He started the first independent jazz label; he was the first to put the names of the participating musicians and the dates of recording on the record label, and he was the first producer to record "jam sessions".
He was also the first to allow audiences at his recording sessions and his own record label, Commodore, became one of the most cherished amongst jazz collectors throughout the world. Many of his innovations were copied by the larger record companies and it was no surprise when he eventually joined one of the biggest, Decca, in Born in Harlem, New York, in , he had begun to sell records in a corner of his father's radio spares shop, the Commodore Radio Corporation, in the late Twenties.
He had rigged a speaker over the door of the shop and piped radio broadcasts into the street. Some of the broadcasts were by Duke Ellington sponsored by Moe Levy Clothes , and through these Gabler became aware of jazz.
He urged the record companies to sell him obsolete jazz records and eventually sold so many that by he was able to ask the companies to reissue specific titles to fill the demands from his customers. The shop on East 42nd Street became the New York meeting place for jazz musicians and the new breed of record collectors.
Knowing a good thing when they saw it, the record companies began unloading further copies of the records that Gabler asked for on to other stores. Gabler regarded this as unfair competition and his response, to avoid such upstaging, was to start his own label, Commodore, in His friendship with the guitarist Eddie Condon meant that the nucleus of the musicians that he recorded were from Condon's coterie.
Thus, neglected embryo jazz giants like the cornettist Bobby Hackett and the clarinettist Pee Wee Russell had their chance and were amongst the inspired soloists who made classics of Gabler's recordings. Although a hard businessman, Gabler was a good friend and he would lend money to musicians and had a reputation for persuading his customers not to spend more money on his records than they could afford. As his reputation as a jazz buff and record producer grew, people came to him for advice or to ask him to find rare records.
He became the jazz provider for radio disc jockeys and often worked as a consultant for the major record labels. In he published The Hot Discography , by Charles Delaunay, a book that attempted to provide the personnel and dates for all jazz recordings.
Billie Holiday came to him in when John Hammond, her producer at the giant Columbia company, refused to record "Strange Fruit". This was a melodramatic poem about lynching, set to music by its author Lewis Allan. At a time when activities within the record industry were not as clearly demarcated and specialized as in the present day, he literally did it all, market analysis, contractual negotiations, talent scouting, promotional details, consulting, artist and repertoire work, and writing liner notes.
Gabler began working for the Commodore Music Shop, owned by his father, in As store manager, he was instrumental in building the enterprise into one of the leading record outlets in the New York area. By the early s, he had began stocking cutout jazz and blues material, catering to musicians, songwriters, journalists, and other collectors. He would bulk order custom pressings of deleted titles from the American Record Company, which had absorbed many bankrupt labels—including Brunswick, Columbia, Okeh, and Perfect—at the outset of the Depression to be issued as white-label Commodores.
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