James Carter

Detroit Jazz Festival

James Carter Organ Trio

Detroit native Carter shared his childhood home with five musically inclined siblings in “a house filled with all manner of sounds, from The Beatles to Funk and Hendrix.”

The Jazz influence came from Carter’s mother who “brought the voices of greats like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald into my life.” It was his mother who in 1980 took young Carter to see the Count Basie Orchestra at the Detroit Music Hall, where the big-band sound made a lasting impression, but it was a World Saxophone Quartet concert two years later that would set music as a path for life. “To watch four saxophonists individually and collectively, literally shred the stage” recalls Carter, “it sparked a furnace inside of me that won’t quit to this day.”