first, but after THAT, James just started breaking out these ideas, these parts of stuff,
LS:
You say that he had written some songs, so I assume you mean that he was still then writing the others?
CC:
Yeah. With a tune like “Jump Up Behind Me,” he had no lyrics, no title. It was just this idea of some chords, and we put together a rhythm track. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it. He wrote the lyrics to that in the absolute final hour.
LS:
That’s amazing!
CC:
And it turned out to be really good.
LS:
YEAH! (laughs)
CC:
He started showing us “Ananas,” for which he had a verse and a chorus. He hadn’t written all the words, but we started jamming. I started playing what became the signature opening figure in the keyboard part, which the vocalists ended up doubling. James said that he liked that. And then he said, “We’ll go into a verse, and then we’ll do another verse. Then we’ll do a chorus, then we’ll go back to a second verse. Then we’ll use that figure as an interlude to set up a guitar solo, which will be over the verse. And then coming out of that, we’ll do the latter part of the verse, then another chorus. And then we’ll repeat the chorus and go back to the intro figure. And it worked. So all of a sudden, that tune came about from a sketch to a whole form, right there.
LS:
Right in front of your amazed eyes.
CC:
Right.
LS:
That sounds like a fantastically creative process and experience!
CC:
It was… how do I say it? It was the most rewarding experience I’ve ever had playing popular music in a recording studio with an artist. We all had a chance to contribute in an unprecedented way, even though we had been playing in the band for years. And Carlos was coming up with drum grooves that were giving these tunes identities that in some ways was unprecedented. I mean, he had played on several records, but he was reaching a new level in terms of his contributions.
For example, James was teaching us “Another Day,” and Carlos came up with this drumbeat that he said he had learned from Brazilian music. It was a really subtle but clear departure from a traditional approach. In other words, he brought in other influences and found a way for them to work with James’ music. He was able to incorporate stuff that he had drawn from other musical histories to really make the music unique.
LS:
How interesting!
CC:
Regarding my work, up to this point, when we first play any James Taylor song, often one of the first things I would think of was, “What would Don do?” I was so taken by the way Don played and accompanied James, and I was just so used to hearing Don play. But at the time we were recording Hourglass, Don was in the last month of his life. He was very ill, and couldn’t be there.
So I was playing this piano part for “Another Day,” but there was something about it that wasn’t clicking. It didn’t sound like it was right for this moment. It sounded like I was playing on some older recording session of James’ from the ’70s or something. So either I or somebody else suggested that I play synthesizer instead of piano. And it worked. It was an example of me integrating the synthesizer into the basic tracks to give the song a different mood and identity. And on “Up Er Mei,” I had this idea to play a very ethereal synthesizer sound on the basic tracks. When I was doing it, I was thinking, “I like this stuff, but can I do this on a James Taylor record? I mean, this is different!” So I asked everybody, and they said, “Go for it. This is a new day. Do something that you like doing. Go for it. Try it.”
LS:
Are you sort of telling me that you were stepping away a little bit from thinking about Don and going more into the Clifford Carter head?
CC:
Yes. I was always keeping Don’s approach in my mind, and there were certain tunes where I would think about what Don might do. But then I would think about what I might do in terms of keyboards. So tunes like “Up Er Mei” and “Another Day” would reflect my approach, where a tune like “Enough to Be On Your Way” was me playing Don, and I loved doing that. So each tune was a constant inner conversation. What is the most appropriate thing for this? How can this tune come to life and have an identity? It was a combination of my approach to keyboards and different musical histories and experiences that I had independent of Don versus Don’s style of accompaniment. So it was an intense experience, because it was the first time that I was the only keyboard player in a James Taylor tracking session.
LS:
And Don passed away right around this time?
CC:
We recorded the basic tracks in May, and Don died June 1st. He heard what we did, and died within weeks. It was devastating. It was also kind of a catharsis. Although Don wasn’t there, I felt his presence. I was working along, kind of being guided by Don’s standards.
LS:
It sounds like a very bittersweet time.
CC:
Yes.
LS:
Is there anything else that you want to say about Hourglass?
CC:
It amazed me that what was released as Hourglass was everything that we played. Everything. Not one thing that we recorded was trashed. I mean, there would be multiple takes, and James chose which take of each song. But every song that we recorded became Hourglass. Which is pretty amazing given the fact that the intention going in was an experiment. Even the long fade on a tune like “Up Er Mei,” at the very end you can hear Jimmy Johnson playing these quick little licks. James used EVERYTHING. It was very rewarding that he did that, because it was real music put together in a very organic, spontaneous way. I was really honored to be part of it and proud of what we did. It was also very rewarding that it was received well.
LS:
I’ve always been struck by the song “Look Up From Your Life.”
CC:
That was amazing to me. Again, James said, “I’ve got this idea. I don’t really know if it’s any good or what it is.” He wrote it on keyboards, and he shows it to me, and he only had like a verse and a chorus. He hadn’t written all the words. So we started playing it, just keyboard, bass and drums. He didn’t even play guitar on it. And I’m sitting there going, “MAN, this is amazing.” Here I’m recording a James Taylor song, and I’m the only one playing chords. It was just a great experience. And the song is an amazing song. A lot of people, including myself, wonder where it came from and what it’s about. I think some people associate it with Don or something, but James has said that it had nothing to do with Don, that it was really just him talking to himself, because he had a lot going on in his life too.
LS:
That’s interesting. Valerie Carter said that when she hears it, she sees Don’s face.
CC:
Right, well that’s the beauty and depth of James’ music or any great song. That people can interpret it different ways and it can still be valid. And who’s to say that unconsciously maybe it did include the reality that Don was ill and that his death was imminent. It’s possible that even James doesn’t know.. A lot of his songs often have a substantial part that seems very clear, but then there’ll be a line or two here or there that it’s not clear. It could be taken a lot of different ways. And I think that’s one of the identities and the wonderfulness of his poetry.
LS:
What an exciting, creative experience it must be to work with him!
CC:
It was. Hourglass was unbelievable. For a sideman to be included in an artist’s recording, that’s as good as it gets. Being a player on a project like this, it doesn’t get any better than that.
RANDOM TALES FROM THE ROAD
CC:
One significant thing for me happened during three gigs at the end of a short tour in the fall of ’93. It was the first time I played live as the only keyboard player, because Don was asked by Paul Simon to play with him for a month. When we did these three gigs, we never really rehearsed with just me on keyboards without Don. I just did my own personal homework. We ran a few things down in the sound check, but that was mainly for the vocalists. I stepped in and did it, and that was intense because I took it as a sign of faith in me from James. I don’t really know what it was, but he was comfortable with it, and it went well, and I felt good about it.
And the other thing I really remember was that David Lasley gave me the sweetest card, a note saying “Thank you very much for the preparation that it must have taken to do this. I appreciate the effort that you made, and it truly shows your love for this music.” It was the sweetest thing in the whole world. It actually floored me, and I’ll never forget that.
LS:
David told me a story about you too, about how sweet you were to him once when you called him before leaving for Europe prior to the last tour [when James did not tour with all four singers].
CC:
Yeah, I called everybody that wasn’t going — because we were going in a smaller configuration — and I just wanted everyone to know that I was thinking of them. Don used to do that for me. There were a few gigs that didn’t involve me, like one time they went to South America for about three weeks, and James couldn’t take everybody. Don would call when he got back and say, “We really missed you.” It just makes you feel really great.
 |
DOES CLIFFORD REALLY KICK SMALL DOGS??
CC:
Regarding other anecdotes, I’ll tell you about the time I broke my toe on the way from the dressing room to the gig bumping into Valerie.
We were in Houston, Texas and it was REALLY, REALLY hot, and I played the sound check with no shoes and socks on because it was just so hot. I asked everybody, “Can I play the show barefoot, or is that just tacky?” and they said, “No, no, you can play barefoot, it’s OK.” So I’m in the dressing room, and it’s a little before we’re supposed to go on. Bob Mann brought something up, so we got into it a bit. We’re having this serious discussion, and all of a sudden one of the crew guys comes in and says, “Aren’t you on this tune?”
LS:
Oh no! (laughs)
CC:
And this was like a nightmare, because I have recurring nightmares at the end of every tour that I’m supposed to be on stage, and I can’t get there. People are blocking me, I can’t find it, and so this was like my nightmares. My heart skipped a beat, and I hear the beginning of “Another Day.” So I take off running as fast as I can. And all of a sudden, Valerie appeared from nowhere with these big shoes on. And I have no shoes on, and I run into her, and I hit my toe. I know that something’s wrong, but I keep running toward the stage, and I embarrassingly walk on in the middle of the tune and start playing.
LS:
(laughing) Did James look at you???
CC:
No.
LS:
(more laughter)
CC:
So, I looked down, and the toe on my right foot is pointing to the right in a way that’s completely bizarre. And I’m freaking, and I’m in some pain. But the mental anguish, knowing that I’ve got to sit here and play for close to an hour, was freaking me out . I couldn’t use my right foot, I had to do things with my left. The keyboard tech brought out a bag of ice, and the singers are looking at my foot, and they’re going “Ewwwwwww, God!” At intermission, the keyboard tech and a paramedic walked me offstage like a football player coming in to the sidelines, and the paramedic straightened my toe out.
LS:
And, of course, this became great fodder for James when he introduced you at subsequent shows.
CC:
Oh yeah, it became a whole rap. Once he said that I kicked a kid, or a dog. Sometimes he would say that I ran into Valerie, or sometimes he would say that Valerie broke my toe.
THE BAND BUS
CC:
OK, here’s an insane bus story. It was our first bus trip with the new band, and we were on the way to do our first gig in Maine. Our bus driver had this “bus girl” named Beth who he brought along to help out. It was late at night, we’re on our way down the road, and all of a sudden, we look up, and the driver is back by the refrigerator making a sandwich,
LS:
Oh my God, oh no!
CC:
We were still moving, and we’re going, “What’s happening???” And he goes, “Well, Beth is driving the bus.” And we just got with the road manager, and said, in the immortal words of George Bush, “This will not stand.”
LS
and CC: (laughter)
CC:
So that never happened again, but that’s pretty legendary. And then there was the bus driver who quit after the first couple of days because we were just so “white bread.” He wanted to be on a rock n’ roll tour. The stuff we would talk about and the stuff we would do was so boring to him that he quit the tour. He wanted another tour. He wanted some rock n’ roll action!
LS:
That’s so funny!
CC:
One time we were on a long tour, and everybody decided to do some spring cleaning because things had started accumulating, and there was all this stuff on the bus. And it was like, “Who does this belong to?” We started to weed out and throw out stuff, and we were laughing because there’d be a pair of shoes, and nobody knew whose they were. It was like, “Whose SHOES are these???” And so we’d just throw them out. Or we’d have five bottles of ketchup… we don’t need five bottles of ketchup, you know.
LS
and CC: (laughter)
CC:
Don was so funny, he was so methodical and so meticulous. He loved routine. One summer he had this thing where he was only going to bring a certain amount of clothes, and every night he was going to wash one pair of clothing in his room, so he would come on the bus the next day with the wet stuff on the hanger. Then at the end of the night he would take that back to his room and then switch it. It was just hilarious watching people going through their different routines. I used to be known as the person who could fall asleep anywhere, anytime.
LS:
Do you guys talk about the concert, not just from a music standpoint, but how the audience was?
CC:
Oh sure, definitely. We’ll say, “Did you see that guy in the first row in the middle of ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ who was on his cellular phone?” Or, “Why does the person in the second row have to have binoculars?” And, “Did you see the girl dancing in the aisle who got into a confrontation with somebody, and the next thing you know there’s a fist fight going on with another woman, and she’s being dragged out of the hall?” I mean, this is a James Taylor concert, it’s not like, you know, AC/DC or Motley Crue.
LS
and CC: (laughter)
LS:
Now in Europe during the 1999 tour, I understand you guys had one bus.
CC:
Yeah, when we first did it last year [1998], I remember talking with Carlos and Jimmy, and I was going, “Wow, we’re riding the bus with James. We never ride the bus with James.” We were saying, “God, I hope he still likes us after this,” and I was wondering whether I was I going to have to check some of my silliness at the door. But it turned out just great. I had some of the most fun and rewarding and serious and silly conversations with James. It’s like one-thirty in the morning, and all of a sudden you’re sitting there, and it’s just you and James. Everybody else is asleep, and you talk for hours.
THE MUSIC (including “STEAMROLLER”)
LS:
Tell me about that funny thing that you blow into on “Jump Up Behind Me.”
CC:
Actually, on the record, it’s Michael Brecker playing that, not me. He played an electronic wind instrument that triggers a synthesizer. But in the 1997 rehearsal for the road, we were trying to decide how to cover that sound. I had this old little Yamaha synthesizer, Yamaha CSO1II. It’s a toy, and I think it’s got, like, two octaves on it. It has small-scale keys, not even full-size piano keys. And it has very limited capability, it’s about 15, 16 years old. But I had used it as a solo instrument in some jazz fusion groups I used to play with, and it works really well with a breath-control device. You plug the device into the synthesizer, and it enables you to control the volume, the attack [when the note starts] and the sustain [the duration] of the note.
You blow air into this thing and set the synthesizer up so that unless you blow into it, no sound will come out. You play the keyboard with your hand like a normal piano, but unless you push air through while you’re playing the keyboard with your fingers, no sound will come out.
LS:
Regarding James’ older songs, how do you keep them fresh? I would imagine you can’t keep playing those songs the same way year after year.
CC:
On some things I take a very similar approach from year to year, and other things evolve. It depends on the song and how specific the original part was and how integral it was in creating the identity of the song.
James got so tired of the arrangement of “Steamroller” that we were doing in 1990, he said, “I just can’t do this anymore.” He was ready to scrap the whole thing. But then we kind of simplified the arrangement and changed the tempo, changed the feel. We’ve done that several times, so we have different versions of “Steamroller.” Depending upon what James’ mood is, we’re always toying with that tune and doing it in different ways.
The interesting thing is that people love that song, and if they didn’t request it he would never do it.
LS:
Request it, like yell it out at concerts?
CC:
Yeah. If they didn’t constantly yell for it, he would never do it, because he’s had it, he’s had his fill of that. But he knows it makes them happy, and so he does it. The reality is that it’s a novelty song. A lot of people take it seriously, but to James it is a novelty. He wrote it as a reaction to the blues music that a lot of young white kids were trying to play, and he thought it was a bit presumptuous of them to try to do that. But if you listen to a lot of old blues, which I do, you actually realize the genius of that song. Maybe genius is a bit dramatic, but it’s clever. Not only is it kind of funny unto itself, but it’s right out of the mold of real serious blues music. There are so many different songs where one guy is saying, “I’ll be your cross-cut saw, baby,” and “I’ll be this” and “I’ll be that.” And you realize that’s what James is goofing on. It’s just a goof.
LS:
Not to mention that it’s a goof on his own supposedly mellow persona.
CC:
Yeah. One night in Chicago in ’91, he’d been talking about how he was sick of “Steamroller” and the arrangement and everything, so he actually said to the audience, “This is the last time we’re ever going to do this, because it SUCKS.”
LS
and CC: (laughter)
CC:
And everybody was going, “Woooahhhhhh, this is not the good old gracious James that we’ve come to know.” But the fact that he exorcised that emotion and that perspective and that little demon, I think it freed him up. Because he sang the shit out of it that night. I mean he really laid into it, and I think it liberated him. And when we got back together the next year, he came up with another arrangement, and it gave it a little new life.
LS:
What song would YOU rather never play again?
CC:
I’ll answer you in a different way. I can’t think of any song that I don’t want to play with James, but I will say that he has a habit of wanting to come up with a cover tune for a summer tour, like “Not Fade Away, or “Summertime Blues.” Some song to use as an encore. So somewhere around ’94-ish, he wants to do “Land of a Thousand Dances.”
LS:
Oh NO (laughter)!
CC:
And I’m going, “WOAH,” and I’m thinking that this is the first time he’s taking a left turn and I’m not sure this is the right fork in the road to go. But I will say that I was completely impressed and inspired by the fact that he made it his own. He was completely hands on — as he always is — in the arrangements, and the way he sang it was GREAT, and it grooved and I got into it. It was a kind of pop/R&B groove that worked, because he committed to it, and he pulled it off.
CLIFFORD SINGS AGAIN
LS:
You got to go back to your boyhood roots when you sang with James on the European tours when James toured with only one or no background vocalists, didn’t you?
CC:
Right. It was something, though. When the sound guy says, “OK, Cliff, could you sing something so I can get a sound on your microphone?,” so I’ve gotta sing a solo that you can hear. And James is standing right there. He’s never heard you do that, and you’re, like, “OK, I’ve gotta do something good, because I don’t want to suck.”
LS:
(laughing) But he wouldn’t have asked you if he didn’t think you could do it, right? I mean, you didn’t go, “James I want to sing vocals.”
CC:
Actually, I did.
LS:
Oh, you DID?? Sorry.
LS
and CC: (laughter)
CC:
We were in rehearsals in ’98, and James said, “I want to try this song called ‘Music.'” I had listened to it, and I said to him, “OK, we can try that song on one condition.” And, of course, I’m joking, but with serious overtones. I said, “Could I take a stab at singing the background part in the bridge?” And he said, “Yeah, sure.” So I tried it, and it worked, and so I did that and some other harmonies too.
 (L-R) Hiram Bullock, Will Lee, Steve Jordan and Clifford Carter |
AND FINALLY….
LS:
Getting back to your work as a keyboardist, which James Taylor song do you love the most? Which is the one that you’d want to play every time if you could?
CC:
Well, when we recorded the song “Gaia,” I was going, “This is it.” That was one of the times in my life where I was thinking, “I was born to do this.” I was proud of that, and I was honored to play on that song because it was really close to my heart.
I love playing with the band. I love Kate and Val and David and Arnold, Bob and Jimmy and Russ, and working with them is very special. It’s just a very special thing.
Billy Payne once said that James’ gig is great for a keyboard player because you get to play so many different styles. I love so many different types of music, and getting a chance to play with James, you get to bring all those different histories in, and you do it in subtle ways. There are not that many bands where you get a chance to play all those different styles. That’s a great thing, and I appreciate it.
EPILOGUE – October 2000
Clifford Carter continues to work with James Taylor and write music with an eye to recording another solo album. Later this month (October), he will play the Blue Note Clubs in Tokyo, Fukuoka, and Osaka (Japan) as part of a group called “Ralph MacDonald and the New York All-Stars” led by percussionist/songwriter Ralph MacDonald. In December, Clifford will play in a band led by Don Was to honor Chuck Berry at the 2000 Kennedy Center Honors. Also in December, as he has done for the past two years, he will visit Denver to play piano with the Colorado Symphony, conducted by Marin Alsop, as they perform a contemporary gospel adaptation of Handel’s Messiah. He will also perform this piece with the Concordia Symphony in New York. Earlier this year, Clifford’s keyboard work was featured on the soundtrack of the John Singleton film Shaft starring Samuel Jackson, and he recently worked on the soundtrack for the upcoming Nora Ephron movie starring John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow called Lucky Numbers.