Clarinetist, saxophonist, and flutist Charlie Gabriel is a
fourth-generation jazz musician from New Orleans. Raised in a
classically trained musical family that emigrated from Santo Domingo in
the 1850s, Gabriel began playing clarinet professionally with the Eureka
Jazz Band when he was eleven years old. During World War II, his
father, clarinetist and drummer Martin Manuel Manny Gabriel often sent
his son as a substitute on gigs. Charlie recalls how the musicians with
whom he played ”T-Boy Remy, Kid Humphrey, Kid Sheik, Kid Shots, Kid
Clayton, and Kid Howard” also raised him and brought him home after the
gigs.
In a career spanning countless genres, Gabriel has performed with Tony
Bennett, Frankie Avalon, Brenda Lee, Mary Wells, Aretha Franklin , Eddie
Willis, Joe Hunter, and many other early Motown artists. Gabriel sums
up the influence of his fellow musicians, "many, many people inside of
me that I have rubbed shoulders with, and I got something from each one
of them. It's all wrapped up inside of me, and by me still playing today
and still able to go around the universe, I give to them all these
other things I have from those that I have came in contact with"
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