Biography
Garrett Saracho works out of Los Angeles as a pianist, composer, arranger, and filmmaker. Funky jazz remains his signature identity, anchored by the solitary 1973 Impulse release En Medio—credited under the name Gary Saracho—which earned Downbeat’s top five-star rating and drew substantial radio rotation under producer Ed Michel. He subsequently joined Redbone on the road, the band led by cousins Pat Vegas and Lolly Vegas. At the same time he took carpentry jobs on film sets, simultaneously teaching himself screenwriting and editing. From the 1980s onward he devoted himself to the long-gestating musical-theater work The Boys of North Broadway, previously titled North Broadway, which chronicles the victories and hardships spanning multiple generations of Mexican-Americans. In 2021 Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad brought Saracho together with an expansive ensemble—featuring a large contingent of brass and reed players—into Linear Labs Studio; the sessions yielded Garrett Saracho JID015, issued in November 2022.
A fourth-generation Angeleno of Apache and Mexican lineage, Saracho was born in Lincoln Heights to a World War II veteran who later pursued graphic and commercial design. He first studied piano at school, moved to vibraphone and then marimba during high school, and eventually circled back to piano. Rock held no appeal for the adolescent Saracho, who instead absorbed the work of Bobby Hutcherson, Milt Jackson, Roy Ayers, and, above all, Cal Tjader.
He entered the jazz quintet of close friend and fellow pianist Herbie Baker. Both musicians drew inspiration from Horace Tapscott and became associated with his broader circle, the Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension (UGMAA). During this period Saracho sat in for a one-off engagement alongside Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles, and John Paul Jones at an L.A. club. In 1969 the Herbie Baker Quintet entered the Frank Sinatra Music Award battle of the bands and was eliminated; they returned the following year and claimed the prize. Baker died in a car accident two weeks later. Grieving, Saracho relocated to San Francisco for roughly two years, committing himself fully to the piano in tribute to his late friend. The quintet’s impact endured back home; in 1972, while teaching “Black Experience in the Fine Arts” at UC Riverside, Tapscott devoted a lecture to Baker’s life and legacy, playing several live recordings that featured Saracho on vibes.
Saracho moved back to Los Angeles in 1973 and persuaded Impulse A&R executive Lee Young to offer him a contract. Assembling a band whose members maintained varying ties to UGMAA, he recruited bassist Roberto Miranda, a longtime anchor of Tapscott’s Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, along with Compton arranger and multi-instrumentalist Owen Marshall, who had previously worked with Lee Morgan. Ed Michel again served as producer. Recorded under the name Gary Saracho and titled En Medio—after a grandfather’s nickname—the five-track set included the fourteen-minute “Senior Baker,” a dedication to his deceased friend that appeared as a two-part single. Jazz critics and broadcasters welcomed the album enthusiastically; Downbeat granted it the maximum five stars, and the New York Times described Saracho and his sidemen as “the Impulse West-Coast contingent.” Among its admirers were Herbie Hancock, fresh from the jazz-funk landmark Head Hunters, as well as Weather Report’s Wayne Shorter and bassist Jaco Pastorius.
Following the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, ABC Impulse dropped its newer roster, citing a supposed vinyl-pressing oil shortage that masked deeper cuts in promotion and overhead. Saracho’s deal ended and the album went out of print. He left the United States for several years, journeying through Africa and Europe, then returned to complete a film-studies degree at UCLA. Additional road work included a stint with Redbone and one cruise-ship engagement. He resumed carpentry on film sets, eventually advancing to editor and sound editor, later overseeing the tool shop for Universal, where his ideas for screen and stage writing began to crystallize. Throughout the 1980s he developed North Broadway. Conceived at first as a cinematic trilogy, the project grew into the epic musical that ultimately became The Boys of North Broadway. Material from its earliest version surfaced on the unreleased 1998 album Dare to Dream, later issued digitally, whose large personnel featured saxophonists Bennie Maupin and Danny Padilla plus Redbone guitarist Tony Bellamy.
Saracho maintained film employment while composing and writing screenplays from a rented Los Angeles space. He finished The Boys of North Broadway during the pandemic; the work now exists both as a musical and as a forthcoming feature film. Under the alias Indianred he also produces electronic music. Longtime enthusiasts of En Medio—musicians, label heads, and dedicated collectors—Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge contacted Saracho and welcomed him to Linear Labs in mid-2021. They assembled a full band that included an expansive brass and reed section. The resulting eight-track album, fusing Latin soul, West Coast funk, and psychedelic rock within a modern-jazz framework, appeared as Garrett Saracho JID015 in November 2022.
A fourth-generation Angeleno of Apache and Mexican lineage, Saracho was born in Lincoln Heights to a World War II veteran who later pursued graphic and commercial design. He first studied piano at school, moved to vibraphone and then marimba during high school, and eventually circled back to piano. Rock held no appeal for the adolescent Saracho, who instead absorbed the work of Bobby Hutcherson, Milt Jackson, Roy Ayers, and, above all, Cal Tjader.
He entered the jazz quintet of close friend and fellow pianist Herbie Baker. Both musicians drew inspiration from Horace Tapscott and became associated with his broader circle, the Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension (UGMAA). During this period Saracho sat in for a one-off engagement alongside Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles, and John Paul Jones at an L.A. club. In 1969 the Herbie Baker Quintet entered the Frank Sinatra Music Award battle of the bands and was eliminated; they returned the following year and claimed the prize. Baker died in a car accident two weeks later. Grieving, Saracho relocated to San Francisco for roughly two years, committing himself fully to the piano in tribute to his late friend. The quintet’s impact endured back home; in 1972, while teaching “Black Experience in the Fine Arts” at UC Riverside, Tapscott devoted a lecture to Baker’s life and legacy, playing several live recordings that featured Saracho on vibes.
Saracho moved back to Los Angeles in 1973 and persuaded Impulse A&R executive Lee Young to offer him a contract. Assembling a band whose members maintained varying ties to UGMAA, he recruited bassist Roberto Miranda, a longtime anchor of Tapscott’s Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, along with Compton arranger and multi-instrumentalist Owen Marshall, who had previously worked with Lee Morgan. Ed Michel again served as producer. Recorded under the name Gary Saracho and titled En Medio—after a grandfather’s nickname—the five-track set included the fourteen-minute “Senior Baker,” a dedication to his deceased friend that appeared as a two-part single. Jazz critics and broadcasters welcomed the album enthusiastically; Downbeat granted it the maximum five stars, and the New York Times described Saracho and his sidemen as “the Impulse West-Coast contingent.” Among its admirers were Herbie Hancock, fresh from the jazz-funk landmark Head Hunters, as well as Weather Report’s Wayne Shorter and bassist Jaco Pastorius.
Following the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, ABC Impulse dropped its newer roster, citing a supposed vinyl-pressing oil shortage that masked deeper cuts in promotion and overhead. Saracho’s deal ended and the album went out of print. He left the United States for several years, journeying through Africa and Europe, then returned to complete a film-studies degree at UCLA. Additional road work included a stint with Redbone and one cruise-ship engagement. He resumed carpentry on film sets, eventually advancing to editor and sound editor, later overseeing the tool shop for Universal, where his ideas for screen and stage writing began to crystallize. Throughout the 1980s he developed North Broadway. Conceived at first as a cinematic trilogy, the project grew into the epic musical that ultimately became The Boys of North Broadway. Material from its earliest version surfaced on the unreleased 1998 album Dare to Dream, later issued digitally, whose large personnel featured saxophonists Bennie Maupin and Danny Padilla plus Redbone guitarist Tony Bellamy.
Saracho maintained film employment while composing and writing screenplays from a rented Los Angeles space. He finished The Boys of North Broadway during the pandemic; the work now exists both as a musical and as a forthcoming feature film. Under the alias Indianred he also produces electronic music. Longtime enthusiasts of En Medio—musicians, label heads, and dedicated collectors—Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge contacted Saracho and welcomed him to Linear Labs in mid-2021. They assembled a full band that included an expansive brass and reed section. The resulting eight-track album, fusing Latin soul, West Coast funk, and psychedelic rock within a modern-jazz framework, appeared as Garrett Saracho JID015 in November 2022.
Albums
