Sitting behind the drum kit at Jazz, TX in 2018, Gerry Gibbs surveyed the club’s setting.
“This is like a real jazz room, not a room where they put jazz,” he said with enthusiasm.
Gibbs, the son of legendary vibraphonist and bandleader Terry Gibbs, grew up listening to everything that he could get his hands on. “It didn’t matter. I was listening to lounge records… everything from Dean Martin to Doris Day. And then the next week, [I was] listening to Albert Ayler. It didn’t matter, I was into everything.”
Asked by an audience member to name the albums that influenced him, Gibbs began rattling off titles, noting, “I owned every Charlie Parker record by the time I was 18, and I owned every Weather Report record when I was 18, every McCoy [Tyner] record… there was a million.”
Hear Gibbs with the Aaron Prado Sextet in this set recorded at Jazz, TX on June 6, 2018. Tunes include two Prado originals, plus “Our Man Higgins” by Lee Morgan, and “The Hard Blues” by Julius Hemphill.
Live at Jazz, TX airs Saturday nights at 7:00 on Texas Public Radio.
