Charles Gayle Quartet - Blue Shadows (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

When Keith Knox and I founded Silkheart Records in 1984, our main objective was to present the “new American jazz”, but also to record the lesser-known, under-recorded heroes of the seventies loft scene époque.

We got off to a brisk start with the latter category by recording Charles Brackeen, Booker T., Ahmed Abdullah, The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, Charles Tyler et al.

About 1985 I had heard a tenorist playing in two separate locations in Manhattan, at the Times Square subway station and around Grand Central. His playing was challenging to say the least, but I didn’t pay too much attention at that time, unlike bassist Hilliard Greene whose attention was grabbed immediately (see his interview in Cadence, August 2006).

A year or so later a friend sent Keith a tape of a tenor player, which he passed over to me. The sound quality was terrible and I didn’t think much of the music. I was told that the tenorist’s name was Charles Gayle and that he was homeless. I did not immediately drop the project and for some reason I was curious, so that when I visited NYC at some time in 1986 and learned that Charles was to play in a small apartment in Soho, I went there to hear him and realized...  more

1. Inside the Sun 03:00

2. Blue Shadows 11:30

3. Eternity Promised 1 17:13

4. Eternity Promised 2 02:08

5. Hearts to Jesus 17:49

6. Soul’s Time 03:09

7. In Sorrow 13:38

8. Snap 01:51

Charles Gayle tenor saxophone, viola

William Parker bass, cello, half-size violin

Vattel Cherry bass, kalimba, bells

Michael Wimberly drums

Charles Gayle Quartet - Raining Fire (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"The all-out assaults of his earlier sessions gives way here to a more open rhythmic sensibility. Gayle's playing takes on an emotionally incantatory urgency here over the shifting layers of dual basses and Wimberly's tumbling, flexible attack. Raining Fire is the more fiery of the two CDs, from the opening blasting hurricane charge through In Christ with Gayle's most incendiary playing of the two. Translations (Silkheart 134) and Raining Fire are welcome additions to Gayle's growing discography, documenting Gayle's uncompromising intensity and continued growth." 

Michael Rosenstein, Cadence, November 1994

Standing on a Chinatown streetcorner, waiting for his ride to a New Jersey studio for day two of recording Raining Fire and Translations (Silkheart 134), Charles Gayle found himself flanked by two guys who wanted him to do something - wanted him to document his playing on chord changes. Gayle's Rollins-like hurtling hurdles usually heard during second sets, live are startling, all the more to folks who keep insisting outcats can't really play.

So these two unlikely allies, with very different relationships with Gayle, were trying to get a stubborn independent to see things their way. One of them had gently pressed Charles...  more

1. In Christ 17:09

2. Blood's Finality 12:52

3. Death Conquered 15:34

4. Grace 14:50

5. Raining Fire 08:20

Charles Gayle tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, viola

William Parker bass, cello, half-size violin

Vattel Cherry bass, kalimba, bells

Michael Wimberly drums

Charles Gayle Quartet - Translations (SILKHEART RECORDS 2018)

"At a time when too many musicians rely on arch referential irony or a reverence to catholic, stylistic recreations, it is bracing to hear a musician who unabashedly ignores fads and styles to aggressively pursue a music imbued with such powerful, emotional depth." 

Michael Rosenstein, Cadence, November 1994

This January Thursday breaks bright, boding well. At 10:15 that morning, a motorcade of taxicabs, its drivers protesting hazardous working conditions, moves slowly down Broadway toward City Hall, car horns in a distinctive staccato rhythm - a rhythm often favored by Charles Gayle, standing on the corner of Canal Street as they drive past. 

This cold, windy Manhattan day feels oddly warm. Maybe it's the pale winter sun, or knowing that 12 years of Reagan and Bush have ended. It is the first full day of the Clinton administration.

At the inauguration in Washington the previous noon, at a podium a few feet from the new president, the distinguished African-American writer Maya Angelou had read an impressive entry in that difficult genre, public poetry rifting on the triple trophes laid out in the opening lines: "A Rock, A River, A Tree" 

The horizon leans...  more

1. Joyous Fellowship 14:40

2. Healing 19:01

3. Holy Mountain 14:38

4. Hymn of Praise 08:53

5. Suffering for Love 14:00

Charles Gayle tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, viola

William Parker bass, cello, half-size violin

Vattel Cherry bass, kalimba, bells

Michael Wimberly drums