Garrett Saracho

Garrett Saracho is a Los Angeles-based pianist, composer, arranger, and filmmaker. He is best known as a funky jazzman whose En Media (recorded as Gary Saracho rather than Garrett), a lone 1973 Ed Michel-produced Impulse album, won a five-star rating from Downbeat and received considerable airplay. He later toured with Redbone, a group run by his cousins, Pat and Lolly Vegas. He also worked as a carpenter on film sets while learning to write screenplays and edit. Beginning in the 1980s, he worked on the much-later-completed musical-theater epic The Boys of North Broadway (formerly North Broadway), a musical retelling of the triumphs and struggles of generations of Mexican-Americans. In 2021, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad invited Saracho and a full band -- including an army of brass and reed players -- into their Linear Labs Studio. They emerged with Garrett Saracho JID015 in November 2022. Saracho is a fourth generation Angeleno of Apache and Mexican descent. He was born in Lincoln Heights, the son of a World War II vet-turned-graphic and commercial designer. He began playing the piano in school and in high school, then switched to vibraphone and later the marimba before eventually returning to the piano. During adolescence, he was completely uninterested in rock music and fell under the influences of Bobby Hutcherson, Milt Jackson, Roy Ayers, and especially Cal Tjader. He joined close friend, classmate, and fellow pianist Herbie Baker's jazz quintet. Both were under the sway of pianist Horace Tapscott and affiliated with his extended cast of musicians, the Union of God’s Musicians and Artist Ascension, or UGMAA. During their run, Saracho once played a pick-up gig with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles, and John Paul Jones at an L.A. club. In 1969, the Herbie Baker Quintet competed in the battle of the bands for the Frank Sinatra Music Award and were eliminated. They tried again in 1970 and won. Two weeks later, Baker was killed in a car accident. Devastated, Saracho moved to San Francisco for a couple of years and took up the piano in earnest to honor the memory of his friend. Back at home, the quintet had been influential. In 1972, Tapscott was teaching a course called "Black Experience in the Fine Arts" at UC Riverside. He dedicated a lecture to the life and legacy of Baker, sharing several live recordings of his quintet, with Saracho on vibes. Saracho returned to Los Angeles in 1973 and convinced Impulse A&R man Lee Young to sign him. The vibraphonist enlisted a band with varying levels of association with UGMAA. The cast included bassist Roberto Miranda, a longtime mainstay in Tapscott's Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, and Owen Marshall, a Compton-based arranger and multi-instrumentalist who had worked for Lee Morgan. Ed Michel was recruited as producer. Titled En Medio (after a nickname given him by his grandfather), he recorded under the name Gary Saracho. The five-track album featured the 14-minute "Senior Baker," dedicated to his late friend. The track was issued as a two-part single. The release of En Medio was greeted with enthusiasm from jazz critics and jazz radio DJs. Downbeat awarded it a maximum five stars, while the New York Times referred to Saracho and his musicians as "the Impulse West-Coast contingent." Among the album's fans were Herbie Hancock (who had just released the tangentially related jazz-funk classic Head Hunters) and Weather Report's Wayne Shorter and bassist Jaco Pastorius. After the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, ABC Impulse began letting go its freshman artists, citing a shortage of oil to press vinyl. It was a thinly veiled excuse to abandon album promotion and cut costs. Saracho was let go and the album deleted. Devastated, he left the country for several years, traveling across Africa and Europe. He returned to finish his degree in film studies at UCLA. He also toured with Redbone and played a single tour as a cruise ship musician. He found work as a carpenter on film sets and eventually learned enough to become an editor and sound editor. He worked in the labor department, and later ran the tool shop for Universal, which is where he began to develop his vision for writing screen and stage plays. During the 1980s he began working on North Broadway. Initially conceived as a cinematic trilogy, Saracho's vision evolved, and he transformed it into an epic musical titled North Broadway that was eventually re-fashioned as The Boys of North Broadway. Music from its first incarnation appeared on the unissued 1998 album Dare to Dream (later available digitally). Its large cast of players included saxophonists Bennie Maupin and Danny Padilla as well as Redbone guitarist Tony Bellamy. Saracho continued to work in film while composing music and writing screenplays in a rented Los Angeles studio. He completed work on Boys of North Broadway during the pandemic; it has become not only a musical but is being produced as a feature film. Further, Saracho records electronic tracks as Indianred. Musicians, label owners, and fanatic record collectors Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge had been longtime admirers of En Medio. They got in touch with Saracho and invited him in to record at their Linear Labs studio in mid-2021. They also brought in a full band with a large brass and reed section. Blending together Latin soul, West Coast funk, and psychedelic rock under the banner of modern jazz, an eight-track full-length was released as Garrett Saracho JID015 in November 2022.
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