Larry Carlton Brings Jazz Fusion Talents and Impressive Resume to The Suffolk

Session musicians are the oft-forgotten sidemen that have been the backbone of the music industry for decades by performing on countless hit songs and albums. But many of these supporting musicians have gone on to make names for themselves in their own right.

Among the most well-known of this group is Larry Carlton. Primarily a jazz fusion guitarist, Carlton has built his career by performing on countless hit records in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as becoming a multi-time Grammy Award-winner as a solo artist.

And now, Carlton is bringing his talents to The Suffolk in an evening that will showcase his six-string mastery on Friday, September 19, at 8 p.m.

The now 77-year-old Carlton first started playing guitar when he was 6 years old while growing up in Southern California. It was this setting that later inspired him to incorporate a volume pedal into his gear, a method which allows for guitarists to create swelling notes.

“Country music was very big in Los Angeles, so I was exposed to steel guitar players,” said Carlton in a recent phone interview. “When I got the idea for a volume pedal, it automatically made me think like a steel guitar player where they can sneak notes in with no attack.”

As Carlton developed his sound, he quickly became one of the most in-demand session players in Los Angeles by the early 1970s. He credited his reputation to a lot of help from word of mouth recommendations, something that was important for most session musicians.

During one Friday night session in the early 1970s with folk singer Donovan, Carlton met Joe Sample, the keyboardist of the jazz fusion group The Crusaders. Two days later, Sample called Carlton to ask him to come in and record for the next two weeks for the new Crusaders album. Carlton, who grew up listening to the group and regularly jammed to one of their albums he owned during his teen years, jumped at the opportunity to work with a group he greatly admired.

Carlton played on 13 of the band’s albums, with his style meshing well with the group’s fusion of jazz and funk, and getting to work closely with Sample became an invaluable experience.

“Joe really influenced my feel and my approach, I got to hear the harmonies that Joe would use,” he said. “It was a unique experience that no other guitar player was fortunate enough to experience.”

One of the artists that Carlton worked with the most was Joni Mitchell, contributing to five albums. He first appeared on her 1974 album “Court and Spark,” featuring her only top 10 hit “Help Me.” Carlton was part of a core backing band alongside Sample on keyboards, Max Bennett on bass and John Geurin on drums that played on a majority of the album’s tracks. Carlton noted that “it was a more cohesive unit and we already knew how each other played,” unlike other sessions working with musicians for the first time.

Carlton is also prominently featured on Mitchell’s 1976 album “Hejira.” Unlike “Court and Spark,” Mitchell didn’t use a full backing band, instead opting to bring in people like Carlton and bassist Jaco Pastorius to record overdubs over her acoustic guitar tracks. When Carlton came in, Mitchell told him to “go out and react to the music,” upon which he did a few improvised takes.

Carlton’s most famous work came from working with Steely Dan, becoming one of the group’s most frequent collaborators among a large rotating cast of session musicians. His most notable contributions came on the group’s 1976 record “The Royal Scam,” most notably with his soloing on opening track “Kid Charlemagne” that stands as one of the most acclaimed works of his career.

But another song from “The Royal Scam” that prominently features Carlton is “Don’t Take Me Alive,” where he performs the song’s opening guitar solo. He recalled that after recording his solo, lead singer Donald Fagen wanted something more. Fagen then had the idea for Carlton to play a dissonant opening chord to open up the song.

“I went out and stood in front of my amplifier and got in the exact position so that all the notes would ring out, and we put the big chord in front of the song,” he said.

Though Fagen and bandmate Walter Becker had a reputation for being perfectionists, Carlton noted that “they wanted everybody to feel comfortable when the tape was rolling” and their approach was successful to make the best music possible.

“As an overdub soloist, I didn’t experience those tedious hour-after-hour sessions the rhythm section had,” he said. “During the tracking dates, we would work hard on playing the tune over and over again until it became really comfortable, and that’s how we got takes so strong.”

By the late 1970s, Carlton began moving away from session work and making albums under his own name, which has been the main focus of his career since then. But his career and life would be challenged in 1988 when he was shot in the neck outside of his home in Hollywood Hills. The shot traumatized the nerves to his left arm, leading him to undergo months of physical therapy to restimulate the nerves in his fingertips so he could start playing guitar again. After eight months, he was once again able to pick up a guitar and hasn’t looked back since.

“Slowly it came back and then it was just a matter of playing and initiating feel back to those nerves that had been dead for so long,” he said. “But thankfully, it all worked out and I got a second half of life.”

During his solo career, Carlton has won four Grammy Awards. Among his winning works is the 2010 album “Take Your Pick,” which he recorded with Japanese guitarist Tak Matsumoto and won the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album.

The collaboration came after the general manager of Gibson suggested it to Carlton’s manager, as Carlton and Matsumoto both had custom guitars made by the company. This led to the two recording their guitar parts separately, with Matsumoto in Japan and Carlton working from his home in Nashville. Despite being thousands of miles away, the two still turned in inspired performances on the record. Most of their guitar parts actually came from the demo recordings the two made since they thought the performances were so good.

Larry Carlton performs in concert at The Suffolk on Friday, September 19, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $80 to $110 at thesuffolk.org. The Suffolk is at 118 East Main Street in Riverhead.