Gabor Szabo: Spellbinder

From his 1961 debut with Chico Hamilton, Hungarian émigré Gabor Szabo was an iconoclast. At a time when most jazz guitarists used hollow-body electrics with conventional tuning, Szabo played an acoustic instrument with open tuning and pickups for amplification. This enabled his distinctive style built around drones or pedal pointsa single tone (usually the tonic or dominant) sustained or repeated in the bass above which he layered solos of exotic, raga-like entrancement. Backed by Latin percussionists, Szabo's Hungaro-Cuban "Spellbinder" suggests Columbus may have found a short route to India after all. This benevolent spell fades away much too soon, but is binding to this day.