{"id":6073,"date":"2014-09-26T23:25:47","date_gmt":"2014-09-27T06:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=6073"},"modified":"2016-03-21T17:22:14","modified_gmt":"2016-03-22T00:22:14","slug":"recent-viewing-and-listening-charles-lloyd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2014\/09\/recent-viewing-and-listening-charles-lloyd\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Viewing And Listening: Charles Lloyd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Llloyd<\/strong>, Arrows Into Infinity<\/a> (ECM)<\/p>\n

Charles Lloyd<\/strong>, Manhattan Stories<\/a> (Resonance)<\/p>\n

The steadfastly independent saxophonist and flutist Charles Lloyd stepped out of the limelight more than once, but even when he was inactive his recordings remained in demand. Lloyd is drawing renewed attention because of a film about his life and music, and an album of previously unreleased performances from a fertile early period of his career.<\/p>\n

His million-selling 1966 album Forest Flower<\/a> and the rock generation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s embrace of his band propelled Lloyd to a level of popular success \"Lloyd<\/a>rare among jazz musicians. Yet, a decade later he retreated to practice, meditate and vanquish drug addiction in idyllic surroundings on the northern California coast. In the 1970s he had stints with The Beach Boys and other rock groups and took time for academic study, but little was heard again from Lloyd in jazz until the early 1980s. His fascination with the teenaged French pianist Michel Petrucciani lured him back to public performance. They formed a quartet reminiscent of Lloyd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mid-1960s band. The partnership inspired Lloyd to a new plateau of vigor, enthusiasm and daring. When he had launched Petrucciani\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s career, he again disappeared into his haven in Big Sur. Illness put him in the hospital, and recovery from surgery kept him out of circulation for much of the 1980s. Allowed by his doctors to play again late in that decade, he began recording for ECM, expanding his considerable discography by more than fifteen albums for the German label, as of this writing. <\/p>\n

The new film is called Arrows Into Infinity<\/em>, after a phrase that Lloyd speaks at the beginning of the film and again, Zen-like, near its end when he discusses his philosophy of creativity. The visual artist Dorothy Darr— Mrs. Llloyd—and Jeffrey Morse produced the documentary with continuity that allows for side trips and surprises. They begin with Lloyd in his twenties or early thirties, telling an interviewer, <\/p>\n

Am I screaming sometimes, am I bitter? Hell, yes, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m bitter. I mean, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got an insane amount of dues that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve paid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The film follows the sweep of the 76-year-old\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s career from its beginning when he was a teenager in his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. Under the spell of Lester Young and Charlie\"Lloyd<\/a>
\nParker, he grew up influenced by pianist Phineas Newborn, Jr., who was six years older. As a teenager, he played with trumpeter Booker Little, alto saxophonist Frank Strozier and pianist Harold Mabern, fellow Memphians who also went on to substantial careers. He was in blues bands, including Howling Wolf\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and B.B. King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, but when Swing Journal<\/em> editor Kiyoshi Koyama asks him about his tenor sax sound, he answers that it came from Young, whom Billie Holiday nicknamed \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The President.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n

I can play strong, but I like something about the ballads and the tenderness that Prez had. It affected me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lloyd attracted fans well beyond the teens and twenty-somethings seduced by Forest Flower<\/em> who packed San Francisco\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Fillmore Auditorium when he appeared. The admirers included many of his contemporaries in post-bop music, among them pianist Herbie Hancock, who says in the film, <\/p>\n

He had his own sound. Nobody ever sounded like Charles Lloyd. He just captured a certain element that was flowing, almost like a flowing river, cascades of sound that almost had kind of an environmental aspect to it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the course of the film, the viewer is treated to extended performances with Cannonball Adderley; Lloyd\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s path-finding first quartet with Keith Jarrett, Cecil McBee and Jack DeJohnette, including bits of a concert performance so successful that it made them persona non grata in the Soviet Union; Lloyd and Petrucciani playing in the Big Sur house; Lloyd and his new quartet with pianist Jason Moran; Lloyd with the Indian tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain; in duet with his old Los Angeles pal drummer Billy Higgins; an all-star encounter with Gerri Allen, John Abercrombie, Marc Johnson and Billy Hart. We seem him play pool but, unfortunately, not music, with Ornette Coleman. <\/p>\n

Affinity with the natural world, implied in Hancock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s description, is a current through much of the film. We feel water\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s importance to him when we see Lloyd and Dorothy Darr on the \"Lloyd<\/a>sand as the Pacific pounds into Big Sur\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beach and monumental rocks, and again in a sequence of Lloyd and Petrucciani on a bluff overlooking the ocean. We hear it as he talks about his birth when the Mississippi River was at record flood stage in Memphis.<\/p>\n

Near the end of the film, now in his seventies, bitterness subdued, Lloyd accepts the rewards of experience, even painful experience.<\/p>\n

There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some that say, the closer we are to the light, the longer our shadow is behind us. And, we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really lug that thing with us. We have to know that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s there and integrate it into our life and our work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

About his music, he says, <\/p>\n

It might not be fully understood by everyone all the time, but people come to me and say they get something from it, or not. But for me, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the last night of the play, and they can boo or applaud. I have to sing my song, in whatever manifestation. However it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s given to me is how it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to come through.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a promotional preview of the film:<\/p>\n