Jazz Legend Charles Lloyd Cannot Be Stopped
The master reedist returns with a sprawling new double album
Saxophone legend Charles Lloyd has nothing left to prove.
He’s has been named an NEA Jazz Master. He’s been awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music. And he celebrated his 80th birthday at the Newport Jazz Festival by headlining the festival for three days in a row with three different groups.
Lloyd has led groups featuring young players – pianists Michel Petrucciani and Keith Jarrett, drummer Jack DeJohnette are a few examples – who’d go on to be marquee stars themselves.
He was named Jazz Artist Of The Year by no less an authority than DownBeat Magazine back in 1967, during the years he spent splitting bills with rock acts at the Filmore West in San Francisco, including Chuck Berry and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
So when a new recording from Mr. Lloyd appears – The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow is his latest for the storied Blue Note records – assume he has something to say. It took the better part of three years to get the musicians on this recording freed up to record together. It was worth the wait.
In his own notes, included in the CD, Mr. Lloyd includes the passage “…my inclination to put down the saxophone and go back to the woods has been staved off for another season.”
This is no mere rhetorical device. Mr. Lloyd has in fact withdrawn from most public playing for long stretches. Sonny Rollins famously played alone on a bridge, Charles Lloyd played with the trees (and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti) in Big Sur, California. But like Mr. Rollins, he came back renewed.
The word “spiritual” gets used by writers attempting to convey the idea that there’s something …deep about a work of art. In the case of Charles Lloyd, I find it apt. Because one gets the sense from reading his liner notes that were he not a gifted musician, Lloyd would be a celebrated poet. His music seems to flow from his desire to offer beauty. He strives for nothing less than uplifting the human spirit with music. Mr. Lloyd can seem as much a sage as a working Jazz musician.
The first thing you’ll notice listening to this new recording is the sound he conjures with a tenor saxophone. Hearing it is like being spoken or sung to in a fresh language.
There are a lot of wonderful saxophone players around, yet none of them sound even vaguely like this.
The recording includes the startlingly musical drummer, composer and bandleader Brian Blade. The drummer and saxophonist have spent over 20 years intending to play together, but they’d not had the opportunity until now. Larry Grenadier is one of the busiest bassists in Jazz, and pianist Jason Moran, in addition to being seemingly perfect for this recording, defies description because of the many interests he cultivates outside of music which he brings to bear when he plays. Of the 15 selections on this new double CD, 13 of them were written by Mr. Lloyd.
The other two pieces are the African American spiritual “Balm in Gilead” and the James Weldon Johnson hymn “Lift Every Voice And Sing.”
Often, recordings of this length contain pieces which don’t seem essential to the story. But that’s not the case here. There’s very little here that sounds inessential, and there are luminous standouts: the wistful “Defiant, Tender Warrior” and it’s elegant reprise at the end of the program, the playful “Monk’s Dance” featuring Jason Moran’s sly introduction, hinting at stride piano, and the flute feature “Beyond Darkness” just for starters.
Those new to Lloyd’s work will likely be compelled by this one to seek out his other recordings. Those fans who’ve been waiting to hear this will find one of the great musicians of our time at the top of his game, at the age of 85.
VIDEO: Charles Lloyd on First Look with Don Was
Stream this one if you must. But I highly recommend the CD, which includes lovely and illuminating notes by Charles Lloyd, an essay by Adolfo Alzuphar and Dorothy Darr’s beautiful photographs.
“Ever the dreamer — as a young man — I naively thought I could wipe out the ugliness in the world with beauty,” Lloyd writes. “In this era of my youth there was a collective effort through song, through protest, through writing, through art — to right the ship. I was intent on making a contribution to humanity. For a brief time we perceived a change… but it was not lasting and began to crumble. In my wildest dreams I never imagined the world to be in this place. Now.”
The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow is indeed the medicine music we need for these times, and could possibly be the best album of his Blue Note era.
David airs a long running Jazz radio show at WWPV FM and serves as a Jazz Director and music librarian at the station.
Follow David on Twitter @DavidBeckettVT
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