CHARLES LLOYD: THE GREAT HIPPIE HERO
I came across Charles Lloyd at a time in my jazz life when there was no palpable reason for him to be there. My jazz journey was then still in its infancy. I had traveled musically from New Orleans to Chicago and New York. I was just starting to explore the West Coast of USA. My heroes were mostly described as “mainstream”. I was still a fan of Louis but was paying increasing attention to Buck Clayton, Vic Dickenson and Lester Young. Basie’s band was prominent as was Ellington’s increasingly. I loved Woody Herman. So I was making advances, creeping ever closer to the dreaded bop but yet to take that final leap of faith.
Into this fairly orthodox arena steps Charles Lloyd, so-called hippie hero of the 1960s, very challenging, and, I surmised, only to be assessed with musicians such as Albert Ayler and Archie Schepp. The principal reason Charles invaded my musical space was that I liked the cover of his album “Journey Within” which contained some edited tracks from a live appearance by the Charles Lloyd Quartet at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco early in 1967. It was about as psychedelic as I dared to become in those days, full of colour and featuring a bunch of musicians who you felt were surrounded by a cannabis haze and who should have flowers in their hair. How could I resist?
There were three principal tracks – “Journey Within” took me into the Himalayas with the Beatles with lots of ethereal, sensuous flute, and some wailing, very typical for the period, while I was blasted awake by the belting “Memphis Green”, a rousing blues and R & B inflected tenor sax feature for Charles with fine drumming from Jack DeJohnette. The real eye-opener was Keith Jarrett’s piano solo “Love No. 3”. He played the piano internally – in other words he played the strings of the piano as a harp. Quite extraordinary and way beyond my musical experience at the time. So Charles Lloyd and his Quartet sat among my mainstream and big band heroes and was frequently played to remind myself that I was at heart far out.
Charles Lloyd is still with us, into his early eighties now but still playing regularly with his quartet and quintet. Charles is a child of Memphis who played the blues with B. B. King before heading out to California where he obtained a Masters Degree in Musicology and hooked up with notable West Coast musicians such as Bill Evans, Eric Dolphy and Chico Hamilton whose band he joined. He was then asked to join Cannonball Adderley’s sextet and this provided him with the platform to set up his own quartet with Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette and Ron McLure on bass. That was some hot band!! Their album “Forest Flower” is said to be the first jazz record to sell one million copies. Then for some reason, Charles took himself off into self-enforced retirement, partly because he was conscious of the potential for self-destruction that he had seen among his musician friends. He lived his life in seclusion at Big Sur before being coaxed back to the stage in the 1980s by none other than diminutive pianist Michel Petrucciani who Charles called “the little guy”. There followed a number of highly praised quartet recordings with ECM and he has been on the scene ever since recording and appearing live. Charles Lloyd has always been a spiritual man and sees his music as a service that aims to transcend the troubles of our times. In an interview conducted in 2002 he said:
“They’ve been throwing rocks at each other for thousands of years. It’s an old story. I’m tired of it. If we’d all pull back and look at this small planet and realise that we’re passing through here and for me, man, as a music-maker I’m in service to the Creator. That presence has always been with me, even when I was blown off course and would throw myself up on the roof in those wild days. I was still searching for the truth………….Please understand I’m trying to make a plea for us to wake up and realise we are children of the infinite but you have to work hard to get away from all this hypnosis that happens in the world.”
This quote comes from article on and interview with Charles Lloyd by Duncan Heining titled “All You Need Is Love”, on pages 30 to 33 of Jazzwise Magazine for October 2002.
Amen to that.
THE MUSIC
For a taste of “Journey Within”:
Later Charles Lloyd can be heard here:
THE JAZZ MESSENGERS – BEGINNINGS
I suppose that the Jazz Messengers are among the most well-known of jazz combos and they will be forever linked to the name of Art Blakey. The Messengers bloodied so many bop and post-bop musicians, many of whom went on to become household jazz names in their own right. The Messengers’ line-up was often young and always vital and trail-blazing. But here’s a curiosity. The original Jazz Messengers did not carry Art Blakey’s name. That privilege goes to Horace Silver. It was Horace that put the original Messengers together and he was also the first to take them to the recording studio.
I am indebted to Derek Ansell for his insightful piece on the first five years of the Messengers (Ansell, 2002). He writes that Horace was just beginning to make his way in the jazz world in 1954. He’d recorded a trio date for Blue Note when the saxophonist Lou Donaldson had to cancel a quartet session. Horace took over and recorded with a trio consisting of himself, Gene Ramey (bass) and Art Blakey on the drums. This was in 1952 and 1953. He had been playing piano with Stan Getz and caught the notice of Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records who was so impressed by what he heard that he persuaded Horace to record with horns and to seriously think about starting out as a leader in his own right. Two of Horace’s co-musicians at his recent gig at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, Hank Mobley on tenor sax and Doug Watkins on bass were retained for these recording sessions and Alfred asked Horace who else he would like to complete the line-up. Horace asked for Kenny Dorham on trumpet and Art Blakey on drums, never in his wildest dream expecting to get them. Alfred assured Horace that this would be no problem and promptly booked the two to complete the quintet.
The Jazz Messengers were always a collective in the early days. Horace Silver was nominal leader but Art Blakey’s strong leadership was always apparent. It was reflected in the way he played. He had led a group called “Art Blakey’s Messengers” in 1947 for his first recording date for Blue Note, as well as, briefly, a big band called “Seventeen Messegers” so the name was in the ether for some time before the formation of the Jazz Messengers. Horace had been playing with Art Blakey since the early 1950s.
As the original line-up eventually went their separate ways, the name “Jazz Messengers” was retained. The original group minus Kenny Dorham who was replaced by Donald Byrd, recorded an album which was released in 1956 titled “The Jazz Messengers” and over the next two to three years, as the sidemen came and went, the named evolved from “The Jazz Messengers” to “The Jazz Messengers Featuring Art Blakey” and “Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers” until, when a completely new group emerged in 1958, it was known as “Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. This was the group that recorded the big hit “Moanin'” and the group in various forms lasted until 1966. The ten years between 1966 and 1976 were lean years for the Messengers although Blakey kept them going as best he could often in difficult circumstances. There was a resurgence between 1976 and 1990 which saw the Messengers rejuvenated under Blakey’s guidance. This was the period of Wynton and Branford Marsalis and Kevin and Robin Eubanks who epitomised the focus on new, breathtaking talent that had been a feature of the Messengers through the years. “Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers” stopped playing in 1990 but only because of the death of the revered drummer. Their musical legacy is unparalleled and without the Messengers many illustrious careers may never have started.
Source: The source for this article is a very extensive piece that appeared in the “Jazz Journal” in October 2002 by the jazz historian and reviewer Derek Ansell titled “The Jazz Messengers 1954 – 59: the Early Years” (pages 10 – 16)
THE MUSIC
Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (1955), “Room 608” on Blue Note.
Art Blakey and the Jazz “Messengers” (1958). “Moanin'” on Blue Note.
RED RODNEY
Red Rodney is not a household name but bop-fanciers will know him well and others will have come to appreciate him as he emerged from a period of relative obscurity in the 1970s and 1980s. He was an early disciple of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker who most famously played in Parker’s band from 1949. Arguably, this was Parker’s happiest band.
Red Rodney was born Robert Rodney Chudnick in Philadelphia in 1927 and was on the road at 15. In the mid to late 1940s he played in the bands of Jimmy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich and Claude Thornhill among others and then was with Oscar Pettiford and Woody Herman. He was with Charlie Parker from 1949 until 1952 but from 1957 until 1972 he played little jazz. He was in showbands in Las Vegas but began to play jazz again seriously in 1972. He returned to new York in 1979 and played on and off for the rest of his life before his death in 1994, particularly with fellow trumpeter and saxophonist Ira Sullivan. (1)
Those are the bare facts. Red’s playing was said to be incisive yet lyrical and his favourite trumpeters were among the great bop stylists – Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Dizzy Gillespie. Red’s nickname came from his red hair and Richard Cook tells us that when Red was with Parker he was sometimes billed as “Albino Red” in order to pass at gigs in the southern states of the USA. He learned the best and the worst from Parker, becoming hooked on heroin which was largely responsible for his jazz absences. He played to raise the funds to feed his habit and in 1972 suffered a stroke. (2) But that also spurred a return to jazz and by the time we reached the 1980s he was relaxed with his own quintet and playing mostly flugelhorn.
There was also a bankruptcy and a spell in jail in the mix but Red was philosophical. “I learned some good lessons from Bird,” he said in 1982, “and some very bad ones. I wish I could say that it all comes out in the music. Some of it comes out in the wash. Bird never had that. I was lucky and did.” (3)
Reminiscing about the early 1940s, Dizzy Gillespie remembers Red coming to the Downbeat Club in Philapdelphia, the first racially integrated jazz club in the city, open between 1939 and 1948. “Red was still a kid,” wrote Dizzy, “not even old enough to get in the Club. He used to stand on the stairs and listen and they would run him outta there.” (4)
Red was a keen observer of his time in jazz. Having survived his addiction and his criminal phase, writes Alyn Shipton, “his accounts of his time with Parker are significant, with the added benefit of hindsight.” Shipton quotes Red on the reasons why so many of the bebop generation followed Parker’s lead and became addicted to heroin:
“When I listened to that genius night after night, being young and immature….I must have thought, ‘If I crossed over that line, with drugs, could I play like that?’ Drugs were heavily involved with that part of jazz music. It wasn’t the swing players who were using junk. It was the new bebop generation that did that. I was one of the last. I saw all those people doing that. I watched Bird and I knew what he did . You want a sense of belonging. You want to be like the others. And so I tried it.” (5)
The following link will take you to Red’s reminiscences of Charlie Parker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9te1oQTdBc&list=PLbFknnbkaiq23lEdCIZW9e0ag50k8NHHO&index=346
THE MUSIC
Red Rodney with Charlie Parker (1949) at Carnegie Hall – “Bird of Paradise”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nasZ5s8sBV4
Red Rodney New Stars (1951) with “Coogan’s Bluff”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldUHKQonci8
Red Rodney and Ira Sullivan both on flugelhorn (1981) – “Monday’s Dance”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnOI-4Tw480
SOURCES
(1) Leonard Feather, Ira Gitler, The Biographical Encylopaedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press, 1999.
(2) Richard Cook, Jazz Encyclopaedia. Penguin Books, 2005.
(3) Brian Morto, Richard Cook, The Penguin Jazz Guide. Penguin Books, 2011.
(4) Dizzy Gillespie with Al Fraser, Dizzy: To Be Or Not To Bop. W. H. Allen, 1980.
(5) Alyn Shipton, A New History Of Jazz. Continuum, 2001.
THE MUSICIANS
There are millions of musicians who have contributed to the development and growth of jazz over the past more than 100 years. And the number is still growing because jazz is alive an well and even though definitions may become blurred as musical influences merge and intertwine, the music is still identifiable and full of creativity and beauty. This page will be used to highlight the musicians that bring us the music. I have my own favourites, of course, and there will be some that I feel deserve more attention. You will have choices of your own and I would be happy to share those with our readers and generate a discussion on what it takes to bring us the music. There will be opportunities for reminiscence and memories of great performances. Here we will celebrate the highs and lows, the lives and loves of our heroes and heroines.
