Written by George Cables has been active as a post-bop jazz pianist playing with some of the best musicians of his generation, and a number of significant jazz forebearers, since the early 1960s. His best known group currently of peers is called The Cookers with Cecil McBee, Eddie Henderson, and others. Besides this, he has his own trio, and on their current European tour it is featuring Italian saxophonist Piero Odorici.
George Cables (born 1944 in New York City) began playing in the clubs by 1964, initially with Billy Cobham, and Lenny White (his peers). Within a few years, he was playing with older masters of the trade, including drummer Max Roach and with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (briefly in 1969).
In that same year, he went on tour with Sonny Rollins to the West Coast, and he ended up staying there (based either in Los Angeles or San Francisco) through the 1970s and beyond. It is also during this period that he began playing with the saxophonist Art Pepper, since 1976, for a remarkable union on both studio and live recordings till Pepper’s death in 1982. Their live recordings are simply legendary.
At the end of the song “Road Waltz” live at the Maiden Voyage in Los Angeles, in 1981, Art Pepper points out “on piano, a wonderful player, a great person and he does it like it really should be done; and if I could play piano, that is how I would like to play, and I call him ‘Mr. Beautiful,’ George Cables…”
Cables first recorded with Art Pepper on Pepper’s long-awaited recording “The Trip” (1976), with compositions that Pepper had written back in 1963 (while in San Quentin prison, in California). Cables joined Art Pepper after the second time he was released from San Quentin, followed by years in drug rehabilitation, and thus inactive as a musician for over a decade, due to heroin and alcohol addictions.
Art Pepper’s most notable live recordings were done with Cables in New York City, 1977, on three successive evenings, “Art Pepper Thursday Night at the Village Vanguard,” then Friday, and Saturday.
On these nights, with George Cables on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and George Mraz on bass, Pepper releases a long-stored up yearning with a profound and swinging lyricism, surprisingly modern jolts (as nods to Coltrane) and still a mastery on alto saxophone, despite his years of inactivity and personal abuse; but it would not have been possible without the rapport of his rhythm section, led by Cables, who has his own best and stand-out moments in the history of live jazz recordings for those three nights.
Art Pepper’s last recording, just before he passed away, was a duo with George Cables titled “Going Home” recorded in 1982. Since then, George Cables, of course, has made many more and considerable recordings with the top players in jazz, but this period of his is only highlighted so that it does not go unnoticed as time goes by and so quickly. As a leader, he has recorded his own notable albums since the mid 1970s with Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Billy Higgins, Stanley Clarke, and on and on.
George Cables with Essiet Essiet on bass and Victor Lewis on drums
George Cables’ last release as a leader is entitled “Too Close for Comfort” (2020) with Essiet Essiet on bass and Victor Lewis on drums. His current group, the George Cables Trio has Josh Ginsburg on bass and Jonathan Barber on drums, plus he is featuring Piero Odorici, from Bologna (born 1962), on saxophone. This quartet will be finishing up its European tour in December at venues listed below.
Sunday & Monday, Dec. 1 & 2—Half Note, Athens, Greece
Wednesday, Dec. 4—Nica Club, Hamburg, Germany
Thursday, Dec. 5—Unterfahrt, Munich, Germany
Friday, Dec. 6—Zigzag, Berlin, Germany
Saturday, Dec. 7—Jazz Dock, Prague, Czech Republic
Tony Ozuna is a senior lecturer for the School of Journalism, Media & Visual Arts at Anglo-American University in Prague.
Last modified: November 25, 2024
