Chances are, if you live in Central Florida, you’ll know the name of James Gamble Rogers II. He’s the architect who had a dramatic influence on the aesthetic of residential homes in Winter Park. But the elder Rogers had a son who took up music and impacted the state’s cultural history with a guitar pick and a litany of well-told (and well-sung) tall tales.
The Winter Park Library will salute the legacy of James Gamble Roger IV, a beloved folk singer and a member of the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, with its fifth annual Gamble Rogers Orange Blossom Special.
The celebration will include a presentation of the 2020 documentary film Gamble Rogers: Down at the Terminal Tavern, on Saturday, October 17, and a tribute concert on Sunday, October 18. Both are at 2 p.m. in the library’s 100-seat Edyth Bush Theater.
The concert, presented in partnership with Central Florida Folk, will feature Rogers’s friends (and folk music icons) Bob Patterson and Jerry Mincey. Admission will be free and reservations may be made on the library’s website.
A self-described “modern troubadour,” Rogers rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead guitarist and vocalist for the Serendipity Singers. He left the group after two years to begin a solo career and attracted a national following with his character-driven ballads and eloquent but down-home storytelling.
Rogers’s life tragically ended in 1991, at age 54, when he heroically attempted to save a drowning man at Flagler Beach and drowned also. Says Jeremy Zorn, public services librarian: “When it comes to folk music and culture, Gamble Rogers is truly a Winter Park-born national treasure.”
