Gábor Szabó was a Hungarian born American guitarist whose best known albums are ”Bacchanal”, ”Dreams” both from 1968, and unfortunately also unbelievably cheesy ”Jazz Raga” from 1967. If you want to hear stunningly bad sitar playing, please choose ”Jazz Raga”, one of legendary jazz label Impulse's greatest brainslips. ”Bacchanal” and ”Dreams” however are two lovely examples of pop jazz with psychedelic tinges. Two albums of quality cool kitsch.
Recorded
in two days in August 1972 in Stockholm, this is the first Szabó
album to feature Swedish musicians, this time Schaffer and Nils-Erik
Svensson of Svenska Löd AB!, Stefan Brolund, Sture Nordin, and
Berndt Egerbladh. It's one of Szabó's best 70s albums, very close to
his 60s work, with his characteristic guitar sound set to a
groove-laiden background. Szabó recorded the Oriental sounding
”Mizrab” several times, but this version is the best of them all,
with a great, funky ensemble performance. (A mizrab is the special
kind of plectrum you put on your index finger when you play sitar.)
”Small World” is an often overlooked album which deserves more
attention. Several different cover variations exist.
Another two-day session in Sweden, this time in January 1978 (but not released until the following year). Only Schaffer is left from ”Small World”, with Wlodek Gulgowski, Malando Gassama, Peter Sundell (from De Gladas Kapell), and Finnish/Swedish Pekka Pohjola joining him. Nowhere near as good as ”Small World”, this is muzak fusion, decorative but dull. The Latin affected ”24 Carat” has some life in it, but it's still not very good. (The album was also released in Japan as ”24 Carat”.)
”Belsta River” was to be one of
Szabó's last albums. He died in 1982 while visiting his birth town
Budapest only 45 years old from liver and kidney failure caused by drug abuse.
Small World full album playlist
Belsta River full album playlist
No comments:
Post a Comment