Great guitarists on Youtube

[Johnpat1]

One player I have really enjoyed watching(for his brilliant technique) & hearing (for his
superb tone) on Youtube has been the flamenco guitarist Sabicas. Apart from knowing that
he was a musical inspiration for Lenny Breau - I know little about him. Does he play a
Ramirez guitar ? When were these youtube videos recorded ?

[Norm]

I've always liked him because he had a certain touch the others lacked. Tremendous guitarist.

Your question prompted me to do a little snooping around and found he started playing at 4, debuted at 6 and was largely instrumental in bringing the flamenco (Please don't call it flaMINGo...it's flaMENco) guitar to prominence as a solo instrument.

Sabicas (Agustín Castellón Campos) was a Flamenco guitarist, of Romani ("Romani" means "Gypsy" 'Romani' is what they call themselves) origin who was born in 1912 in Pamplona, Spain and died in 14 April 1990 in New York. Django was gypsy also but he was Belgian I believe. The "sabicas" is, I think a modification of a childhood nickname having to do with "beans"

In any case, I found a chatboard discussing his guitars and he apparently had a lot of them. Certainly being an artist of his stature I'm sure he had no problem getting instruments made by the best of the day and, as many top guitarists do, found all of them wanting...the perfect guitar was never at hand.
Some makers mentioned were Barberos, Ramirez, Santos Henandez, "Blanca" and DeVoes. Like with Chet, there seem to be quite a few guitars allegedly owned by him out there. And as it is with Chet, there are guitars known to have been owned by Sabicas that have disappeared, probably in private collections.

One poster said he was a compulsive poker player and would often hock or sell his guitars to keep in a game. If he was anything like Django this is probably true. I just read a biography of Django and, to him, money was to spend and gambling was one of the things to spend it on.

I think it would be inaccurate to try to hang one brand of guitar on his name. If that were the case the makers themselves, as Gretsch does with Chet or Selmer did with Django, would make a point of the association.

The guy was fabulous!

I've posted before (as an extra note) that I read once that he painted his nails with DuCo Household Cement to make them last.

[George Beasley]

I think in the book "One Long Tune" there is a quote from Lenny where he said that he thought Sabicas was the greatest guitar player. He did name his son "Chet Sabicas Breau", so he obviously thought highly of him. I am sad to say that I really haven't listened to Sabicas very much, and only own one recording by him. Are there any tunes that are considered to be "must have" pieces by him? I would like to know more about him as well.

[Norm]

I can't name any.

I'm like most foks here probably are... flamenco is a rare meal I serve up and one good feeding last me quite a while because I really haven't studied it. I had an LP of his years ago and recently picked up Sabicas as a CD that seems to have the songs I most remember from the old LP.

My dad and I went to see Carlos Montoya back in the sixties and he was good but lukewarm compared to Sabicas

[Johnpat1]

Interesting comparisons between Django & Sabicas Norm. Barney Kessel once
said that Django had real fire in his playing &Sabicas has that too. Pat Martino
is another guy who has it.