Top 15 Jack Gale Archive Discoveries

For the past few years, my wife Catherine Gale and I have been organizing her dad Jack Gale’s music. This has been quite an effort. His amazing career in New York City spanned nearly five decades, and the materials are in a myriad of different forms. We have audio recordings from his computer but also from vinyl records, reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes and mini discs. Over the past 25 years he wrote compositions and arrangements in Finale, but before computer music publishing software was available he wrote sheet music in pencil or ink. Sometimes he made copies for an optimistic home publication business with a copy machine down in the basement. We also have videos on DVD, VHS tapes and 8mm film. Yikes! You can see the list of all his compositions and arrangements we’ve identified to date in this Excel file.

Jack’s famous brass quintet arrangement of “West Side Story”

Much of Jack’s work is well-known to the brass world. His arrangement of “West Side Story,” officially sanctioned by Leonard Bernstein himself, is standard repertoire for brass quintets. And his 24 Etudes for Jazz Trombone are used by aspiring jazz players all over the world to learn style and phrasing. So, I decided to focus this list on my favorite things we unearthed that are not as well-known. Jack created music in many different settings, so I essentially chose one piece from each category.

Enjoy!

-MT

#15: The Squawker

There are hundreds if not thousands of audio files on Jack’s computers where the title or filename contains the word “multiples”, his indicator that he’d recorded all the parts either entirely himself, or along with his brother Dave Gale on trumpet. Not only could Jack write really fun tunes and overdub all the trombone and bass trombone parts in his basement, he also played electric bass and drums on this recording. Dave’s lead trumpet playing is also quite impressive. This one gets stuck in my brain for days at a time.

#14: Episode for Winds

When asked about this piece, Jack told us that saxophonist Ed Joffee had reached out & told him he’d booked a saxophone quartet concert, adding that a trombone quartet would also be performing on the show. So, he asked Jack to write a new piece for both groups combined. The result is this wonderful piece that dances gorgeously along the boundary line of tonality. I’m not aware whether the piece has been played since — I’d love to hear some folks tackle this piece anew!

#13: Solid Sounds

Jack wrote a series of jazz, studio orchestra and other novelty pieces for Jack Shaindlin’s Cinemusic, a company that created libraries of stock music for TV and movies. In those days, producers could purchase this music on vinyl albums and drop in the cues into whatever they were doing. This is a set of cool shorts Jack wrote called “Solid Sounds.” If you happen to catch any old TV shows or movies with any of this music please let me know!

#12: Battle Hymn of the Republic with Marilyn Horne

Jack wrote this orchestral arrangement for the concert “Marilyn Horne’s Great American Songbook” at Avery Fisher Hall. It was broadcast on PBS’s Great Performances. We’ve yet to find the video, but have this great audio recording.

#11: Dance Suite for Brass Quintet

Without a doubt, the majority of Jack’s output over the course of his career was for brass quintet. In our spreadsheet of his compositions and arrangements, we’ve identified 174 different quintets (So far — we’ve still got more boxes to go through). It’s entirely impossible to select just one representative piece, but I just picked my current favorite. While a lot of Jack’s quintets are well known, this compelling set of four miniatures inspired by dances is not. We’re immensely thankful to Ed Hirschman at Art of Sound music for publishing this suite recently.

#10: In a Mellow Tone, arranged for Rick Kiefer

A remarkably effective vehicle for trumpeter Rick Kiefer, Jack’s friend from the early 60’s Maynard Ferguson years, who had subsequently moved to Germany and was playing with the Kurt Edelhagen Band. Rick is a fantastic lead trumpeter and jazz soloist, as you can hear in the recording.

Fans of Woody Herman know of Jack’s great big band chart “Sig Ep”, but Jack also wrote a huge number of great big band arrangements. In fact, Jack got his first big break in music due to his arranging skills. Bandleader Buddy Morrow heard about Jack’s writing chops from his Wichita pal saxophonist Rick Davis who was already on the road with the band. So, Buddy reached out to see if Jack would send more charts. One of Jack’s favorite stories is how Buddy Morrow called him to play lead trombone in his band based on his arranging prowess, but Jack said he’d only join the band if he could play 2nd trombone – he wasn’t ready to play a lead book yet. Buddy said that was fine – Jack could play the 2nd book. But when Jack showed up, Buddy had tricked him into joining under false pretenses and expected him to play lead after all. The rest is history!

#9: Lake Wobegon Blues

When Garrison Keillor performed in New York City he enlisted Rob Fisher’s Coffee Club Orchestra, a larger group than when the show was out of Minneapolis. Jack played in the band, and made the most of the opportunity, writing several arrangements and getting to play colorful solos. This time, he also got to play alongside Chet Atkins, and got to have a funny on-air interaction during the intro with Garrison.

#8: Improvisation on Kind of True

This one is a personal favorite I will treasure forever. The original composition is mine, a song called “Kind of True.” I’ve always been happy with the tune itself — the chord progression and melody — but as a jazz vehicle, I’ve never been able to improvise anything even close to an effective over the chord progression. Jack told me he liked the tune and had decided to take up the challenge of improvising over it. So, he worked up a beautiful basement scratch recording of the head, and also found a way to improvise a gorgeous solo over the chord changes. This was an amazing gift. And check out his high notes in the melody — they were absolutely second to none.

#7: Beyonce’s Single Ladies for Woodwind Trio

I’m an arranger myself, and the aspect of Jack’s arranging I most admire is his ability to capture the essence of a song regardless of the setting or which instruments he’s writing for. When Jack announced that he’d been hired to arrange Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” for a woodwind trio of bassoon, clarinet and oboe, I couldn’t begin to fathom how something like that would even be possible. Even though we’ve only found this MIDI recording among his files, the spirit of Beyonce’s song is undeniable.

#6: “Anansi the Spider” featuring James Earl Jones

We don’t know too much about how this came about. We know Jack originally wrote the piece for the West End Symphony’s Music Outreach program that did educational concerts at schools. The story is an Ashanti folk tale. Jack composed the music for a small chamber group to accompany a live narration of the story. At some point, Music Outreach asked him to expand the piece for the entire orchestra for a performance with a mystery big-name narrator. This is the result. Apparently, the recording was made near the oboist.

#5: Bernie’s Waltz with soloist Gerry Mulligan

This cool recording of Jack’s arrangement is a bit of a puzzle. The MP3 we found says that the band is the “New Sauter Finnegan Orchestra.” We know is that the announcer is reed player Harvey Estrin – Jack recognized Harvey’s voice immediately. We assume Harvey is playing, too, but maybe he was just conducting, organizing or announcing. The song’s composer & namesake is Bernie Berger, a good friend of Jack and Harvey’s, and it’s certainly possible that Bernie was playing in the reed section on this concert, too. But, we haven’t been able to locate any other direct information about who is playing, where or when it’s from. A mystery!

#4: Gagoose and the Easter egg hunt

One of Jack’s childhood career ambitions was to be a radio actor, so it’s no surprise that he created a series of holiday audio stories for daughter Catherine. When Catherine was a toddler, Jack asked who she wanted to hear a story about. Her answer was a nonsense word “ga Goose!!” so Jack created the character Gagoose Gale. He used a range of technology available at the time: multiple tape decks, changing speeds, reverb, and sometimes even backwards tape. If you listen closely, you might catch one of his “Solid Sounds” in the mix!

#3: In a Sentimental Mood

Of all of Jack’s basement overdubs, I’m perhaps most impressed by the trombone octets, and this is one of my favorites of the lot. It also just so happens to be a beautiful arrangement, too.

#2: Beatles Medley

Another basement “multiple” that Jack recorded all himself. It’s not only amazing that it’s got a great rhythmic groove, but for someone primarily known as a tenor trombonist, his bass trombone playing is fantastic. From an arranging standpoint, this exemplifies Jack’s ability to capture the spirit of songs, and then stitch them together into a seamless arrangement, a skill he utilized for several of his published brass quintets as well.

#1: The Tragic History of the Trombone with Garrison Keillor

Can you find our illustrious trombonist?

I was only planning to choose one discovery from each category, but I had to choose a 2nd Garrison Keillor recording because this one is simply amazing. There’ll never be another Jack Gale.