Thoughts on Gabor Szabo?

[Enlightened Rogue]

Thoughts?

[AllanAllen]

I listened to some of that concert. It's fine. Is it jazz? Sure, we have room for this.

[JazzPadd]

Definitions and genres can get a bit slippery, but personally I’ve enjoyed his instrumental music (not so much the vocal stuff) and have adopted some of his sensibilities into my own playing. His open string drone riffs in Em and Am helped me to get some fresh perspective on standards like My Favorite Things and Summertime. The Arabic tinged tunes have some kindred spirits with later Arabic jazz artists, like Rabih Abou Khalil. And Szabo’s treatment of pop songs in the 1960s is coterminous with that period of Wes’ music. What Bill Frisell does with pop and jazz tunes seems to be giving a nod to Szabo. Is it jazz? Dunno, but I have no qualms with him turning up on a jazz playlist.

[jameslovestal]

I saw Gabor Szabo with Howard Roberts back in the 80s at Donte's in North Hollywood CA. Szabo can certainly play "jazz". E.g. they played many standards together and Szabo's solos were inventive and interesting.

I leave how to define Szabo's own music up to others (since I view such put-into-boxes discussions as kind of silly\meaningless).

[mr. beaumont]

His album with Chico Hamilton should put any "can he play jazz?" arguments to rest.

[Stringswinger]

I am in favor of defunding the jazz police.

[jameslovestal]

I am in favor of defunding the jazz police.

The movement to defund police in the USA is DOA and that is a good thing. Even Portland has learned their lesson based on Tuesday's result.

"Confronted with a surge in crime and homelessness, Portland voters have chosen a onetime Republican to be their next district attorney, ousting incumbent Mike Schmidt and the progressive agenda he was elected to implement following the riots of 2020".

Now if only the same thing would happen to the jazz police!

[jazzshrink]

The movement to defund police in the USA is DOA and that is a good thing...

Cut and paste the first paragraph from yesterday's National Review article. Do you get MAGA points for inserting politics into unrelated discussions?

[wolflen]

Cut and paste the first paragraph from yesterday's National Review article. Do you get MAGA points for inserting politics into unrelated discussions?

Back at cha..

[jameslovestal]

Cut and paste the first paragraph from yesterday's National Review article. Do you get MAGA points for inserting politics into unrelated discussions?

I'm no member of MAGA and wouldn't vote for Trump if my life depended on it, but continue on with your BS assumptions based on your own biases.

PS: My point was made to another user since police was mentioned and he lives in the San Fran area, one of the places where the very misguided defund movement started.

[Gitfiddler]

My thoughts about Gabor Szabo...
As a young player in the 60's I enjoyed Gabor Szabo and his unique contributions to jazz, pop and RnB. I saw him live at the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach, CA back then. He played standards as well as his more pop-oriented tunes on a well-worn Martin D45 with a pickup in the sound hole.

Like others in this thread, I adopted some of his E and B string drone techniques just for fun and to add something 'interesting' to my playing.

I recall the story (told by Bobby Womack) that Gabor did not want his name credited to the song "Breezin", since Gabor thought it was just a jam comprised of a simple A scale riff made up by the two jamming in the studio. Apparently they needed one more song for their duo album, so Breezin was it. Take a look at the credits on George Benson's albums and you'll only see Womack's name as writer!

Discussions of him being a jazz player or not are irrelevant to me. He was a great guitarist who went his own way, adopting some of his Eastern European cultural music influences and combined them with more Western influences. In some ways Gabor was difficult to categorize by genre.

And that's why I appreciate his unique style so much.

[AndyV]

I love Gabor Szabo's playing. It crosses stylistic boundaries in unique and musical ways. Jazz, raga, pop, rock, Eastern European folk, classical - it's all in there. Labels are pointless. It's good music.

[Mick-7]

Huh? He played standards, played with jazz musicians such as Charles Lloyd, Ron Carter, Chuck Rainey, et. al., why wouldn't he be considered a jazz musician?

[AllanAllen]

[sgcim]

He was very against the Raney/Farlow style of jazz, and made no secret of it.
But you can find a few jazz things if you look hard enough.
He became a junkie, and went back to Hungary when he knew he was dying.

[JazzPadd]

Forgot about the record with Chico Hamilton. Listening to it now for the first time in a while.

Thanks, will listen to some of the others mentioned over here, too.

[Cunamara]

I would say he is as much "jazz" as Django Reinhardt was. Like Django, he brought a central European approach and flavor to the music. I don't know if he could play bebop, he certainly doesn't most of the time. To some extent I place him in the same sort of framework as someone like Charles Lloyd, who explored something out of the New York City bebop centric approach.

In many of the videos of him, I think he has an excellent tone that he achieved with the Martin D45 and what appears to be a DeArmond sound hole pickup. I don't know how the thing wasn't feeding back into the point of bursting into shards. The video in the original post is an example of this; I really like that tone.

[AllanAllen]

I would say he is as much "jazz" as Django Reinhardt was.

So…. unarguably a jazz musician? Jazz is more than NYC bebop.

[ccroft]

He was an influence on me when I was starting out. I had a plastic disk or 2. I got my first electric when I put a DeArmond in the sound hole of my Framus in about '68 or 9. It had an arched back!

I always thought he was jazz. I'm not 100% sure what that means though. It's big ballpark.

[rictroll]

I am in favor of defunding the jazz police.

Comment of the day.

[ragman1]

If you ask me, it's not up to Gabor Szabo, it's up to the jazz freaks. If they want to include him in their club then so be it. He played what he wanted, a bit like Julian Lage.

[Bobby Timmons]

In that clip I heard him playing a jazz tune so he would be a jazz musician. However the main tunes and style did sound rock / jam band. I hadn't heard of him before and liked it.

[ragman1]

Apologies. I wasn’t trying to be “the jazz police” or a troll when I started this thread. I understand why it can come off that way though. Lesson learned.

No, I think it's a reasonable question because he didn't just play one style. He did play jazz tunes with jazz musicians. But I think to be considered a 'jazz artist' you'd have to be firmly centred in jazz. Pass, Montgomery, Raney, et al, were doubtless jazz artists.I don't think anyone would question that.

These days, however, it's not so clear. For example, is Scofield a jazz artist? His style combines all kinds of stuff like jazz, blues, rock, fusion, etc, and there are lots of other players like that too. So I suppose it depends on one's point of view and current parameters. But there's a danger in trying to judge the past by the present. What is considered jazz now is not necessarily what was called jazz then, and vice versa.

[AllanAllen]

Apologies. I wasn’t trying to be “the jazz police” or a troll when I started this thread. I understand why it can come off that way though. Lesson learned.

I don't think the jazz police comments were aimed at you.

[mr. beaumont]

Apologies. I wasn’t trying to be “the jazz police” or a troll when I started this thread. I understand why it can come off that way though. Lesson learned.

I definitely didn't take it that way.