Name: 89
Brand: Charlie Gabriel

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

SP1490

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Colour

Gold

Colour details

Translucent Gold

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Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-08-05

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

PIAS

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

098787149005

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / gold

SPCD1490

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Gatefold Sleeve.

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098787149029

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1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

 Charlie Gabriel

Genre GB

Jazz

Label GB

Sub Pop

Short for "Subterranean Pop" 

The label was an outgrowth of [a=Bruce Pavitt]'s Olympia, WA based (print) fanzine, which became the well respected cassettezine of the same name. 

After his move to Seattle he ran a music column in the Seattle Rocket also called Sub Pop.

After initial forays into the record label world with a [a=Green River] 7" (not officially on Sub Pop) and the Sub Pop 100 LP, the label exploded onto the indie scene with four influential colored vinyl 7"s which included [a=Mudhoney]'s "Touch Me I'm Sick" which made the year-end top 10 playlist of nearly every music journalist in the world.

Subsequent hyping of the label in the English music press put them on the map, and grunge was born.

Label-Code is 03159; rarely found printed on releases (basically only on releases manufactured/licensed by Warner/WEA Germany)

Sub Pop debut by Preservation Hall Jazz Band member and 89-year-old clarinet and saxophone legend Charlie Gabriel. This is Charlie’s first album as a bandleader. He has played with Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus, Cab Calloway drummer J.C. Heard, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more.

“I’ve been playing since I was 11 years old,” says Charlie Gabriel, the most senior member of the legendary Preservation Hall Band, “I never did anything in my life but play music. I’ve been blessed with that gift that God gave me, and I’ve tried to nurse it the best way I knew how.” While he’s faced plenty of challenges nursing that gift for more than 78 years, none likely rank with last winter’s passing of his brother and last living sibling, Leonard, lost to Covid-19. For the first time ever, Gabriel put down his horn, filling his days and weeks instead with dark reflection, a stubborn despondency broken now and then by regular chess matches in the studio kitchen of Hall leader Ben Jaffe, working overtime to bring his friend some light. One such afternoon also included Joshua Starkman, sitting off in a corner playing his guitar and half-watching the chess from a distance. When Charlie returned the next day, he brought his saxophone. “I was just inspired to try it, to play again. It had been a long time, and a guitar makes me feel free. I do love the sound of a piano, but it takes up a lot of a space, keeps me kind of boxed in.”

That day was to be the first session for 89, almost entirely the work of Gabriel, Jaffe and Starkman, recorded mostly right there, in the kitchen, by Matt Aguiluz. Charlie Gabriel’s first professional gig dates to 1943, sitting in for his father in New Orleans’ Eureka Brass Band. As a teenager living in Detroit, Charlie played with Lionel Hampton, whose band then included a young Charles Mingus, later spending nine years with a group led by Cab Calloway drummer J.C. Heard. While he’s also fronted a bebop quintet, played and/or toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more, this is the first time his name appears on the front of a record, as a bandleader.

Since 2006, Gabriel has been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, featuring prominently on That’s It, So It Is, and Tuba to Cuba. 89 was different, and not simply due to a smaller ensemble. “We had no particular plan, or any particular insight on what we were gonna do. But we were enjoying what we were doing, jamming, having a musical conversation,” Charlie says, further musing, “Musical conversations cancel out complications.” 89 includes six standards and three newer pieces on which Gabriel is a writer: “Yellow Moon,” “The Darker It Gets” and “I Get Jealous.” The record also marks Charlie’s return to his first instrument, clarinet, on many of the tracks. “The clarinet is the mother of the saxophone,” he says. “I started playing clarinet early in life, and this [taught me] the saxophone.”

Finally, 89 includes three tracks of Charlie singing. “I always sung, but it wasn’t my forte to become a singer,” he says. “The truth is, people often develop a real relationship with a song once they hear the words. Sometimes I enjoy singing them.”

Music GB

Buy Charlie Gabriel - 89 (Vinyl, CD) now from Rough Trade - independent purveyors of great music, since 1976.