89

Description

Charlie Gabriel is releasing his first solo album, 89, on the Sub Pop label. He is the longest-serving member of the legendary New Orleans jazz ensemble, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. His first professional concert dates back to 1943, when he was filling in for his father in the Eureka Brass Band, a New Orleans group. As a teenager, he lived in Detroit and played with Lionel Hampton in a band that also included Charles Mingus. He then spent nine years in the band led by former Cab Calloway drummer J.C. Heard. Although he also led a bebop quintet and toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin and others, this is his first album as a bandleader. Since 2006, he has been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and has developed a musical relationship with the group’s bassist and tuba player, Ben Jaffe. The two men, along with guitarist Joshua Starkman, recorded the album throughout 2020 and 2021. 89 includes six jazz standards and two compositions: "The Darker It Gets" and "Yellow Moon". Charlie plays tenor saxophone and clarinet throughout the record, while Joshua is on guitar and Ben handles bass, drums and keyboards. Although he has faced many challenges throughout his life, none compared to the death, last winter, of his brother Leonard, taken by COVID-19. For the first time, he put down his instrument, filling his days and weeks with dark reflections. A discouragement broken for a moment by regular chess games in Ben Jaffe’s studio kitchen. During one of those afternoons, Joshua Starkman, sitting in a corner, plays guitar and watches the chess from afar. When Charlie returns the next day, he is inspired again, the sound of the guitar having restored a sense of freedom to him. That is the day the first session for 89 takes place, almost entirely carried out by the trio, recorded mostly on site, in the kitchen, by Matt Aguiluz. 89 is different, not only because the ensemble is smaller, but because there was no particular plan, nor any precise idea of what they were going to do when they recorded it. The record also marks Charlie Gabriel’s return to his first instrument, the clarinet, on many tracks. Finally, 89 includes three tracks on which Charlie sings. According to him, people often develop a real relationship with a song once they have heard the lyrics.