Eddie Gale


Edward Gale Stevens Jr., better known as Eddie Gale, was an American trumpeter known for his work in free jazz, especially with the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Life and career

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Gale studied trumpet with Kenny Dorham. He recorded with Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Larry Young, and Elvin Jones, and performed with John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Booker Ervin, and Illinois Jacquet. In the early 1960s he was introduced to Sun Ra by drummer Scoby Stroman. He spent many hours exposed to Sun Ra's philosophy about music and life. Eddie explains, "Playing with Sun Ra is a great experience--from the known to the unknown. You play ideas on your instrument that you never imagine. His music provoked me to explore the use of trills, for instance, and the placement of whole tones and then a space chord--ideas you do not find in the exercise books."
During the 1960s and 1970s, he toured and recorded extensively with Sun Ra, who influenced him greatly until Ra's death in 1993. After a yearlong stint as artist in residence at Stanford University, Gale moved to San Jose, California in 1972.
Helping to bring jazz into the 21st century, the trumpeter made numerous appearances with Oakland hip-hop outfit The Coup, whereby Gale's trumpet could be heard engaging with the music's breakbeats and turntables. In the late 1990s Eddie Gale also held regular creative music workshops at the Black Dot Café, a grassroots performance space in Oakland run by artist/activist Marcel Diallo and his Black Dot Artists Collective. The collaboration with Desert Storm Veteran and Guitar player in his many different projects, Dennis Kyne, helped develop Music in our schools and a free trumpet program for underserved youth in San Jose. Holding concerts with the Inner Peace Orchestra and fundraisers for musicians' health care, Eddie Gale took the music to churches, universities and colleges.
Gale died on July 10, 2020, aged 78.

Discography

As leader

With Sun Ra
With Cecil Taylor
With Larry Young