Studio Club: The Pec Legacy Day with Freddy Rodriguez & the Jazz Connection LIVE on KUVO!!

Thursday, September 21 is “Pec Legacy Day” during KUVO’s Fall Membership Campaign, an on-air celebration of the historic and now closed jazz and blues club El Chapultepec (“The ‘Pec”). At noon, we’re bringing LIVE from the Masterpiece Studio, Freddy Rodriguez & the Jazz Connection.

Freddy Rodriguez Jr. (keyboards), Tony Black (drums) and Andrew Hudson (bass) were most of the house band at El Chapultepec before it closed! Jeff Miguel is playing saxophone in place of The Pec’s late, great, and longtime house band leader Freddy Rodriguez, Sr., who passed away early in 2020.

KUVO Studio Club members, be sure to RSVP through the invitation coming to you via email.

Up until his death in March 2020 at the age of 89, tenor saxophonist Freddy Rodriguez Sr. led the band at Denver’s famed El Chapultepec jazz club for more than 40 years.

Both local and traveling musicians would regularly pop in and Freddy enthusiastically welcomed them to sit in with the band. It might be one of the Marsalis brothers one night or Bono from U2 another night. In the early 1980s, Jaco Pastorius sat in with Freddy for a legendary set. But it was also always a delight to hear a young high school or college musician cutting his teeth and then see Freddy spending his break encouraging them. In the earlier years, some of Freddy’s gruffer musicians were not as kind. If you were sitting in and didn’t know the song or you got lost, you might feel a drumstick whacking you in the head.

Freddy Rodriguez Sr. was a jazz icon in Denver, Colorado. No, he was never featured in Downbeat and he didn’t play the big jazz festivals, but his legacy will be just as important: one of the many hometown jazz musicians that perform throughout America – jazz evangelists keeping this great art form alive and accessible to Americans everywhere.

KUVO will be celebrating The Pec throughout the day on Thursday, September 21, and we’ll be sharing other ways to support The Pec Legacy Project.

It’s Freddy Rodriguez & the Jazz Connection on KUVO’s Pec Legacy Day and LIVE on KUVO, on the air, on the stream, on the App and on KUVO’s YouTube Channel, Thursday, September 21 at noon.

LIVE performances on KUVO JAZZ are supported by Bonfils Stanton Foundation, Drum City Guitarland, Grace Design Pro Audio, Listen Up, Schmitt Music – Englewood, and made possible by KUVO’s Studio Club and Beat Collective members.

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