Debo Dabney at the piano performing with Glenroy and Company, one of many bands he appeared with, at the 2017 Richmond Jazz Festival at Maymont (Photo by Peter McElhinney)
At the end of the 1975 “Soul Train” appearance of the Richmond-based flash-in-the-pan ensemble Poison, 24-year-old pianist Herbert Allen “Debo” Dabney is framed between the band’s frontman and show host Don Cornelius. Staring coolly at the camera, even with a huge Afro and tiny goatee, he recognizably embodies the charm, curiosity and canny awareness that would enliven the Richmond music landscape for the next four-plus decades. His death on April 9 silenced one of the most wide-ranging and consistently surprising musical voices on the local scene.
Washington, D.C.-based reggae guitarist Ras Mel Glover (Awareness Art Ensemble, The Wailers, Mighty Diamonds) remembers Dabney’s commitment to music back when they were schoolmates at Richmond’s Randolph School.
“As soon as 'Bo got home, he started playing the piano. We used to hear him as we walked to school, some classical piece, or Ramsey Lewis’ 'Hang on Sloopy.' "
After Poison broke up, they played together in James "Plunky" Branch’s pioneering Afro-jazz ensemble Oneness of Juju, and later in Doc Branch’s long-running bands at Rick’s/Emilio’s. It was a lifelong friendship.
“He would phone twice a week, sometimes as early as 6:30 a.m.,” Glover says. “It was talk, talk, talk, then hang up and start practicing.”
Singer Desirẻe Roots Centeio grew up with Dabney as a virtual part of her family, and she saw a different side of the musician in the early years.
“His whole thing was gospel,” Centeio says. “Nobody could play the organ like Debo — except maybe my dad. He looked so much like my father, and they played so much alike that my mother used to joke about making him take a blood test.”
Dabney played keyboards with her on countless jazz gigs, starting when she was 18 and ending at what may have been his final performance, a Christmas party last December. Performing with him was an unpredictable delight.
“Between songs he would play the themes from ‘Jeopardy’ or the 'Young and the Restless,' making jokes, just noodling and thinking what song to do next,” Centeio says.
The playfulness was grounded in disciplined principles. “I learned about how to present from 'Bo,” says Virginia State University Director of Jazz James “Saxsmo” Gates. “He said, 'Always have the same attitude. Dress right, shake hands, smile, always be humble, and hit it as hard as you can for as long as you can. Sometimes people request a song. Work it in if you can.' ” But flexibility is not compromise. “He could play any style of music, but he didn’t want to play like anyone else. And who sounded like Debo? Nobody.”
The last few years were shadowed by increasingly painful arthritis, eventually leading to the complications that took his life at age 68.
“At last year’s Second Street Festival,” Centeio recalls, “as he climbed the steps to the jazz stage one slow foot at a time, I said, ‘Debo, I don’t like what I am seeing.’ He said, ‘Baby girl, I don’t like what you are seeing, either. But if I can make it to the bench, it will be OK.’
“Once he sat down to play,” she says, “it was magic.”
