Eric Gale - Forecast (1977 Japanese CTI/Kudu GP 3127 Vinyl LP)

Eric Gale - Forecast | Vinyl LP - 1977 Japanese CTI/Kudu Reissue (GP 3127, King Record Co. Ltd)

• Debut solo album from CTI/Kudu’s house guitarist, the Brooklyn session player who appeared on over 500 records including Van McCoy’s “The Hustle”, Grover Washington Jr.’s “Just the Two of Us” and Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly sessions.
• Recorded at Van Gelder Studios in January 1973 with Bob James arranging strings and horns, Hubert Laws on flute and piccolo, Idris Muhammad and Rick Marotta splitting drum duties, and Ralph MacDonald on percussion.
• 1977 Japanese reissue on CTI/Kudu, manufactured by King Record Co. Ltd. Original US release: KU-11.

Eric Gale had been Creed Taylor’s go-to guitarist on the Kudu imprint for years before he got a record of his own. He played on the first album ever issued under the Kudu logo (Johnny Hammond’s Breakout) and kept showing up on sessions for Grover Washington Jr., Hank Crawford, Stanley Turrentine, Idris Muhammad. By January 1973, Taylor finally let him lead. Forecast opens with a compact, easy-listening take on “Killing Me Softly with His Song” (Gale played on Flack’s hit version too), with Tony Studd’s baritone horn floating over Bob James’s electric piano. From there, the record moves through six tracks that have almost nothing in common with each other. “Cleopatra” is a calypso street-party number with Hubert Laws on piccolo and Ralph MacDonald doubling on congas and Latin percussion. “Dindi” takes the Jobim standard and strips the bossa beat out of it entirely, playing it instead as a slow, dreamy pop ballad over strings. The three Gale originals on Side B range from R&B (“White Moth”) to Afro-reggae (“Tonsue Corte”) to a closing funk-rock riff on the title track.

The personnel list reads like a directory of New York session players in 1973. Two rhythm sections split the work: Gordon Edwards and Rick Marotta handle “Killing Me Softly” and “Dindi”, while Bill Salter and Idris Muhammad cover the rest. Bob James plays electric piano, organ, synths and bass marimba across the album, on top of writing and conducting the horn and string charts. The brass section includes Randy Brecker, Jon Faddis, Marvin Stamm and Victor Paz. Joe Farrell and Pepper Adams sit in the reed section. Rudy Van Gelder engineered and mastered the whole thing. Gale would go on to record Negril for Kudu, co-found the funk supergroup Stuff with Steve Gadd and Gordon Edwards, and play sideman on records by Billy Joel, Paul Simon and Al Jarreau right up until his death in 1994. This copy is the 1977 Japanese reissue on CTI/Kudu (GP 3127), pressed by King Record Co. Ltd.