Biography

Lloyd grew up in Memphis, and was exposed to its rich river culture and musical heritage, including blues, gospel and jazz. Lloyd's ancestry of African, Cherokee, Mongolian, and Irish descent reflects a similar rich culture. He was given his first saxophone at the age of 9, and was riveted by 1940s radio broadcasts by Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. His early teachers included pianist Phineas Newborn, Jr. and saxophonist Irvin Reason. His closest childhood friend was the great trumpeter Booker Little. As a teenager Lloyd played jazz with saxophonist George Coleman, Booker Little, Harold Mabern, and Frank Strozier, and was a sideman for blues greats Johnny Ace, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King.

Classical music exerted a strong pull on the young Lloyd. In 1956 he left Memphis for Los Angeles to earn a degree in music at USC where he studied with Halsey Stevens, a foremost Bartók authority. While his days were spent in academia, Lloyd spent nights getting educated on the job in L.A.'s jazz clubs, playing with Ornette Coleman, Billy Higgins, Scott LaFaro, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Eric Dolphy, Bobby Hutcherson and other leading west coast jazz artists. He also was a member of the Gerald Wilson big band.

In 1960 Lloyd was invited to become music director of Chico Hamilton's group when Dolphy left to join Charles Mingus's band. The Hungarian guitarist Gábor Szabó and bassist Albert "Sparky" Stinson soon joined Lloyd in the band. Hamilton's most memorable albums for Impulse Records, Passin' Thru and Man from Two Worlds, featured music arranged and written almost entirely by Lloyd, and during this period of prolific composing he was also finding his unique voice as a saxophonist. A collaboration took place between Lloyd and the Nigerian master drummer Babatunde Olatunji, with whom the saxophonist played when he wasn't on the road with Hamilton. Lloyd joined the Cannonball Adderley Sextet in 1964, and performed alongside Nat Adderley, Joe Zawinul, Sam Jones and Louis Hayes. He remained with Cannonball for two years, and to this day continues to acknowledge the important role Cannon played in his own development as a leader.

In 1964 Lloyd signed with CBS Records and began to record as a leader. His Columbia recordings, Discovery! (1964), and Of Course, Of Course (1965), featured sidemen including Roy Haynes and Tony Williams on drums, Richard Davis and Ron Carter on bass, Gabor Szabo on guitar and Don Friedman on piano, and led to his being voted Down Beat magazine's "New Star." Of Course, Of Course was reissued on Mosaic Records in 2006.

Lloyd left Cannonball Adderley in 1965 to form his own quartet, an ensemble that included pianist Keith Jarrett, drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Cecil McBee. Their first release together was a studio recording, Dream Weaver, followed by Forest Flower: Live at Monterey (1966). Forest Flower made history as one of the first jazz recordings to sell a million copies, and the album's firsts continued as it became a crossover success that appealed to a popular mass market audiences and gained heavy airplay on FM radio.

The Quartet was the first jazz group to appear at the famed Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. The acoustic group fused virtuoso improvising with a constantly changing combination of musical tropes, incorporating the challenge of avant-garde or "free jazz" with elements of non-Western music, impressionistic harmonies and occasional rock rhythms in open-ended musical flights that echoed the free spirit of the so-called psychedelic 1960s. Electric jazz/rock germinated in a series of original performances that, ironically, were acoustic. He was invited to guest on recordings with the Doors, the Byrds, Aashish and Pranesh Khan, and the Beach Boys. Miles Davis and other jazz figures were highly influenced by Lloyd's explorations and soon plugged in to play for the young fans that Lloyd had reached through his acoustic outings. During this period the Quartet also shared billing with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Cream, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.

In 1967 Lloyd was voted "Jazz Artist of the Year" by Down Beat magazine, and the Quartet was invited to tour the world. The Lloyd quartet found a warm reception in Europe at the new jazz festivals in Montreux, Antibes, and Molde. Its performances in the Far East, the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc nations of Europe often marked the first time these audiences had heard an American jazz group live.

Credited by many musicians with anticipating the World Music movement by incorporating cadences of many cultures in his compositions as early as the late 1950s, Lloyd describes his music as having always "danced on many shores". As Peter Watrous noted, "Lloyd has come up with a strange and beautiful distillation of the American experience, part abandoned and wild, part immensely controlled and sophisticated."

From the moment he first came to prominence as the young music director of the Chico Hamilton Quintet in 1960, Lloyd began to take audiences on journeys that traversed enormous distances. Over nearly five decades, his compositions have punctuated the post-bop period, embraced the traditional music of a host of world cultures and enlivened the psychedelic 1960s with avant-garde improvisation.

Lloyd was one of the first jazz artists to sell one million copies of a recording (Forest Flower), and then he surprised the music world by walking away from performing just at the point that he was dubbed a jazz superstar. Actually he was just following a trajectory that was taking him closer to the essence of the music he was hearing.

At the peak of the Cold War in 1967, Lloyd made headlines when his Quartet became the first jazz group from the U.S. to play in the USSR by invitation of the Soviet people rather than through government sponsorship. Its first stop was Tallinn and subsequent concerts took place in Leningrad and Moscow.

At the height of his career in the early 1970s, Lloyd disbanded the quartet and dropped from sight, withdrawing to pursue an inner journey in Big Sur, the wild haven that had previously attracted other artists and seekers including Robinson Jeffers, Langston Hughes, Henry Miller, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, Jean Varda and Jaime de Angulo.

Despite recording several albums during the 1970s and occasionally appearing as a sideman, he practically disappeared from the jazz scene. During the 1970s Lloyd played extensively with the Beach Boys both on their studio recordings and as a member of their touring band. In the late 1970s Lloyd was a member of Celebration, a band composed of members of the Beach Boys' touring band as well as Mike Love and Al Jardine. Celebration released two albums.

It wasn't until 1981 that Lloyd moved to break a decade of silence in the jazz world when a remarkable 18-year-old French pianist, Michel Petrucciani, arrived in Big Sur. Lloyd was compelled to help introduce this gifted artist to the world. This led to U.S., European and Japanese tours in 1982 and 1983 with Petrucciani on piano, Palle Danielsson on bass and drummer Son Ship Theus. British jazz critic Brian Case called Lloyd's return "one of the events of the 1980s." The group produced a special edition cassette, Night Blooming Jasmine, and two live records, Montreux 82 and A Night in Copenhagen, which also features Bobby McFerrin (reissued by Blue Note Records). Satisfied that Petrucciani was beginning to receive the recognition he deserved, Lloyd again retreated to Big Sur.

In 1986, after being hospitalized with a nearly fatal medical condition, Lloyd rededicated himself to music. When he regained his strength in 1988 he formed a new quartet with the renowned Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson. When Lloyd returned to the Montreux Festival in 1988, Swiss critic Yvan Ischer wrote: "To see and hear Charles Lloyd in concert is always an event, not only because this saxophonist has been at quite a few crossroads, but also because he seems to hold an impalpable truth which makes him a thoroughly original musician...This is what we call grace."

Lloyd made his first recording for ECM Records, Fish Out of Water in 1989. The project marked the beginning of a new wave of Lloyd compositions and recordings. ECM's producer, Manfred Eicher, compared the recording to a Giacometti painting, saying, "I really believe this is the refined essence of what music should be. All the meat is gone, only the bones remain." More than twenty years later, he is still with the label, and still in search of the “sound” and the truth. From 1989, Lloyd toured actively and recorded for the ECM label. Although his playing had not changed much stylistically since his groundbreaking work in the 1960s, these recordings showcased his sensitivity as a ballad player. Noteworthy albums include Canto, Voice in the Night, The Water Is Wide (featuring Brad Mehldau, John Abercrombie, Larry Grenadier and Billy Higgins), Lift Every Voice (featuring Geri Allen), and the live Rabo de Nube (with Jason Moran).

Lloyd has shown great consistency and creativity in his period with ECM, much of his music containing a strong spiritual element, some it heavily in a "world music" vein, and some of it unusual and experimental as in the duets on Which Way Is East with his longtime friend and musical soulmate, Billy Higgins.

Mirror, his second recording with the New Quartet (released September 2010), has already been called a "Charles Lloyd classic." Rabo de Nube, also on ECM, captured the quartet "live" at its inception, and was voted #1 recording for the 2008 JazzTimes Reader's and Critic's Poll. His concerts and recordings are events of pristine beauty and elegance, full of intensely felt emotion and passion that touches deep inside the heart. This is not entertainment, but the powerful uncorrupted expression of beauty through music. When music vibrates, the soul vibrates and touches the spirit within.

Lloyd established another "first" in his interesting history of jazz "firsts," by collaborating with the classical Greek singer, Maria Farantouri, for a concert at the Herodion Theater at the foot of the Acropolis. Ta Nea, the leading newspaper of Athens, stated "Music has no borders…. The audience was filled with a Dionysian ecstasy. While the music had reminiscences of a Hypiros fair, at the same time it took you to the heart of New York City." This concert was recorded and Athens Concert was released by ECM records in 2011.

Charles Lloyd maintains an active performance and recording schedule with the New Quartet, Sangam, Maria Farantouri and special projects around the world. He celebrated his 75th birthday in 2013 with concerts in the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum and the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. On June 25, 2014 it was announced that Lloyd will receive the NEA Jazz Masters Award 2015. Lloyd was the Honoree at the 2014 Monterey Jazz Festival Jazz Legends Gala, hosted by Herbie Hancock. Lloyd was the recipient of the 2014 Alfa Jazz Fest International Music Award. In January 2015, it was announced that Lloyd had signed with Blue Note Records and that a forthcoming album would be released. Wild Man Dance, a live recording of a long-form suite commissioned by the Jazztopad Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, was subsequently released in April 2015. Lloyd was presented with an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music in a ceremony at the Umbria Jazz Festival In July 2015.

Personal life

Lloyd lives in Southern California with his wife, Dorothy Darr.

Discography

As leader

Release date	Title	Label
1964	Discovery!	Columbia
1965	Of Course, Of Course	Columbia
1968	Nirvana	Columbia
1966	Dream Weaver	Atlantic
1966	Forest Flower	Atlantic
1966	The Flowering	Atlantic
1966	Charles Lloyd in Europe	Atlantic
1967	Love-In	Atlantic
1967	Journey Within	Atlantic
1967	Charles Lloyd in the Soviet Union	Atlantic
1968	Soundtrack	Atlantic
1970	Moon Man	Kapp
1971	Warm Waters	Kapp
1972	Waves	A&M
1973	Geeta	A&M
1973	Morning Sunrise	ADC
1978	Weavings	Pacific Arts
1978	Koto	ADC (Same album as Pathless Path)
1979	Pathless Path	Unity (Same album as Koto)
1979	Big Sur Tapestry	Pacific Arts
1979	Autumn in New York Volume One	Destiny
1982	Montreux 82	Elektra/Musician
1983	A Night in Copenhagen	Blue Note
1989	Fish Out of Water	ECM
1992	Notes from Big Sur	ECM
1993	Acoustic Masters I	Atlantic
1993	The Call	ECM
1994	All My Relations	ECM
1996	Canto	ECM
1999	Voice in the Night	ECM
2000	The Water Is Wide	ECM
2001	Hyperion with Higgins	ECM
2002	Lift Every Voice	ECM
2004	Which Way is East	ECM
2005	Jumping the Creek	ECM
2006	Sangam	ECM
2008	Rabo de Nube	ECM
2010	Mirror	ECM
2011	Athens Concert (with Maria Farantouri)	ECM
2013	Hagar's Song with Jason Moran	ECM
2015	Wild Man Dance	Blue Note
2016	I Long To See You	Blue Note

As sideman

Release date	Title	Label	Notes
With Chico Hamilton
1960	Bye Bye Birdie-Irma La Douce	Columbia
1960	The Chico Hamilton Special	Columbia
1962	Drumfusion	Columbia
1962	Transfusion	Studio West
1962	Passin' Thru	Impulse!
1963	A Different Journey	Reprise
1963	Man from Two Worlds	Impulse!
1965	Chic Chic Chico	Impulse!	Appears on only one track
With Les McCann
1961	Les McCann Sings	Pacific Jazz	Appears on four tracks
With Cannonball Adderley
1964	Cannonball Adderley Live!	Capitol
1964	Cannonball Adderley's Fiddler on the Roof	Capitol
1991	Radio Nights	Night
With The Beach Boys
1971	Surf's Up	Caribou/Stateside	Appears on only one track
1973	Holland	Brother
1976	15 Big Ones	Brother	Appears on only one track
1978	M.I.U. Album	Brother
With Canned Heat
1971	Historical Figures and Ancient Heads	United Artists	Appears on two tracks
With The Doors
1972	Full Circle	Elektra	Appears on "Verdilac" and "The Piano Bird"
With Harvey Mandel
1972	The Snake	Janus	Appears on only one track
With Gábor Szabó
1973	Gábor Szabó Live	Blue Thumb	Appears on only one track
With Roger McGuinn
1973	Roger McGuinn	Columbia	Appears on two tracks
With William Truckaway
1976	Breakaway	Reprise
With Celebration
1978	Almost Summer: Music from the Original Motion Picture	MCA
1979	Celebration	Pacific Arts
1979	Disco Celebration	ADC
With Joe Sample
1995	Old Places, Old Faces	Warner Bros	Appears on three tracks
With Mark Isham
1998	Afterglow: Music from the Motion Picture	Columbia

[ Source: Wikipedia ]