• Jazz Gumbo
  
• 6:00 p.m. Monday June 20
• At Phineas Phogg’s Room, Seville Quarter, 130 E. Government St. Downtown Pensacola
• Cost:  $7 for public; $5 for JSOP members.  Admission includes a bowl of seafood gumbo 

The Jazz Society’s Jazz Gumbo event will be a double-header with two outstanding groups.

The first set will be performed by guitarist Mark Guest of Bay St. Louis, MS.  He will be accompanied by string bass and tuba player Todd Edmonds. Guest is a regular performer on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  He and his group performed for a previous Jazz Society event.

World famous jazz and country violinist Johnny Gimble will play the second set with his family group.  Gimble has won many awards in his long career.  He became a member of Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys at age 18.  Although never a regular member of Willie Nelson’s band, he and Nelson have been frequent collaborators.  For example, Gimble has been in every one of Willie Nelson’s movies.  Gimble played the part of Bob Wills in Clint Eastwood’s movie “Honkytonk Man.”

Gimble has performed at Pensacola JazzFest in the mid 1980s and has subsequently performed at the Great Gulf Coast Arts Festival. When Gimble was living and working in Nashville, he discovered Pensacola Beach and has been a frequent visitor since that time.  Now living in Austin, Texas he has been a regular performer on the PBS show Austin City Limits.  Willie Nelson has said about Gimble, “He plays jazz, just tells ‘em it’s country.”

Norman Vickers, Volunteer Executive Director of the Jazz Society, said, “Johnny has been a good friend to the Jazz Society.  When he let us know that he and his family would be vacationing here and would like an opportunity to perform, we welcomed them.  In addition to his performance at the Jazz Gumbo, we made contact with Sandy Wyatt, director and steel guitarist with the Farmers Opry in Chumuckla. The Gimble family band is to perform there on Saturday June 25th. Gimble’s quartet features him on violin, granddaughter Emily on keyboard, son Dick on guitar and grandson-in-law Roy on bass

For further information on Johnny Gimble, www.johnnygimble.com.  Farmers’ Opry website is www.farmersopry.com.  The Jazz Society may be reached at 433-8382 or www.jazzpensacola.com