Paco de Lucia was born Francisco Sanchez Gomez in Algeciras, southern Spain, in 1947 into a family of gifted flamenco guitar players, and he started playing at the age of seven. His precocious talent led his father, Antonio de Algeciras, to encourage him and he spent countless hours practicing, learning the falsetas of Nino Ricardo, who sometimes visited the house. He later discovered the recordings of Sabicas whose speed and clean execution had a profound influence on the young de Lucia.
 
With his brother Pepe singing, Paco recorded an album, Los Chiquitos de Algeciras, in 1962. In the same year, the pair appeared atthe Jerez Concurso (music festival) where they were a sensation and won top prizes. The family moved to Madrid, where Paco joined Jose Greco's dance troupe, touring the US in 1963, and meeting Sabicas and Mario Escudero, who encouraged him to develop his own identity. Within a short time he was making records, including ducts with his older brother Ramon de Algeciras (b. 1938), experimenting with Brazilian music and jazz, and broadening his vocabulary to play in more unusual settings.

Although traditional, his first solo record, La Fabulosa Guitarra de Paco de Lucia (1967), coruscates with characteristic fast, attacking inventiveness. On "Punta Umbria," for example, he produces a very sharp, bright sound, playing rasping lines with a taut, rhythmic drive that combines invention, speed
and cutting rasgueados.

Transition

A player with razor-sharp articulation, natural improvisational abilities, and emotional power and depth, Paco de Lucia started to record pieces that modernized the sound of flamenco in the 1970s. On the album Fuentey Caudal (1973), the title track, a taranta, is wonderfully poignant and full of space, with a dark intensity featuring tremolo playing, graceful crystalline harmonies and expressive lines. The album has other traditional material, such as the exciting "Cepa Andaluza," but a track that was originally an afterthought was set to change Paco's career. The rumba "Entre dos Aguas" was given an added rhythm section with guitar, electric bass and percussion and became a hit in Spain, setting Paco on the road to stardom. Over the repeating harmonies of the attractive melody, he improvises in a relaxed,thematic style using sustain with contrasting bursts of flamenco-style virtuosity. Another popular album, Almoraima (1976), features a title track bulerias that blends chopping rhythms, an Arabic flavor, a delicate melody and harmonies with a latin-jazz flavor. "Rio Ancho" is a rumba propelled by a warm, seductive rhythm section and made dazzling by a series of melodies and countermelodies with developed themes and variations, attractive harmonies and rhythms and the fast lines of explosive invention. Paco de Lucia's music has played a major part in encouraging forms that are known as cante ida y vuelta, Spanish ideas that went to the Americas and returned as altered, reinvigorated styles, such as the rhumba.
 
Consummate mastery

Early in his career, Paco worked extensively with singers and formed a close empathy with singer Camaron de la Isla; they recorded a series of albums, including Soy Caminante (1974), that highlight his sensitive approach. There are echoes of Spanish classical vocabulary in de Lucia's playing and in 1978 he recorded Paco de Lucia Interpreta a Manuel de Falla, on which a group freely interprets de Falla's compositional ideas.

Increasingly influenced by jazz, de Lucia was, by the end of the 1970s, playing in a trio with John McLaughlin and Larry Coryell, recording the live Castro Marin in 1979, and he went on to work with McLaughlin and Al Di Meola (see page lib) in the early 1980s.

The album Solo Quiero Caminar (1981) features a sextet consisting of three guitars, bass, percussion, a flautist/saxophonist, and brother Pepe on vocals. The tight, driving title track is a tango starting with an attractiveguitar figure and featuring close interplay with the electric bass. Paco's guitar melds rhythmically with the band and he plays fast linear solos.

Among subsequent highlights are "La Barrosa" (1987), full of effortless delicacy with cascading phrases, bright strumming and inspired improvisation, and "Tio Sabas" (1990), a heartfelt and introspective taranta. The haunting beauty of this homage to Sabicas, with its beautiful swirling effects, 'ud influences and Arabic flavor, is marked by incandescent inventions that surge out of a contemplative stillness. In 1991, Paco memorized and recorded Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, which he plays with a flamenco feeling and a bright clarity that gives the work capricious edge.

He worked with Jose-Manuel Canizares and Jose Maria Banderas on the album. He has continued to develop and seek out new horizons, playing a modernistic form of flamenco on the Guitar Trio (1996), working in a guitar trio with previous colleagues John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola.