Double Bass Carson Smith!

[bassfiddlesteve]

The recent thread on Putter Smith made me think about his late brother Carson Smith whose playing I really enjoy. His name doesn't come up very much, but he was a superb player. My all-time favorite bass feature is a tune he wrote and performed with the Chico Hamilton Quintet called "Mr. Smith Goes To Town". Anyone here ever heard it? It's a catchy minor-key melody that bears a strong resemblance to the Isreali national anthem (really). It features a fugue/counterpoint section with clarinet, guitar and cello and Carson plays some tasty solos throughout the track. I have it on vinyl but I can't find it on CD other than a prohibitively expensive multi-disc set.

- Steve

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[Paul Warburton]

The recent thread on Putter Smith made me think about his late brother Carson Smith whose playing I really enjoy. His name doesn't come up very much, but he was a superb player. My all-time favorite bass feature is a tune he wrote and performed with the Chico Hamilton Quintet called "Mr. Smith Goes To Town". Anyone here ever heard it? It's a catchy minor-key melody that bears a strong resemblance to the Isreali national anthem (really). It features a fugue/counterpoint section with clarinet, guitar and cello and Carson plays some tasty solos throughout the track. I have it on vinyl but I can't find it on CD other than a prohibitively expensive multi-disc set.

- Steve

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Steve, as I have mentioned before, I spent several long concerts and jazz parties here in Denver with Carson. They were promoted and put on by a kind of famous jazz entrepreneur named Dick Gibson. They were pretty big deals in that Gibson would hire about 5 or 6 guys per instrument. The bass player were like: Ray Brown, Milt Hinton, John Clayton, Major Holley, you know, people of that kind of fame (with the exception of me) This would happen once a year for the big party over the Labor day week-end, then there would be separate concerts over the year too.
Carson ended up living in Las Vegas which is not exactly JAZZ City.
I loved the Chico Hamilton band, that also included Jim Hall.
I can only say that i'm sorry that Carson never got his due in the jazz world. He was a great player and good guy!!