Rambler

Gabor Szabo fled Budapest after the 1956 Hungarian uprising and ended up in Los Angeles, where his guitar style — modal, fingerpicked, with Hungarian gypsy ornamentation and pentatonic scales — became one of the most distinctive sounds in late-’60s and early-’70s jazz. Carlos Santana has cited Szabo as his single biggest guitar influence: the “Gypsy Queen” outro of “Black Magic Woman” is literally a Szabo composition, directly lifted.

Rambler (1974) is on CTI — Creed Taylor’s label, which invented the “lush 1970s jazz” sound (Bob James, Don Sebesky arrangements, the whole aesthetic). CTI alongside Blue Note are the canonical crate-digger labels: the records that Native Tongues producers were working through systematically in the late ’80s and early ’90s, mining for samples with the patience of a scholar. One specific chain runs through here: the Pharcyde’s “Runnin’” samples Stan Getz — specifically from his 1963 sessions with Luiz Bonfá — and Madlib’s Brazilian crate-digging trip where Madvillainy was made. Szabo is adjacent to that chain — another jazz guitarist on another crate-digger label, the source material that later music was built from.