Track Listing

1. Lianmo
2. Down To The River
3. Don's Idea
4. Skull Grabbin'
5. Odyssey
6. Trouble In The World
7. Escape From Bizarro World
8. Frisco Follies
9. Lockjaw's Lament
10. In Carterian Fashion

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #136342 in Music
• Released on: 1998-05-19
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com's Best of 1998
Early in 1998, saxophonist James Carter signed a modeling contract, perhaps explaining the title of this LP. His jazz chops, we are happy to report, have not suffered. On Fashion, Carter and his sax are all business. He is able to cool burn on slower numbers, recalling Ben Webster's smoldering ballads, then turn on a dime to deliver blistering runs of honk and skronk that seem intent on peeling the paint from the walls. Carter's horn playing is all about power and forceful delivery, but he is also capable of amazing control. And on Fashion, he dukes it out with hotshot keyboardist Cyrus Chestnut, here driving a Hammond B3 organ like he was piloting a Zamboni. Great stuff! --S. Duda

Amazon.com
Detroit-born saxophonist James Carter has proven on his three previous CDs that he's a multifaceted, jazz dynamo. His tenor sax playing can ache with the romantic silkiness of Ben Webster and then soar with the multiple ranges of David Murray. In Carterian Fashion ups the ante on listeners, with Carter and celebrated jazzman Cyrus Chesnutt getting downright soulful in the latter's first outing on Hammond B-3 organ. There would be no "Carterian Fashion," however, if there wasn't a wide and telling divergence among Carter's performances. He goes ballistic on a couple of freewheeling tunes, showing again how the avant-garde and mainstream in jazz are, in reality, kissing cousins when skillfully dashed together. And once again, fellow Detroit-native and pianist Craig Taborn hammers the keys with both subtlety and absolute directness. --Andrew Bartlett

Option
Carter is among the best young sax players on the planet, and his new album is rich with horns ... while the organ lends a thick downhome sound wherever it occurs ... the tunes and arrangements of the album could just have well accommodated a more standard piano line-up.

Customer Reviews

Good, fairly tasteful James Carter
James Carter's 1998 CD has three different rhythm sections, and has five original songs and five covers (though no standards). It starts off with melodic "Lianmo", a somewhat lackluster "Down To The River", and a smoking "Don's Idea" with Dwight Adams on trumpet trading phrases with J. C. "Skull Grabbin" is a catchy original with Craig Taborn standing out on organ. Carter finishes "Odyssey" with some tasteful baritone sax chirps. James Carter sometimes has a weakness for overplaying and overusing free jazzesque squeals, chirps, honks, and overtones. He keeps it more tasteful on this CD. "Trouble In The World" is another bluesy traditional song. It's somewhat better than "Down To The River". "Escape From Bizarro World" is a catchy song written by Spencer Barefield, a Detroit jazz guitarist. The final three originals range from Saturday Night Live funk to bluesy, to Saturday Night Live funk. It's a pretty good CD, but one problem is some bluesy and funky songs sound too much like the Saturday Night Live houseband. It's not that those songs are unentertaining, they're just not as original as they could be. In the world of James Carter, I put this CD below "Conversing With The Elders" and "Gold Sounds", but it's a 4-star disc like the other two.

almost a tenor thing
except for one track, james carter puts down his signature baritone not for the other horns he plays, but to be accompanied by the organ, played on most of the tracks by craig taborn.

the organ has more possibilities than any horn, while being closer in sound to the saxophone than any other instrument. in any race the organ wins. or should win. carter's high octane is a blend of blues funk and free jazz improvisation.

this cd also contains a composition by don byas. if byas becomes part of the jazz conversation again, give credit to james carter.

Where is the line?
Many artists in jazz seem content to simply stick to one style of jazz; free jazz artists stick to their abrasive music, swingers ignore anything post-bebop and play the same boring music that was actually good during the 1940s and those of the Wynton Marsalis school will accept anything that is not avant-garde and/or fusion, but will accept classical music.

James Carter is an oddity then in the world of popular jazz. This album, with its soul-jazz organ riffs maybe expected to sound just like a 60s soul-jazz record; very much hard bop with an organ and nothing too avant-garde. In Carterian Fashion shows Carter going all over the place; with drum beats that sound like a 40s swing band, screeching solos that would have made Albert Ayler and John Coltrane proud and great straight-ahead playing. Carter is pretty much unique in the Young Lions era of jazz in that he is able to use all of jazz history to his own ends to create some of the best Jazz of the 1990s. This album is recommended to fans of jazz who aren't close-minded to the avant-garde and enjoy a bit of 40s swing.