Gabor Szabo

Budapest to Berklee

Gabor Istvan Szabo was born in Budapest on March 8, 1936, and was given a guitar for Christmas 1950, when he was fourteen. After a few weeks of lessons he was self-taught, learning from American records and the radio. He left Hungary after the 1956 revolution, by way of an Austrian refugee camp to San Bernardino, California, worked as a janitor for a year, and studied at Berklee in Boston from 1958 to 1960; a Hungarian source dates his admission to 1957. He recalled playing Newport, Rhode Island in 1958 with the International Band.

In 1961 he joined Chico Hamilton's Los Angeles quintet, which also had Charles Lloyd, and stayed until 1965. In 1965 he worked with Gary McFarland's jazz-pop group, then led a quartet with Lloyd, Ron Carter and Tony Williams, and orchestrated Hamilton's score for Roman Polanski's Repulsion. He also appears on Hamilton's Drumfusion (1962), Lloyd's Of Course, Of Course (1965), McFarland's The In Sound (1965) and Paul Desmond's Skylark (CTI, 1973).

Impulse!, Skye and CTI

His Impulse! albums were Spellbinder (1966), Jazz Raga (1966, released 1967), The Sorcerer (1967), Light My Fire (1967) and Wind, Sky and Diamonds (1967). "Gypsy Queen", from Spellbinder, became a hit for Santana in the "Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen" medley. In 1968 he co-founded Skye Records with Gary McFarland and Cal Tjader, and made five albums there, among them Dreams (November 1968), Bacchanal, 1969 and Lena and Gabor (1969, with Lena Horne). Magical Connection (1970) and High Contrast (1971, with Bobby Womack) were for Blue Thumb, and High Contrast contains the original version of "Breezin'", later a hit for George Benson.

Mizrab (CTI, recorded 1972, released 1973), Macho (1975), Nightflight (Mercury, 1976), Faces (1977) and Femme Fatale (Pepita, dated 1979 or 1981) followed. From 1974 he visited Hungary again, and a Hungarian television concert was widely broadcast as a film; Hungarian sources count 26 solo albums between 1965 and 1978. Peace and Rhythm describes a style that mixed jazz with Hungarian folk, Indian, Middle Eastern and gypsy music and pop, used feedback, and worked well with singers. He died in Budapest in February 1982, aged 45, on the 26th according to Wikipedia and the 28th according to We Love Budapest, and is buried in Farkasreti Cemetery.

Live in Cleveland 1976 (2022), In Budapest (2008) and In Budapest Again (2018) were released later. Setlist.fm lists 221 setlists, among them Montreux on July 15, 1979, Alexandra Palace in London on July 18 to 21, 1979, and a Magyar Televizio recording on August 1, 1981. In 1992 the Hungarian Jazz Association created an annual award in his name, and a Szabo Gabor 90 exhibition was announced for the Magyar Zene Haza in Budapest, opening September 10, 2026. He is described as the first Hungarian jazz musician with international recognition.