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When it comes to the Monday Night Jazz series at his Silver Spring Italian restaurant, John Eshun knows one thing: "I take care of the spaghetti and meatballs."

Eshun, a native of Ghana, started out as a dishwasher in a Bethesda restaurant, earned a degree in accounting and opened Vicino's nearly 20 years ago. And while he's all about the food and the customers — the restaurant owner is known for greeting diners as they enter — he leaves the details of the jazzy downstairs supper club to Ted and Chad Carter.

"They do everything," he says. "They put the posters on the wall, bring in the musicians.

"And our customers love it; they're very appreciative of the fact that we have this."

Also appreciative are the jazz artists who have performed every Monday evening these last four years — people like Ron Compton, Karen Gray, Bootsie Barnes, Paul Wingo, Barbara Morrison, Steve Novosel, Nasar Abadey, Bob Butta, Buck Hill, Michael Bowie, Chuck and Robert Redd and Lenny Robinson.

Ted Carter, who with his son, jazz singer Chad, facilitates the series and runs the online jazz community Jazzknights.com, says his interest in the art form goes back to his childhood in Port Chester, N.Y., where he was at school with the late Silver Spring jazz legend Keter Betts.

"I met him when I was a kid," Ted Carter says. "He was really dizzy trying to get his career started as fast as he could."

Years later, he ran into Betts at the East Coast Jazz Festival.

"He was a mainstay every year," Carter remembers. "He loved to play that festival; he and [the late ECJF founder] Ronnie Wells were great friends."

Betts loved the jazz scene in Silver Spring and the spaghetti and meatballs at Vicino's.

"Oh, Keter was a big supporter of Vicino's in general," laughs Chad Carter, Ted's son. "It was one of his favorite places to go and eat."

He says Betts never got to play the Monday Jazz Series — "We just missed getting him there before he passed" — but he came often to support the artists and enjoy the atmosphere and simple, well-prepared Italian food for which Vicino's is known.

"He came down to support us," Carter says. "I was shaking in my boots when he came to see my show."

It wasn't his first bout of stage fright. The 37-year-old vocalist didn't sing in public until he was well into his college years.

"I was too shy," he admits. "I kind of messed around with it in the privacy of my room."

But after earning a bachelor's degree in communications at Howard University, Carter deferred graduate school for a year and enrolled in a jazz workshop with Wells and Ron Elliston.

"It was a very nurturing environment, not threatening," he says. "Anybody could join, no matter what your level of experience, and after eight weeks, you get to perform in an actual club."

That sealed the deal for Carter. He did go to grad school — he holds a master's in public policy from Carnegie Mellon University — but says that after graduation, "I felt I had lost two years. There wasn't much time to eat or even sleep — forget about singing!"

He went back to the jazz workshop, but "it didn't fulfill my hunger to perform. Five songs at the end just wasn't enough."

That's when he started to look for a venue "to spread my wings."

"I use this analogy," he says. "Like a boxer in a gym, I wanted to go and hit the heavy bag."

Chad Carter and his dad decided Vicino's might be the place. The D.C. area, they could see, "was overflowing with talent," and while a weekly series was more than the younger Carter could handle on his own, he thought it would be a great home base for the jazz community.

"John was amenable to the idea," he recalls. "We asked to do one show. We said, ‘If you don't like it, we'll keep coming back for spaghetti and meatballs.'

"Seven years later, we're still there."

They'll be there on Monday: Chad Carter plus Frank Owens on piano, James King on bass and Keith Killgo on drums. Eshun will be on hand to greet his customers — and see to the meatballs, of course.

"I love music, and jazz is one of the great traditions," he says. "People need a place to listen to live music while they dine."

The Chad Carter Quartet performs at 8 p.m. Monday at Vicino Ristorante Italiano, 959 Sligo Ave., Silver Spring. Admission is $25, $20 in advance. Call 301-588-3372 or 202-726-6515.