Jim Hall / Ron Carter Duo - Alone Together (1973 Japanese Milestone Vinyl LP)

Jim Hall / Ron Carter Duo - Alone Together | Vinyl LP - 1973 Japanese Milestone (SMJ-6011, Victor Musical Industries)

Hall had come up through Chico Hamilton's quintet and Jimmy Giuffre's trio, and had spent the 1960s working with Sonny Rollins, Art Farmer and Paul Desmond. Carter had spent five years in Miles Davis's second great quintet and had become the most in-demand bassist in New York, a musician whose credits by 1972 already ran into the hundreds. What they share is an approach: both play with a cool, unhurried tone, both think harmonically rather than pyrotechnically, and both had built careers on knowing what to leave out. Put the two of them alone on a stage and the result is a conversation rather than a performance. "St. Thomas," the Sonny Rollins calypso that Hall knew from working with its composer, opens the album at under five minutes and sets the terms straight away: Carter states the theme as often as Hall does, and the roles keep swapping. "Alone Together" follows, taken slowly enough that the harmonic movement is fully audible. "Receipt, Please" is Carter's own composition and gives him the most room on side A.

Side B is where the record settles. "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise" is under three minutes and the most concentrated thing here. "Whose Blues?" is Hall's contribution, a blues that neither man plays straight. Then "Prelude to a Kiss," which is among the most harmonically demanding ballads Ellington wrote and which the two of them handle without once making the difficulty audible, and "Autumn Leaves" to close. The album was recorded in a nightclub with an audience, and you can hear the room throughout: glasses, conversation, the general noise of a Friday night at a Playboy Club. Some listeners find that distracting and others think it adds something. What is not in doubt is that the two musicians are listening to each other with an attention that studio dates rarely capture. Hall and Carter went on to record together as a duo twice more, in 1982 and 1984.

This is the 1973 Japanese pressing on Milestone SMJ-6011, made by Victor Musical Industries.