Taproot (album)

Taproot emerged during Gábor Szabó’s period of stylistic experimentation in the early 1970s. Szabó had already become known for a distinctive guitar sound shaped by jazz, Hungarian musical sensibilities, folk music, and the psychedelic atmosphere of late-1960s popular music.² The album was issued by Blue Thumb Records, an independent label noted for its interest in jazz, soul, and hybrid forms.

The title presents the record as a return to something foundational, but the music is not a conventional acoustic-jazz statement. Its instrumentation and repertoire place it in the commercially aware jazz climate of the period, when electric guitar, studio production, and rhythm-and-blues grooves were increasingly central to the genre’s development.

The album’s identity comes from the tension between lyrical guitar lines and rhythmically assertive arrangements. Its program includes Szabó originals alongside adaptations of material associated with pop, rock, and orchestral music. “In My Life” reworks the Beatles song, while “Concierto de Aranjuez” draws on Joaquín Rodrigo’s celebrated guitar concerto; “The Beat Goes On” comes from the pop repertoire.¹

Other pieces, including “Breezin’,” “Come to the River,” “Space,” “Mizrab,” and “Jero,” help define the album’s eclectic profile. Szabó’s playing favors sustained tones, vibrato, economical phrasing, and a vocal quality that makes the guitar function as both a melodic singer and an improvising instrument. The result is accessible without being reducible to easy-listening jazz.

Taproot belongs to the transitional part of Szabó’s career, when he was broadening his audience through electric, groove-oriented jazz. Born in Budapest, Szabó studied at the Franz Liszt Academy before leaving Hungary after the 1956 revolution and later establishing himself in the United States.² He worked with figures including Chico Hamilton and Charles Lloyd before developing a solo career that moved between post-bop, jazz-rock, funk, and popular song.

The album therefore sits between his earlier exploratory records and later projects that leaned further toward crossover production. It also illustrates a broader period in jazz history: artists were responding to rock, soul, and new studio practices while retaining improvisation as a central value.³ Szabó’s work is often discussed in that context because it resists a strict division between jazz and popular music.

Taproot is notable less for a single signature hit than for the range of musical sources it places in one compact program. The inclusion of Rodrigo beside the Beatles and Sonny Bono shows how Szabó treated repertoire as a field for reinterpretation rather than as a boundary between “serious” and commercial music. That approach was characteristic of the period’s jazz crossover, but Szabó’s phrasing gives the record a recognizable personal center.

The album also demonstrates why Szabó is sometimes difficult to classify: he belongs simultaneously to the histories of jazz guitar, electric jazz, Hungarian-American musicianship, and instrumental pop. Later listeners have encountered Taproot through reissues and catalog retrospectives rather than through a dominant chart legacy, making it a quieter but revealing document of early-1970s jazz pluralism.¹⁴

Blue Thumb Records

An American independent record label associated with jazz, soul, funk, and other stylistically adventurous music.

Crossover jazz

Jazz that incorporates elements of rock, pop, soul, funk, or other popular styles, often seeking an audience beyond specialist jazz listeners.

Concierto de Aranjuez

A 1939 concerto for guitar and orchestra by Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo, frequently adapted by jazz musicians.

Electric jazz

Jazz employing amplified instruments and, commonly, rock- or funk-derived rhythms and production.