The Brooklyn-born Gale was an active participant in the New Thing scene in the ’60s, playing with Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor (Unit Structures, Blue Note) and Larry Young (Of Love and Peace, Blue Note) among many others. Those associations led him to Blue Note, whose Francis Wolff offered him a contract. Ghetto Music features two bass players-Judah Samuels and James “Tokio” Reid-and two drummers-Thomas Holman and Richard Hackett-as well as tenor saxophonist and flutist Russell Lyle. Black Rhythm Happening trades Reid for Henry Pearson and adds reedist Roland Alexander, alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, drummer Elvin Jones and John Robinson on African percussion. What both albums share-in addition to lots of avant soul and the trumpeter’s sister, Joann Gale Stevens, on folk guitar-are the 11 lively voices of the Noble Gale Singers, which lift the records to the level of a spiritual throwdown.
Gale calls the music he was going for then “ghetto music,” because it came out of the streets he grew up on. “[That neighborhood] had all these elements to draw on,” Gale tells Andrew Raffo Dewar in the vinyl version’s new liner notes; the CD versions have only the original ones. “That’s why this is ghetto music, because it comes from all of us that lived in that area of the city, that lived this life of music, going to school, learning and growing up. It was all-encompassing.”
His contract with Blue Note ended because United Artists bought the label. Gale left New York in 1971 to become artist in residence at Stanford University in California, and in 1972 he decided to make San Jose his new home. (jazztimes.com)
Love it or hate it, trumpeter Eddie Gale’s second Blue Note outing as a leader is one of the most adventurous recordings to come out of the 1960s. Black Rhythm Happening picks up where Ghetto Music left off, in that it takes the soul and free jazz elements of his debut and adds to them the sound of the church in all its guises — from joyous call and response celebration on the title track (and album opener), to the mournful funeral sounds of “Song of Will,” to the determined Afro-Latin-style chanting on “Mexico Thing” that brings the pre-Thomas Dorsey gospel to the revolutionary song style prevalent in Zapata’s Mexico — all thanks to the Eddie Gale Singers. Elsewhere, wild smatterings of 
hard and post-bop (“Ghetto Love Night”) and angular modal music (“Ghetto Summertime,” featuring Elvin Jones on drums and Joann Stevens-Gale on guitar), turn the jazz paradigm of the era inside out, simultaneously admitting everything in a coherent, wonderfully ambitious whole. There is no doubt that Archie Shepp listened to both Ghetto Music and Black Rhythm Happening before setting out to assemble his Attica Blues project. The album closes with “Look at Teyonda,” a sprawling exercise in the deep melding of African and Latin folk musics with the folk-blues, flamenco, and jazz rhythms. Funky horns (courtesy of Gale, Russell Lyle, and Roland Alexander) moan toward Fulumi Prince’s startlingly beautiful vocal. Stevens-Gale’s guitar whispers the tune into the field before the saxophones and brass come to get it, and when they do, long open lines are offered slowly and deliberately, as Jones’ shimmering ride cymbals triple-time the beat into something wholly Other. Black Rhythm Happening is a timeless, breathtaking recording, one that sounds as forward-thinking and militant in the 21st century as it did in 1969. (by Thom Jurek)
Personnel:
Roland Alexander (flute)
Eddie Gale (trumpet)
Elvin Jones (drums)
Russell Lyle (saxophone, flute)
James Lyons (saxophone)
Henry Pearson (bass)
John Robinson (drums)
Judah Samuel (bass)
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William Norwood (vocals on 08.)
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The Noble Gale Singers conducted by Fulumi Prince:
Sylvia Bibbs – Paula Nadine Larkin – Carol Ann Robinson – Sondra Walston – Charles Davis – Joann Gale Stevens – Fulumi Prince – William Norwood
Tracklist:
01. Black Rhythm Happening (Gale) 2.54
02. The Gleeker (Gale/Stevens) 2.16
03. Song Of Will (Gale) 3.07
04. Ghetto Love Night (Gale) 5.29
05. Mexico Thing (Gale) 5.05
06. Ghetto Summertime (Gale) 3.12
07. It Must Be You (Gale) 5.44
08. Look At Teyonda (Gale) 9.31
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