Eddie Gale

Last copies, sold-out at source Within the canon of 20th Century jazz, few labels can claim to match the devotion and respect it’s been offered by fans and musicians alike to Blue Note. Founded by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis - two Jewish emigrants who had fled persecution in their native Germany and arrived in New York with a deep passion for African American music - over the course of the next 40 or so years, by offering complete creative freedom to its artists, the label would produce more musical masterpieces than any other independent label on the planet by artists like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Art Blakey, Grant Green, Hank Mobley, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Hutcherson, Jackie McLean, and dozens of others. While Blue Note is arguably most closely associated with hard bop, particularly as the 1960s wore on, the label’s faith and trust in its artists often took it into the uncharted waters of emerging creative fields, including free jazz, fusion, and gestures infused with soul and funk, many of which still haven’t entirely gotten their rightful due. Arguably among the most notable of these is the trumpeter Eddie Gale’s 1968 masterstroke “Ghetto Music”. Almost entirely singular in the history of jazz as a mind-bending hybrid of free jazz, spiritual jazz, and gospel, more than half a century on it’s hard to think of any record that has ever sounded like, or accomplished, exactly what it does. With this in hand, we’re absolutely thrilled, partially given how rare and pricy original copies are, to draw attention to a stunning new 180gr vinyl edition of this monster from Elemental Music, belonging to their larger initiative to make important works from the Blue Note catalog available to a new generation of fans. Truly amazing and not to be missed by any fan of free jazz, spiritual jazz, gospel, and all the wonders of Blue Note at large.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Eddie Gale cut his teeth playing with Jackie McLean, John Coltrane, Sonny Stitt, Booker Ervin, and Illinois Jacquet, among others. He studied with Kenny Dorham, and played trumpet in Sun Ra’s Arkestra for significant amount of the 1960s and '70s - his trumpet can be heard carving its way across Ra classics like “Secrets of the Sun”, “Lanquidity”, “The Other Side of the Sun”, and “On Jupiter” - and was a member of Cecil Taylor’s band, appearing on the pianist’s astounding “Unit Structures” in 1966. During a hiatus from the Arkestra in the late 1960’s, Gale ventured out on his own and laid down two records as a leader for Blue Note, the first of which was “Ghetto Music”, issued in 1968 (the second being 1969’s “Black Rhythm Happening”). Neither sit comfortably within the label’s larger catalog (or anywhere), and quickly fell out of pint and were never repressed, becoming among the label’s rarest artefacts on the collectors market.

An early gesture of Black Nationalist spiritual jazz - an idiom that would come to prominence over the next decade - that finds itself in good company with the work of Kelan Phil Cohran, Sun Ra, and Pharoah Sanders, fed with the influences of groundbreaking jazz/gospel efforts like Donald Byrd’s “I'm Tryin' To Get Home”, Eddie Gale’s debut as a leader shoots out of the gate with a profound force. Featuring a giant sound, fully enriched by the sweeping vocals of the Noble Gale Singers - an eleven member gospel ensemble - structurally the sextet of Gale on a range of instruments - trumpet, recorder, thumb piano, steel drum, and bird whistle - Russell Lyle on sax and flute; Judah Samuel and James Reid on bass; and Richard Hackett and Thomas Holman on drums, is deeply locked in, chucking with melodic grooves and wilder more out moments, it’s a heavy, chugging effort - soloists come and go, while modes, melodies, and harmonies remain firmly intact - that remains one of the best and most illuminating musical realisations of the concerns and politics of its era.

“Ghetto Music” has been described as “militant music possessed by soul and spirit”, and it’s hard to find better words. Unquestionably one of the most important, moving, and enduringly important and singular records ever issued by Blue Note that was almost entirely unheard at the time, Elemental Music’s much needed, beautiful new 180gr vinyl edition of this masterpiece, bringing it to a new generation of fans, is impossible to recommend enough. Ten out ten and beyond.