James Carter: Chasin' The Gypsy : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

James Carter
Layin' in the Cut
Atlantic
2000

At thirty-one, 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 sustaining audience, a mainstream reputation and a knack for coming up with noticeable records. He's sharper than Branford Marsalis, wilder than Joshua Redman, better than Greg Osby; if his brash range, breathtaking chops and brawling sound recall anyone, it's Sonny Rollins or category-busting forty-five-year-old David Murray. And after albums devoted to boudoir come hither, Hammond B-3 and personal jazz roots, his latest releases are a double doozy: two separately sold CDs, one taking off from the Romany guitarist Django Reinhardt, the other a long-overdue bid to reclaim the Ornette Coleman-derived style of fusion briefly achieved by Murray and guitarist James Blood Ulmer around 1980.

Chasin' the Gypsy is the instant fave here. Opening with an in-your-face bass-saxophone rendition of Reinhardt's hugely hummable World War II hit "Nuages (Clouds)," Carter and a band featuring violinist Regina Carter and drummer Joey Baron swing romantically ("Manoir de Mes Reves [Django's Castle]"), jauntily ("Oriental Shuffle"), moodily ("I'll Never Be the Same"). The title tune is a gut-busting flag waver, the closer a literal lullaby. Carter's affection for a bygone culture is palpable throughout and never deadened by piety.

But the freshly improvised, quickly recorded Layin' in the Cut is just as impressive. Topping a rhythm section with roots in Ulmer and Ornette and the very different 'twixt-jazz-and-rock guitarists Marc Ribot and Jef Lee Johnson, Carter is as at home pumping percussive funk as he is rolling out off-buoyant swing. His distinctly hard-edged embouchure is especially well-suited to this harmolodic style, with its determination to make jazz guitar loud and R&B horns free. Like everything Carter does, it will make guardians of jazz taste wince and lovers of its spirit rejoice. (RS 846)

ROBERT CHRISTGAU