Remembering Professor Carter & Life Under Chicago’s Wing

Hi, it’s me, Jonah, the baritone saxophonist.

I moved to New York city 18 years ago, in 2006. That’s about half my life, but I grew up in Chicago. There is no doubt in my mind that Chicago is the reason I am a musician today. Well not Chicago. People in Chicago. Teachers in Chicago. 

Today, I found out that we lost one of the most important of them: Professor Ronald Carter.

I spent most of my high school years chasing the best music students I had ever heard all over Chicago. Ryan & Marquis on trumpet, Kenneth on guitar, and Michael, Jabari, & Alford on saxophone. I did my best to find my way into any room where they were playing. And they were playing in a lot of rooms, because in those years, there were a ton of people and organizations putting everything they had into creating opportunities for kids to study Jazz in Chicago. Many of those people are still doing that work today.

Just before high school I started at the Gallery 37 Jazz Band in downtown Chicago. At the audition, I met Michael McLaughlin. I followed him to the Merit School of Music, where he conducted the Jazz combo. That was fall 2004. About the same time I joined the jazz band at Lincoln Park High School, conducted by Phillip Castleberry. In March, Mr. Castleberry sent me to a kids jam session (ya that existed) run by The Jazz Institute of Chicago at Hot House. I think I played a blues with Marquis that night. I was in awe of all these kids playing at a level I could never imagine. I wanted to learn what they were learning.

Suddenly I was showing up to Merit School of Music, Ravinia Jazz scholars, Chicago State University, Lincoln Park HS Jazz Band, hanging at the jam session at the Velvet Lounge, and spending time around the greatest musicians and mentors I could imagine. Musicians/organizers like Mwata Bowden, Willie Pickens, Bobby Broom, Fred Anderson, Pat Malinger, Pharez Whitted, Lauren Deutsch, Michael McLaughlin, Phillip Castleberry, and countless others were dedicating themselves to creating spaces to learn, play, and experience life as a musician. The craziest part was all I had to do was show up. They welcomed me.

I followed that pack of music students everywhere, especially if Marquis, Ken, or Mike was willing to give me a ride. But the most important place I followed them was to the South Shore Cultural Center. That’s where, every summer, Professor Ronald Carter ran the South Shore Youth Jazz Ensemble. 

I can clearly remember how I felt when Professor Carter told me he was letting me into his band: I was terrified. Terrified because from the moment I met him, it was clear that acceptance into this program wasn’t a gift, it was a responsibility. I had won the opportunity to improve, and the responsibility to strive in an earnest and urgent way. It took him 15 minutes to welcome me under his wing and see me for what he demanded I become. It was almost magic. I left the audition seeing myself as a different person. A person who tried really really hard, and a person who could succeed. He gave me true mentorship, effortlessly and instantly, without even really knowing me. That is a level of talent as an educator that I have not since encountered.

But what about the music? The truth is, music is about a lot more than music, and what I remember the most about Professor Carter is how he made me feel. Which in a way is kind of fitting, because all he cared about was if the music was swinging. Every summer, one thing was for sure, if the band wasn’t swinging in June, it was gonna be swinging by August. He would accept nothing less, and honestly, I don’t think anyone will ever be able to teach someone how to swing the way he did. Ever.

I think about Professor Carter every day. Saying goodbye is a heavy loss, and I will celebrate his transformative impact any time I get the chance.

Of the mentors I mentioned above, 3 of them have passed on: Willie Pickens, Michael McLaughlin and now Professor Carter. Every time we lose one of them, I think about this part of my life. In fact, I think about growing up in Chicago all the time. I even once wrote an album of music about it called, I Try to Remember Where I Come From. I’ll finish things off by digging up the artist statement I wrote when that album was released in 2017: 

I’m deeply grateful for my day to day. The act of creating and performing music gives my life a sense of motion, and I step into each day knowing that I have somewhere I want to go. But as I go about entertaining myself with my own creative process, I try to remember that music exists to communicate truth. I am a product of Chicago, and although I spent my most formative years in many incredible programs starting or ending with the word Jazz, it was the term Creative Music, a concept first introduced to me in my high school band room and explained over years of mentoring by South Side musicians, that formed my musical spark. As I derive my livelihood, and my life’s creative fulfillment from these musicians’ example, I have to remember that their tradition is not mine to claim. Black American music is a response to an environment of exclusion, oppression, and institutional silencing that I, a white American man, have not, and will never experience. Despite all of this, throughout my teenage years, Black musicians in Chicago shared their traditions, their gatherings, their bandstands, their living rooms, and their musical incites with me in a generous, and enduring way. I think a lot about how special it is that there are people in this world who have responded to the physical and mental silencing that is inextricably linked to the American story by creating something that has, at one time or another, warmly embraced nearly every person on earth.

Talk soon, 

Jonah