RALPH CARNEY
Avant-garde all-rounder (1956–2017)
According to Tom Waits, his most famous employer, ralph carney was “guided by some other source of information. He’s like a broken toy that works better than before it was broken.” Waits’ typically abstract definition goes some way to explaining the playful sense of otherness that carney’s sax and clarinet lines brought to his work during the ’80s and ’90s, from
Rain Dogs and Frank’s Wild Years through to Bone Machine and Mule Variations. His versatility, which extended to horns and violins, helped Waits make the transition from barfly piano man to jazz-blues
troubadour. “You get attached to each other musically and as people,” carney once said of their relationship. “He’d have a very clear idea of what he wanted, but at a certain point he’d hand the reins to me and let me go where i wanted to.”
carney had begun in his native Akron, ohio, with avant-rock troupe Tin Huey, who debuted on Warner Brothers with 1979’s Contents Dislodged During
Shipment. A commercial flop, by his own admission the music was “too unclassifiable.” Aside from his association with Waits, carney did session work for Elvis costello, The B-52s, Jonathan richman, galaxie 500, Jim White, St Vincent and more, as well as issue a succession of solo albums and related projects, the most recent being 2012’s Secret
Language, with david coulter. He was also mentor to The Black Keys, featuring his nephew, drummer Patrick carney, collaborating on 2008’s Attack & Release.