Charlie Gabriel

Charlie Gabriel has been a musician for over 75 years. “I’ve been playing since I was 11 years old,” he says. “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.” As a teenager living in Detroit, he played in Lionel Hampton’s band, which also included a young Charles Mingus, and later spent nine years with a group led by drummer J.C. Heard. Still later, he toured with Aretha Franklin and played with many other pop and R&B artists. He’s lived and worked in Germany and Singapore, too, but he always knew he’d find his way back to New Orleans, the city of his birth.

Since 2006, he’s been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and has developed a tight musical relationship with the group’s bassist and tuba player, Ben Jaffe. The two men, along with guitarist Joshua Starkman, recorded Charlie’s new album 89 throughout 2020 and 2021.

89 includes six jazz standards and two new pieces, “The Darker It Gets” and “Yellow Moon.” Charlie describes the repertoire, which includes “Stardust,” “I’m Confessin’ (That I Love You),” and “Three Little Words,” as “standard material that every musician, if they’re an old musician like myself, will have played throughout their career. Every time I play one of these tunes the interpretation is a little bit different.” He plays tenor sax and clarinet throughout, Starkman plays guitar, and Jaffe plays bass, drums, and keyboards.