Freddie Gambrell

Freddie Gambrell is an alternative solution to Cecil Taylor with regards to extending the legacy of Artwork Tatum into postmodernism, nearly all his peers choosing to lower and run as though a reader met with the initial half of the sentence. A lot more alluring will be the mix of mystical and mundane information out which arrived his relatively short amount of time in the limelight, at least by jazz requirements. Blinded as an adolescent, Gambrell mastered plenty of devices to humiliate a good multi-instrumentalist from Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Innovative Musicians. He discovered violin at 11, later on documented on viola, was “launched” to the general public in the first ’50s by maestro Chico Hamilton like a pianist in the “blind genius” category, and in addition played acoustic guitar, bass, and brass devices throughout. Among the strangest reasons for having Gambrell — which at least provides him something in keeping with Garth Brooks as well as the suicidal stage of Phil Ochs — was his reinvention of himself as Federico Cervantes, contemporary jazz trumpet participant. The discography of Gambrell, such as for example it is, may not be examined with out a research of as much as four albums released beneath the name from the Federico Cervantes Sextet. Reviews about these recordings are enthusiastic, talking about mixtures of Latin jazz and nation & traditional western and trumpet solos filled with the sort of daring common to a musician working under an alias. His strategy as Cervantes non-etheless arrived of his self-taught history as Gambrell, at one stage paying his method by playing keyboards in night clubs much more from the beaten monitor than the SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA Jazz Workshop. The second option venue finally offered Gambrell a chance to present his key pad design to a wider, even more discerning target audience. He was connected with a tempo section offering Hamilton and Ben Tucker, a bassist from Nashville. This artist’s stylistic options under whatever name are bound by their link with the Bay region, the special smell of outdated vinyl in polished covers for the Globe Pacific label probably as thrilling as the music itself, in parts crystallizing the pianist’s Tatum revise while jazzing in the score through the Mikado. Critics had been of the divided opinion and an alternative solution viewpoint was obtainable straight from the horse’s mouth area on the Sticky Wicket, a place in Santa Cruz where Gambrell started doing a vocalist/songwriter gig, support himself on electric guitar and also starting for himself being a jazz lecturer. Virtuosity is actually a great appeal for Gambrell. As Cervantes, he proceeded to go for the trumpet design of players such as for example Maynard Ferguson, filled with high-note acrobatics. His focus on Tatum, such as a violinist selecting Paganini, intended that his key pad performances had been insistently brilliant officially — although this didn’t always distract membership patrons from viewing the seeing-eye pet sitting down at Gambrell’s foot.