I want to call BS on some of the so-called “conventional wisdom” about Jazz. The Beatles and The Stones, Elvis, Rock and Roll in general, did NOT destroy the market for jazz.
Yes…I can imagine comments saying things like “of course it didn’t!”…but the reality is that local Jazz gigs are going extinct faster than Polar Bears. I don’t mean the large venues or the new hot young person that Blue Note is promoting. I mean the $100 gigs in working class African American bars and in Italian restaurants. The library gigs and the town big band gigs are vanishing. The mechanism by which many musicians can earn, and thereby practice their art, is given zero value by just about everyone. And it is going away.
The reasons for that are involved. But Rock and Roll is NOT to blame. It is NOT the fault of pop music. And there was a time when one of the greatest “scenes” in the history of American Rock and Roll and Baby Boomer Culture embraced and made a super star of the excellent Memphis born Saxophonist/Flutist, Charles Lloyd.
Lloyd recorded the first million selling jazz album and performed at the Fillmore West a good year or two before Miles Davis. Please do break on through to the other side……
If you are finding me for the first time, I publish a diary on Jazz every Sunday around 10pm EST. I’ve been doing this here on Dailykos since Februrary. Welcome!
Charles Lloyd was born on March 15, 1938 in Memphis. And he played as a teenager with other legendary figures in Jazz such as Booker Little, Phineas Newborn Jr and George Coleman and Harold Mabern. If you've read my diaries before, you might know I was fortunate to study jazz for a bit with Harold Mabern at the end of the 1980s. Harold didn’t talk much about Lloyd that I heard. But the one time he did, he did so with such respect that it was a bit jaw dropping. Charles Lloyd had a major concert at the Kennedy Center last year celebrating his 75th birthday. In June it was announced that he will share the NEA Jazz Master’s award with Carla Bley, Joe Segal (owner and founder of the oldest existing Jazz club in Chicago, est. 1947), and fellow Memphis man, George Coleman.
Early in his career, Lloyd worked as a sideman with R&B groups such as Bobby Blueband and BB King. In 1956, he moved to LA to study music at USC. While there, he spent much time in LA clubs with Ornette and Don Cherry and Bobby Hutcherson and the other West Coast musicians.
In 1960, he became the musical director of Chico Hamilton’s band.
In 1964, Lloyd joined Cannonball Adderley’s band.
He left the group at the end of 1965 and proceeded to form his own group featuring three young unknowns: Keith Jarett, Jack DeJohnette, and Cecil McBee. The music speaks for itself.
In 1966 they made the studio recording, Dreamweaver
Here is the title track.
Sombrero Sam
The Flowering—recorded in 1966 and released in 1971
Speak Low
This recording was taken from the same live sessions as Lloyd’s 1966 “In Europe”. I can’t really find any clips from “In Europe” on the youtubes.
Here’s a live clip of the bad from this time.
Also in 1966, the band recorded what would become the first million selling album in jazz: Forest Flower: Live in Monterey
Note: this is the full version. Folks often use the first 7 minutes or so as “Forest Flower”…whereas really that’s the “Sunrise” part and then around the 7:20 mark it switches to the “Sunset” part.
The tune itself has become a Jazz standard. Its one you can actually play on a gig for people who don't listen to jazz regularly.
Here’s Sorcery written by Keith
The album hit #6 on the Jazz Charts and #188 on the Billboard pop charts.
1967 saw Lloyd achieve something that Miles Davis would still need to wait a year or two to do. He performed at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. McBee is out too and replaced with Ron McClure
Tribal Dance
Here, There, and Everywhere
Is It Really the Same
Since I was born about 10 months after this concert (10! Not 9! Neither of my parents ever even visited California before 2010) it’s hard to image what the “Scene” was. And at the same time, I was certainly obsessed with this time AND place when I was younger….and will still proudly wear my “Steal Your Face” t-shirt I bought at the tourist trap T-Shirt store on the corner of Height and Ashbury. It is not hard to imagine what this scene could have been like. Collectively, popular culture often looks to San Francisco and the late 60s.
A good musical scene plus DFH’s BEFORE the Summer of Love--the time which Paul Kanter and Phil Lesh might call the REAL Hippy scene--plus Owsley and all….(ie LSD and The Acid Test)….well, I have an easy time imagining a young Jerry saying in his high pitched and ever optimistic voice “hey man! Lets go see Charles Lloyd!”
And…well….it sounds like accessible Coltrane doesn’t it? In 1966 and 1967, Trane had taken it quite out. His performances had become quite avant guard by this point. And his legend was huge, but the music became very challenging to listen to. Lloyd and his group play damn well and to my ears evoke a Coltrane from 63 through 65. That Coltrane influenced The Doors to do extended solos on Light My Fire. That Coltrane inspired a young Phil Lesh, albeit that Phil was very into experimental music via a more classical tradition. Not to mention that Carlos Santana comes to adore Miles and Trane seemingly above all others, though Im not sure his inclinations were towards that back in 67.
And with a few exceptions, these are not the “standards” of Jazz and the great American songbook. Lloyd isn’t playing songs sung by Ella or Louis. They aren’t doing tunes Teddy Wilson played. There are no Big Band classics. This music is just as much of a generational break from the past as the music of The Airplane, The Dead, and Santana is.
I just don’t buy the notion that Rock and Roll “killed” jazz. I believe Neoliberalism did…sort of. Of course it's not dead. But I do believe that music industry is so f*cked up that it’s pathetic. We have employed a strategy in the Post-Modern period—largely beginning in 1973 officially, though I’ld often argue it begins in 1967—the has maximized the income generating potential for the most minimal amount of people. Jazz will never compete with Miley Cyrus for popularity, but it can and will be supported by smaller markets and earn less, for less industry investment. But we have hit a time when something that can generate a million or three in revenue a year is dismissed for the thing that can generate 10 million or more per year.
Lloyd's group was invited to tour the Soviet Union in the spring of 1967. At this point in time, Jazz was seen as decadent in the USSR and this tour was not an official State Department Cultural exchange sort of thing. It really is quite an achievement. And sadly, I can’t find any clips of the of the 1967 release “in the soviet Union” on Youtube.
The Journey Within also from the Fillmore concerts
In 1968, the group disbanded. Here’s some live footage of them towards the end.
Lloyd was a superstar. And he somewhat turned his back on the biz. He wasn’t the first Jazz artist to “walk away.” Sonny Rollins famously took sabbaticals from the music industry at least twice before 1967. But Lloyd was the first to do so when he was so popular and successful. Lloyd moved to Big Sur in California and took to meditating. He recorded several albums through the 70s, though most are hard to find now and I know of none that stand out for their music.
What is fascinating is how Lloyd really stayed active in the biz. He toured and recorded with the Beach Boys throughout the 1970s. This actually makes a lot of sense to me. Mike Love (of The Beach Boys…that’s Kevin Love’s uncle for you youngsters. Kevin Love is a great basketball player in the NBA today and is about 95% sure to be Lebron James’ sidekick this coming season) had gotten very into Transcendental Meditation, even being certified to teach it by 1968. I don’t know for sure, but it seems likely that Lloyd could have met Love in a TM situation. And if the pressures of being a star was hard on Lloyd, a Beach Boy could likely relate and even offer guidance. In the 70s, the Beach Boys had become a live act and were critically acclaimed for their performances. Lloyd plays damn well and is a professional, so certainly he could do what the Beach Boys needed. And it would have provided a healthy income stream through the 70s for Lloyd. It wouldn’t surprise me if you told me Mike Love was a Tea Party loving GOPer today, but I doubt he would have been so in 1972. I don’t know the actual story, but I suspect that Mike Love and the others helped preserve a great artist’s talent and perhaps life.
Life? Wynton Kelly died penniless. Jim Hall pretty much too. It’s too depressing to research, but I am sure I can add many more names to that list of jazz musicians who died with nothing. The thought of that can make me rather uneasy when I think about the amount of money Don Cheadle and the studio might earn from the eventual movie about Miles Davis’ life…but I digress…
Jumping to the 80s, a rather incredible man helped to bring Lloyd back into the Jazz limelight. French pianist, Michel Petrucciani (December 28, 1962-Janruary 6, 1999).
From Wikipedia
Michel Petrucciani came from an Italo-French family with a musical background….Michel was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, which is a genetic disease that causes brittle bones and, in his case, short stature. It is also often linked to pulmonary ailments. The disease caused his bones to fracture over 100 times before he reached adolescence, and kept him in pain throughout his entire life. "I have pain all the time. I'm used to having hurt arms," he said
Lotus Land 1983
By the way, the Danish bass player, Palle Danielsson, is one Europe’s most successful Jazz musicians. Palle has performed on several Keith Jarett recordings and with many others.
Petrucciani was an amazing pianist. I saw him perform a handful of times in NY in the 80s and it seemed as though every time I went to see Joe Henderson—which I did every chance I got—he would be there in the audience. His disease left him about a meter tall, but his hands were the size of what a man 5’10” might have. He was also notoriously a brat and lived life to its fullest (wine women and song). To many, it seemed as if he was very aware that his life would be cut short and that Michel wanted to be sure he got a full life’s worth of experiences in before he left us. I think he did.
Here Lloyd and Petrucciani team with McBee and DeJohnette for a live date.
After touring Europe in 82 and 83, Lloyd returned to retirement in Big Sur. The notion is that Lloyd gave Petrucciani enough exposure to maintain his own career. In 1986, Lloyd was hospitalized with an illness and nearly died. But he survived, returned to recording and has been productive ever since. In 1989 he began recording for ECM records.
From 1992’s Notes from Bug Sur
It’s very ECM: Quasi Third Stream with a touch of New Age wallpaper, meditative and calm combined with experimentation and world music.
1993 saw the release of Acoustic Masters which featured the Cedar Walton Trio with Lloyd, Billy Higgins on drums and Buster Williams on bass. This isn’t ECM, but the remainder of Lloyd’s recordings are.
Lloyd also formed a quartet with Billy Hart on drums which recorded four albums in the 90s. And then towards the end of the 90s, Lloyd recorded some with Billy Higgins. These are some of the last recordings done by Higgins
Billy Hart will continue to play with Lloyd after Higgins’ passing. They record with yet another great pianist, Geri Allen
Putting things in context….does Lloyd think about Dennis Wilson when he plays that one?
In 2008, Lloyd began recording with his new Quartet featuring Jason Moran on Piano, Rueben Rogewrs on bass and Eric Harland on Drums
How might Jazz have gone in the 70s if Lloyd had kept up the same intensity he had in the 60s? We’ll never know. History has played out as it has. But rock and roll did not ruin Lloyd’s career, it created and embraced it. And it took care of him in the 70s. He never actually left us and he is still going strong.
Thanks for listening everyone! As always, PLEEEEEEASE support your local jazz musicians and all local live music. Next week, I expect to follow what my polls seem to indicate you want…but no promises! Although…I have no gigs for the next two weeks (sigh), so I may have the time to do some bigger research.