Charles Gayle Profiled

Source: burning ambulance.

Gayle was often portrayed as a post-Ayler flamethrower, but he was a much more complex player than that. He started out on piano, and despite working in a mode of total improvisation (his pieces were titled after the fact, almost always with some reference to his deep Christian belief) there often seemed to be a song buried in there somewhere. From a technical standpoint, he was an ascended master of the horn, on a par with Pharoah Sanders or Sonny Rollins and much less unfettered than players like Brötzmann, Ware or Wright.