Terry Gibbs
is one of the LAST living legends from the Bebop Era. Part of the scene in
1940s, Terry played with everyone from the creators of Bebop, Charlie Parker,
Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Max Roach. He then moved on to tour with
legendaries Benny Goodman & Woody Herman. From there Gibbs went on to
conduct TV Shows for pioneer talk show host Steve Allen and Regis Philbin. His
2004 autobiography GOOD VIBES: A Life in Jazz won the prestigious ASCAP Foundation
Deems Taylor award. This is only a small summary of 92-year-old Terry Gibbs.
Mr. Gibbs has come out of retirement only to make ONE MORE recording on Whaling
City Sound and doing it in a jam session, the way he did back in the 1950s with
Parker & Gillespie and all the great musicians of that era.
Throughout almost 80 years of playing and presenting music,
exuberant vibraphonist and jazz icon Terry Gibbs, now 92, has always been known
for the sheer joy that imbues his performances and CDs. On live recordings, he
can be heard cheering the band on, punctuating arrangements and solos with
non-verbal interjections. Even in the studio, the overall feeling of his band
and his music is that life is a gas, a spirit very evident on 92 Years Young:
Jammin' at the Gibbs House.
These songs were recorded live at a jam session in Terry's
living room over 4 days in May 2016. Most tracks were done in a single take.
Arrangements were discussed briefly just before playing, or not at all. There
was no rehearsal. This kind of session knowhow is characteristic of Terry and
not all that many others: name a song, play through it once into the mics, and
move on. The entire band carries the seamlessness and continuity, which support
the leader both comfortably and ably. Terry's son Gerry, a veteran drummer and
leader with several #1 CDs of his own, has recorded with his 'Pops' a number of
times, as has pianist John Campbell. Handling the bass in this company as if
born to it is Mike Gurrola.
The vibes is a very physical instrument, and Terry makes it
sparkle and groove. In the liner notes for the CD, vibraphonist Warren Wolf
writes, "[Terry's] tone…is always recognizable, his speed and accuracy are
rock solid and most important, the history of the music is heard throughout
Jammin'.
Terry is one of the few musicians alive to have played in
the formative years of bebop (Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie) as well as with
the King of Swing, Benny Goodman. For many years, Terry's quartet included a
woman on piano (and vibes), something rare in those days.
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