Charles Lloyd/Don Was

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
A conversation with Charles Lloyd feels like a veritable interaction
with the pages of history. I was continuously surprised throughout
my conversation with Charles, along with Don was about the
depth of his experiences and the wisdom too. Charles is
an ordinately beautiful tenor player from Memphis, Tennessee, who grew
up at a time when the region was brimming with talent.

(00:42):
Elvis Presley, Helen Wolfe, Junior Parker, Billy Lee, Riley, B. B. King,
and so many more were from there or made their
careers there. It was also a popular destination for toring artists,
giving a young Charles an incredible musical education. On today's
episode of Broken Record, another in our series celebrating the
eighty fifth anniversary of Blue Note Records, I have Don's

(01:03):
my co host, and we talked to Charles Lloyd about
his colorful upbringing in Memphis and about the early Last Angels,
Jazzy and he became a part of after moving to
California to attend usc This conversation goes a lot of places,
from Elvis to Quincy Jones, to the Beach Boys and
far beyond. And please be sure to check out his
wonderful new album out on Blue Note. The Sky will

(01:25):
be there tomorrow. This is Broken Record liner Notes for
the Digital Age.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
I'm justin Mitchman.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Here's Don Was and myself from Amazon Music Studio one
twenty six in Culver City, California with Charles Lloyd. To
see the full video version of this episode, go to
YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
I would love to start at the beginning. I remember
one time you told me that you had like African
Choctaw Irish and Mongolian.

Speaker 4 (02:04):
Little jerky in there too with the Chocto. Yeah, and
I don't bring all my guns out right away or
arrows into infinity. Yeah. Well what happened was, let's see,
a future slave ship came over here and brought some people.
But before my eldest were already here. Sally Sunflower white Cloud.

(02:26):
It was my great grandmother, and I have her songs.
And then on Mary Flowers side, that's on my grandfather's side,
Sally Sunflower white Cloud. On my mother's side there was
Mary Flowers who was married to Bud Maccombe from Ireland.
And I don't know a lot about the direct brothers

(02:50):
and the Mongolian I asked my grandmother, where did we
come from? And she said Mongolia. And then I looked
at a map and somebody told me the Barons Street.
They walked across the barren streets to get over here,
because there was a time when you could walk across. Okay,
So we go far back, Caw. But my great great

(03:15):
grandmother was Hagar right, And Dorothy knows my history because
she went down south Mississippi and did the serious digging
and went behind the counter and went into the archives.
The problem is that Hagar, this is deep. No one

(03:40):
responds to it, but I need to bring it out.
She was taking a ten years old from her parents
down in Mississippi by slave owner up in Balivard, Tennessee,
need him Ingram, and he proceeded to rape on her
ten year old girl. She's pedophile stuff. And at thirteen

(04:03):
she had my great grandfather, Ben Ingram Senior. And this
guy had the nerve when his daughter got married with
his white wife to give my great grandmother, great great
grandmother and her child Ben as a wedding gift to

(04:26):
his daughter. So, man, I got some serious beefs about
this stuff that's going on, and it's still going on,
and I'm kind of blowing fuses as a young man
at Blue Fuses. Now I can't afford to blow fuses.
So what I have to do now is to go
back on the south and make some music that can

(04:48):
heal the world. But that's naive because I thought I
was doing that when I was a young man, and
some people heard it. But in two thousand, Master Higgins,
Billy Higgins, said he wanted to come up to visit
us at our compound, and he wanted us to do
some work that was that he could only do with me.

(05:14):
So he brought all of his drums and all of
his instruments, guitars from Africa, from all that Moorys stuff,
and we began to go at it for about a week.
Dorothy made the wonderful veggies for us. At the time
he showed up, I'd been fasting for a couple of weeks,

(05:36):
and I told him that I was going to go
back into the forest and give it up again. And
he's two years older than me, and I met him
when I first came out here in fifty six at
a jam session where he was there and Ornett was there,
and he and I had a bonding instantly. Ornett came

(06:00):
to this jam session and he played. But I was
new in town, and there's a place called the Stadium
Club over by USC. Now that I look back on USC, men,
there's some stuff that's very disturbing to me that I
had to do my own personal research on. I got

(06:22):
so many balls in the air. But anyway, so Arnett
was let up on the stage and they were playing
what is this thing called Love? So what on that
play was the Etymology of Love? And they invited him
off the bandstand because he wasn't adhering to just running

(06:42):
the changes. He was talking about the real deal and
I heard it and I love something about it. He
had to suspend us on and he had this homemade
outfit that was very special. We used to go to
a tail in Memphis called Paul the Tail, and there
was another one called Collettes. They were both on Beale Street.

(07:05):
So I had my stuff that I had to change
up real soon. I had twenty five inch knees and
eighteen inch bottom. I remember that, you know specific about that.
But when I got out here, they were wearing those
little uh yeah, she knows, okay, So my stuff was
too out for school. So I had to find a

(07:28):
way to make my stuff work anyway, because I was
in it, but I wasn't of it. And I had
some songs to sing. And when I was a little boy,
Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges, those people stayed at our
house because we had a large house and they weren't
adequate hotels for these musicians. So the lady from the

(07:50):
theater called my mother and said, you know, can you
help us out and accommodate some quality of people.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
So Duke Ellington stayed at your house.

Speaker 4 (07:59):
Yes, so did Lionel Hampton, so did special various people.
I met Quincy Jones during that period. He was playing
trumpet with Loonel Hampton. Quincy was he was five years
older than myself. But he was a little bitty, little
skinny guy and I was a little bitty, little skinny guy.
And I was about nine and so he would have

(08:22):
been five years he was about sixteen. Yeah, And so
we had a simpatico and when I came to California,
he would turn people on to me to do sessions
and stuff. You know, he was like it in those
days for the jazz community. He was like networker and
he knew, he knew where stuff was, and people would

(08:44):
call me from Capitol your company in different companies, and
I'd go do sessions. That was very special, and I
always remember that, and I think he's the one who
recommended me to Cannonball Attilie when you Latiith left. That
was in sixty four and Joe Sabeu was in that band,
Sam Jones, Lewis Hayes and Cannon's brother Nat. So I

(09:05):
played with that sex Step for going on two years.
And then I had a b in my bonnet that
I need to express Eibo, my stuff, personal music that
I had to make because when I was with Chico,
I had replaced Eric Dolphy Chico Hamilton, Sorry, thank you.
And what happened was that Chico made me music director

(09:28):
and so I'd written all this music when I was
a canniball. He said we'll be playing we'll play your
music too. But he also had he was a racking
tour and stuff, you know, and he was good at
the microphone and handling people and stuff like that. In
cordiality anyway, So I was there for a couple of years.
Then when I started my own band, when I was
a canniballist Keith Jarrett had heard me in Boston. He

(09:49):
was going to school at Berkeley and he was playing
upstairs and we were playing downstairs at he said, I
want to play with you. I said, well, you know,
when the time comes, you know, I'll let you know.
And then when the time came, Goborzabo, who had been
playing with me with Chico, I called him, and Pete
Larocca and oh Alvert Stenson wonderful basis that people don't

(10:12):
know because he left early too. He left in his twenties,
early twenties, around that age that guys leave town. But
he was even younger than that, and he and Bobby
Hutcheson had grown up in Pasadena and he was a
genius in Scott LaFaro and Charlie Hayden were the young Lions.
But sparky Alvert Stenson had a strong sound, real woody,

(10:40):
you know, and he loved wilbur Ware and so he
came from there anyway.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
So, yeah, there's so many places I want to go
back to. Yeah, so you talked about Higgins coming.

Speaker 4 (10:51):
Yeah, Higgins was playing that jam session to everybody loved
Billy Higgins because no matter how you played behind the beat,
on the beat, whatever he could make you a tailor
made suit, because that's that's what he fixed your stuff
up right up. You know. They finally let me play
at the end of the session because I'm young kids
sitting over there with an alto and that was my

(11:12):
instrument that started off. And finally let me on the
band stand. But it was strange because they didn't invited
on that off prior set. But On that comes up
to me with his splendid outfit that he had made
it home, and he said, you know, you can really
play the saxophone, but that don't have a lot to
do with music. And so I said, wow, you know,

(11:35):
I'd been in Memphis with George Coleman and Hank Craft
and Frank Strojan Booker, Little my Master and all the
cats in Memphis and there it was a rich tradition.
Phineas Newborn was our js Bock and he was our
hero in Memphis and he always was extremely special by On.

(11:59):
That's saying that he didn't say it with hostility. It
wasn't harsh. It was you know where he talks. Yeah,
you can't ready place apo. They don't have a lot
to do with me, so it was sweet. So somehow
he and I lived several blocks from each other. He
would come over to my house, I'd go to his house,

(12:20):
and we began to go at it, you know, with
the music. And I was coming from a lot of
modern tradition. It's like the old guys in Memphis said
to me, you know you playing all those notes because
i'd heard bird. You know, so you're playing all those notes,
but they don't mean anything without a beautiful sound. So

(12:46):
I started practicing long tones. Phineas Newborn hurt me on
an amateur show and I won first prize. I was
about nine or ten, and he said, you need lessons bad.
When I walked into the wings, he takes me around
the corner on Beal Street to Irving Reason, a great
alto player, and left me say you need lessons. And
so I didn't get to get rich before I learned

(13:09):
how to play. I had to focus on the music,
and so Irving was great for me. Phineas kept kept
on top of me, and then maybe I was twelve
or thirteen, he put me in band with his brother
Calvin and in his father's band, playing at the plantation
in Over across the river. In West Memphis, Arkansas. So
we played this several nights a week, seven nights, six seven,

(13:32):
and then I had gigs with all those blues guys too,
and my favorite was Howling Wolf, Junior Parker, Johnny A's
BB King, Roscoe Gordon, on and on anyway, So I
had lots of deep experiences with those blues guys because
they could reach the back of the hall or the

(13:54):
schoolhouse or wherever we were playing, and they were communicators,
you know. And I somehow got infected by that because
I was moved by how women would throw their panties
on the stage and do stuff of surrender, do you know,
without And I'm a little kid, you know, I'm not
ready for that lane yet, but I saw something in

(14:16):
there that was frightening and intriguing and interesting, you know.
So I didn't have the chops yet for any of that.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
But uh was Hubert someone with Wolf?

Speaker 4 (14:27):
That different cast? Play with Wolf? You know.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
It's like talking to Quincy Jones.

Speaker 4 (14:34):
You've done everything, no, no, but Quincy well, he's a
special guy. I don't know him now, you know. I'm
sure if we saw each other, Well, no, I do.
I shouldn't talk like that, you know. I was playing
at montro a few years ago and he came backstage.
He was pulling on my coat when I walked near
the near the edge of the stage, and he remembered

(14:56):
you from uh from oh well, no, throughout he's remembered.
We're cordial, you know, and it's just that, Uh. I've
been drunk with this music. And what my idea was
was to change the world with the beauty of music.
And I'm still at it. But I went away for

(15:19):
a while because I blew fuses as a young man,
because the setup was so unfair and so gross that
you know, it didn't work for me, and I began
to medicate myself too, you know. So I had a
lot of stuff I had to deal with. But when
I first got to New York, I checked into the
Alvin Hotel where Prais had lived, and Prais died there.

(15:42):
And that's too young, correct, And that's too young, Yes,
my hero. I've gone around the world in a plane,
but I've come back to Prais because he was the
poet of the music. That's why when you hear this
new record, don that we made it Prais's He came

(16:02):
and visited me, you know. And Pras died on March fifteenth,
nineteen fifty nine, I believe, and I just turned twenty one.
Whenever I turned twenty one. The chronology may elude me,
but I think I have some mystical notion that Pres said, Okay,

(16:24):
I'm leaving town, but let's see what you can do
with this stuff. So I have notions like that, not
illusions of grand shurt. I got that when I was
a little kid, but Phineas nipped that in the bud.
But anyway, I'm just I'm a lone man on the mountain,
as you know, and I'm trying to sing this song.

(16:46):
And I told Master Higgins when he came up at
that time in two thousand, that I was getting ready
to go back into the forest. You know, I've been
in Big Sur for a decade or more. And he said, well,
I said, nobody cares about this music, and he said,
fuck them, we care. It was such a strong rebuke.

(17:07):
And Master Higgins was always He's very special, as I
just told you, and everybody wanted Billy to play with him.
You know, you know that Recordly Morgan made Sidewinder, Well,
he and Billy was on that record. Along with Barry Harris,
and I think Higgins told me something also almost had

(17:29):
a profound effect on me, like my great great grandmother.
It was like they were up in Harlem looking for
the man because they needed their medicine and they were
in bad shape, and they went to every bar in
Harlem and Sidewinder was playing on the box everywhere. It
was the fuel. It was lifting up the The whole

(17:51):
darm of the planet was being held up by that song.
So what happened was that they couldn't find the man.
He wasn't in any bar. And they finally found him
and he was sitting there very areadype, you know, with
his vaunts and stuff, and they said we need our mens,

(18:12):
and he said, They said, but we're two dollars short.
And he looked at them and he said, I'm sorry,
I can't help you guys, you know. And after these
guys it lit up the planet with Sideline. He can't
help them, and you know, so there's a lot of injustice,

(18:35):
you know, personal that not to mention the foulness of
man's inhumanity to the man and throwing rocks at each
other for thousands of years, and this stuff has been
bothering me lately, and I've got to shake it off
because this morning it hit me real hard. You know.
I have friends all around the world, and folks aren't

(18:58):
being treated right, you know, and these giant politicians they've
pad their pockets and stuff. But we need sages to
help humanity, you know. So it's so back to my song.
I'm making this music that the heel of planet. So
I'm and I keep coming up short, you know, and

(19:21):
it's troubling to my nervous system to be kind candid
with you. I can't tell you something, Charles Sure.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
I heard you play for the first time in the
mid sixties. I saw you play live, oh you fourteen fifteen,
and your music impacted my life so tremendously. So you
may not see the full impact. Yeah, yeah, I know.

(19:49):
Maybe the whole society didn't change, but on a personal level,
just the tone of your instrument. That's why the tone
of your instrument is one of the constants in my life,
you know, in my adult life, and it has such
soothing and healing properties. You may not see that that

(20:13):
part of it that may not turn up at a concert,
that certainly won't turn up in a newspaper, but enter
joy and peacefulness from that. And I'm just one person.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
Man.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
I know you sold a million copies of forest Flower.

Speaker 4 (20:30):
Thank you. I appreciate that. I think I'm probably here
because of you, because the whole recording industry was run
like a plantation system as far as I could see
in my lifetime early on.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
We'll be right back with more from Charles Lloyd after
the break. We're back with Charles Lloyd in conversation with
Don was and me.

Speaker 4 (21:02):
Well, the thing is that I was reading something the
other day and it told me that JA Music sells
two of the records sales. I don't want to believe that.
Accept that. It's kind of like I would wonder why
people don't vote to have somebody who could have more

(21:23):
caring at least because it's it's all corrupt. But what
I'm saying is that it hurts me. You're gonna have
to edit this because I'm sure not much of it's useful.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
But it's beautiful, man, It's like a solo. Well you did, ah, The.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Thing is beautiful.

Speaker 4 (21:43):
The thing is that I'm troubled by the condition of
the condition. And you know, Dorothy going down south with
my cousin Selene, and they going back there. It's a
funny thing Dorothy told me. When she and my cousin
went to the archives or where the record County Hall

(22:03):
where the records are kept, they said they want to
look into the records, and oh they're here, you know, yeah,
because they knew they were dirty, and they said, oh,
they've come to see the records. And so she looked
up Sally Sunflower, White Cloud and all these indigenous folks
that I have some blood with, and I love all people.

(22:31):
You know. When I came out here to Cali, I
was about to tell you about my USC experience, and
I got upset with myself. The other day at some
of my research. There's this guy named Rufus von Kleinschmidt
who was the He had been a president of USC,

(22:52):
I think from twenty one to forty six or somewhere
in the twenty fourth and he now when I went
to SC I started in fifty six and there was
a genius in the dorm. His name was Milton Oldham
and he was from Asbury Park, New Jersey, and he

(23:12):
was so brilliant. He was like lit up. You know,
it's a little guy, you know, about five feet two
or three. But he was like a light bulb, you know,
and he would do everybody's homework and help everybody in
the dorm. I got to the dorm Anias Hall in
the summer of fifty six because I was run out

(23:34):
of town. I was playing in West Memphis with Willie Mitchell,
and those girls liked us a lot. It was a
white dance hall called Danny's, and we'd have to run
back across the bridge and Willie's Pontiac car whatever it
was doing one hundred and twenty whatever it would do,

(23:55):
because we were always being chased and stuff, you know.
And my stepfather sold cars and in the black part
of the dealership, you know, he would get referred girls
and stuff, and you take care of the guys, you know,
with some change, you know. And somebody called him from
the police station and said they're coming to rest your

(24:17):
son tomorrow night, you know, because they've been pooling around
with those girls. And so when when he goes to
work tomorrow night, just want to let you know he's
on the list, which point my mother said, no, he's not.
And my stepfather also worked on the railroad, pulling forward

(24:39):
this stuff, so he put me in a first class
drawing room, a on the plane, on the on the train,
and took me across the country. That's how you ended
up it in La I got there in the summer.
I was supposed to start in the in the ball
but when I got there, i'd all had a lot

(25:01):
of solicitations from fraternities offering me to take residents there
for summer because they would collect bread. You know, they
have some tenants in the house, you know, till the
boys get back. So and then I told some guys
in the dorm that all those returnities had been trying
to send me solicitations. They laughed. I didn't quite understand.

(25:29):
When I checked into the dorm, it was summertime. There
were no people of color there. So what they did
was they put me with a Hawaiian you did, Ken Purdle,
and his mother was Hawaii and his father was a
Howlly from England or something. You know. This guy later
committed suicide. He joined one of those fraternities. But what
happened was it backfired on him because he couldn't go

(25:54):
fully with the program. And so when you.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
You couldn't shake not being fully white, you couldn't shake
not being fully white.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
And somewhere in there because it was a very racist
time in the fifties. It still is, you know, it
was so overt. Then we're getting back to vun Kleinschmidt,
Rufus vun Clinschmidt. Whenever I've told people about him, so
you have to be careful because there's some stuff out
there protecting him. No one has ever taken that in

(26:24):
an interview for me, and I often wondered why, so
I said, I'm going to look up. I don't know
why I didn't do it. Earlier. Milton Oldham was in
a club called the Squires and they and they're going
to have a parade for the alumni, and so the
alumni rufus unclimbed and has to preview the parade to

(26:46):
see how's going. And when he saw Milton in the parade,
he said, no, can't happen. So the alumni, we don't.
And then I came to find out that he was
a Nazi and he'd gone over there and fraternized with
Hitling all those guys and stuff and during and he
denied it and kind of liked that, but and so

(27:07):
somehow somebody would bring it up and he would, so, yeah,
we're gonna do something about that. Never did anything about anything.
And so the reason I'm telling you this now you
don't have to use this for the interview, but somebody
in has to know what's going on. And so I'm
studying all this stuff. And then lo and behold, I

(27:29):
read I did a lot of research that they've taken
his name. He af After he was the president for
those ten twenty years, he became what do you call
it in lawyer? Lawyer and they call it a counsel.
He's upstairs, he's controlling the dance, you know. So he

(27:50):
wouldn't let Milton. He said, no, Milton, can't. Can't march,
you know, with the Squires. And that was very hurtful
because Milton was a pure soul and he wasn't even
tainted by I don't think he even growing up in
Ashbury Park, that's different than growing up in Memphis. I
don't think he was. He was. I don't think he

(28:12):
even knew that he was black, you know, he was.
He was so well modulated, you know, I know. So
what I'm getting at is that he was a special
guy man, and we used to hang out and dorm
in these rooms and stuff, you know, and and we
would always end up in Milton's room because he was
he was a like magnet, you know, he was he

(28:35):
was keeping the dharma, upholding the dharma like Preis and
Bird and Train and all of that, you know. So
they just said, I keep looking, and I find out
recent just recently, USC has taken his name off of
a building and they put a Native American guy's name

(28:55):
on there too. Late. But anyway, pardon that, but stuff
has been bothering me lately. I'm checking it out. But
then I'm here. I am trying to sing a song
about tenderness. I am a tender worry. I'm not going
to lie to anybody, you know, because but tenderness, you know,

(29:19):
that takes me back to Preis, because and then Preis
was messed up in the arm in dB blues, the
detension barriers blues and stuff, you know, and it's light.
When will it end? When will it quit? The beautiful
thing I'm trying to say to you, Dahn, is that
I went away. I left Atlantic. They blackballed me. I
couldn't record with anyone else before anyone else because they

(29:41):
said I still owe them records and anyway. But I
came out here. I made my getaway. Beginner's changed, not
nothing serious, but I did by home in Malibu Colony,
which was interested in sixty nine. When I left, he

(30:03):
left Atlantic, and I left New York in the music
industry because I I had blown too many fuses and
I had left Atlantic. I wouldn't give them any more records.
They went from giving. At one point, I wanted to
move up to Woodstock with Bob Dylan was a neighbor
in the village, and he moved up to Woodstock and

(30:25):
Robbie Robinson the band. Those guys were friends and fans
and all of that. And so I'd go up and
hang out with Robbie and stay at his house, and
he'd take me over to Dylan's place. And the thing
is that, so Dylan comes up to me. We were
hanging out at Grossman's house. Dylan comes up to me

(30:46):
and said, Robbie, say you moving out to the West Coast.
And I said, well yeah, And he said, well don't
do that. That place is going to fall into the ocean.
And I said, well, Bob, you've written some nice lyrics,
but so be it. You know, I've got to do
it my way. Then one day I'm at my house

(31:07):
on the beach and I look out there and there's
the band standing almost near my house taking a photo,
you know. So I went out and saw leave on
and robbing all the guys and Rick and stuff. So
I said, what's going on, guys, And they said, well,
Bob just brought us out here. I said, oh, the
same guy who told me don't move out here because it's,

(31:29):
you know, too file of the village. No, that's a
different story. So I always followed my own bells, and
that leads me to what I just slipped it said
to When I moved to where Dorothy and I live
now in Martacito, I said to the guys, I said,
I'm going to buy this piece of land out here.

(31:50):
You know this guy. They said, you don't want to
move out there's too far out the village. I said, well,
I used to play with Holland Woolf and Junior Park
and they used to sing, I'm gonna move wall on
the outskirts of town. Don't want nobody coming out there
messing around. So I knew what was good for me.
The iceman, the mailman, you know. So anyway, now, everybody

(32:13):
wants to live out there, you know, and the girl
who seriously swaps houses and stuff and different people move,
they all move near me. And Dorothy's made a beautiful
world for me there, and I do want to be
able to live in my lifetime with my creativity. And
this music is ten cents of dance. Don't get me wrong.

(32:34):
It's it's but it's shiny, but it's it doesn't They
just raised my insurance thirty percent and this and that,
you know, back in so the inflation or whatever, inflation
blues or whatever. So I just thought wow. But anyway,
so what happened was a friend, Steve Cloud, who was

(32:58):
managing Keith Jarrett, called me and said, man, you see
him wants you to come over there. Because I was
in Big Sir, and I wasn't recording or even interested.
He said, man, you see him really wants you. So
I said, well, what does that mean? He said, means
that you'll get a straight count, but it'll be the
slow burn. It won't be you know, the big program.

(33:20):
So I said, well, if it's honest and straight. So
I went with that, and but I was always I
wrote a lot of music and I needed to have
my children, my masters, so to say. And we could
never work that out with Manfred. And although it was

(33:43):
supposed to have been an enlightened situation, it didn't get
enlightened enough for me, and so we had we had problems,
and also he would I got to the point where
with Higgins and the records, I was Dorothy and I
were producing all the records after the first ones, and

(34:04):
we made a record Fish out of Water. It was
the first one with Manfred, and they told me he
was a strange guy. So I said, well, I'm just
going to do my music, and I played about five
pieces and he pushed the talk button and said, don't
you want to come in and hear something? So I
went into the studio and I had tears because what
I had heard in my mind's here. It was on

(34:26):
the tape and there's a guy named jan Eric Kungshag
I think was his name, Norwegian or yeah, I think
a Norwegian guy, and he had captured it because before
it was always you know, engineers were some some I
wasn't getting close enough to the music, so that that

(34:47):
touched me very much. And if you ever listen to
that record, Fish out of Water, you can you can
hear every instrument clearly, and the whole thing is is
what I'm trying to get at. It's all a union,
you know. It's it's an amalgam of spirits on a
human journey. And that's what we were doing. But we

(35:08):
could gets only so far. Then here you come along,
and you I have a friend in New York, Nate Chennon.
He's a journalist, and he said, you know, Don Was
told me you could bust his story. He said, Don

(35:31):
Was told me that when he takes over Blue Note,
the first artist he wants to sign is Charles Lloyd.
And then you came up with flowers and sweets and stuff,
you know, and a pure heart. But by this time
I was fragile, and it's hard to believe what anyone says,

(35:54):
you know, because we live in our own world and
we don't bother people and make sure you leave us alone.
You know. Finally, what didn't work in America finally works
with you because you have this big years and appreciate
and big heart, and you didn't do me wrong. And
you came and you let me keep my children, and

(36:20):
you in it for the music and you wanted to
see the best of that, and that's why we drive
down here because I'm at a different stage where I'm
not ready to go anywhere now because now they got
me in the medical clinics and I got medical problems,
and you know, I didn't have that stuff before, never,

(36:43):
and I haven't done non prescription drugs in many, many decades.
So I didn't know why me. But you know, I
guess chronology is some strange stuff. I haven't seen anybody
get out of here live yet. It's something that I'm
interested in, but I haven't seen anybody pull it off.
You know. I did learn to swim underwater. I was

(37:05):
a junior lifeguard. I'm at Jamal was really touched by
that because Jamille Nassa played bass with him and he's
from Memphis, and he told him and he grew up
at Hineas and he told him all about my junior
lifeguard stuff. But I would practice swimming underwater, and I'm
trying to learn how to breathe. It's a concept, but

(37:28):
it's not a reality. But I keep working on it,
and I almost pulled it off sometimes where I could.
I thought I was staying under for a long long time,
and I went to Toledo in Ohio and I won
diving contests and stuff like that. I told you about Easel.

(37:52):
You know, there was this guy in my neighborhood. We
could only go to the swimming pool two or three
months in the summer because they said we got to
give him that at least, you know, stuff, And they
had their pools all year round. And we'd go to
Mississippi out of Memphis and there was clear water, you know,
and the grand stuff for the other tribe. And so

(38:17):
I thought this was pretty out there. But so we
couldn't wait for the pool open. And my mother was
very wise. That was earlier property. When I was eight
or nine, she bought a house. She bought some lots
across the street from the Orange Mound playground, so I

(38:37):
had access, you know, and it was beautiful. I had
almost a little world. My grandfather was a wise guy,
and he had sixteen hundred acres in Mississippi, and so
he knew Faulkner and all that stuff. And I would
go through his orchards and all of that, you know.
But what I'm getting at this really touching is that

(38:57):
we couldn't wait for the pool open. So somebody knew
how to get up under the wire fence in the back.
And so we would go and we would swim at night,
you know, because they got the water in there, but
they're not gonna open it for a week or two.
So we would go every night and swim. But Ezil
went up on the diving board, the high board, and
h one night we just couldn't wait, and he wanted

(39:20):
to do a two and a half, you know, and
so he could do a one and a half, but
he wanted to make sure he could do a two
and a half, and he went up on the board
and uh, there was no water in the pool. And
so uh, Ezell didn't come back the same. He stayed
with us, but he was always kind of laughing and
grinning like he knew what was happening. And in another way,

(39:43):
and I walked to school past his house through a
field every day, but he'd just be out there grinning
at us all the time. That kind of hurt me
a lot. You know. If the facilities had been as
they should be available, we wouldn't have had to be
such Wow guys. You know, one last thing I'd tell

(40:05):
you about Higgins and Ornette because they were at this session,
So at this jam session I told you about. Higgins
told me that he and Don Cherrywood and Watts playing
stickball out in the street. I would tell you this Don,
So this is really good to know. And they were

(40:27):
young musicians, you know, and they grew up in LA
and they heard this wow sound coming from several blocks away,
and they dropped his sticks and ball and started running
to the sound. And they didn't know what it was,
but it was compelling. And when they got there, it

(40:49):
was Arnett in the music store trying not to read.
So that was the start of them, because Ornett he
it was the call. They heard it, you know, and
they ran to it, you know. And so Ornette told
me once he said, man, if you get four guys
and they can leave in an ideal, he said, you can.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
I don't.

Speaker 4 (41:14):
He didn't say changed the world, but he said you can.
You can achieve a lot. I don't know how he
how he put it, because he and I would have
all these discussions and such. But I've always loved that
story that Higgins told me about that.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
What was it like to play with him?

Speaker 4 (41:34):
Play with with Arnett or Higgins?

Speaker 3 (41:36):
Arnett?

Speaker 4 (41:37):
This was great, man. See, as he said to me,
you can really play the saxophone, but that doesn't have
a lot to do with music. He had his own cosmology.
He he could he could do the traditional thing. He'd
heard bird, he'd gone through that. But he was from
Texas Fort Worth and he'd play with those rhythm and

(41:58):
blues bands too. And the guys take his horn and
break it and beat him up and stuff on the road.
But he never stopped either, you know, he just kept
kept going. And Phineas Newborn was our js bock in Memphis,
and he had me to learn all the standards and
the changes and the harmonic modulations and and and how

(42:20):
do you call it a play Cherokee and b Flatin? Now,
let's play it in a Let's play it in e
And George Coma was like a Santini kind of guy,
you know, sergeant major on your case, you know. So
we had a serious school there in Memphis. And uh
and Brooker Little was my best friend in high school.

(42:41):
And he's the one when I first got to New York.
I did tell you that. He said, where are you staying?
I told you that. So anyway, he weren't that basics
weren't the tightest, but he had his cosmology. And as
I said, he was playing the etymology of what is
this thing called? If he wasn't playing the changes, you know,
And so he had moved into harmolodics, as he called it,

(43:04):
and he was playing the sound of the music, you know.
And so we would argue, you know, and he said, well,
you know you're not you know, you're not telling the story,
you know, singing the song. And I said, well, but
you you can't read or something, you know. He was
a little shaky there, you know, and he said, well,

(43:26):
I'll fix him. He can't. You walked over to my house.
He had a STUDI Baker car. Don't know if you
ever remember that they were made in the fifties where
the front in the back you can't tell which is which.
And I remember that we were at a jam session
at the Little Chris Club over by Wrigley Field here
in la and Watts and we would go to these
jam sessions and we would come out we'd be so

(43:48):
high from the music that Ornett was taking us home
in his car. But because you can't tell which is
the front and which is the back, he backed up
and backed over his horn. And because we were high
from the music, and the relative kind of recedes and
it's no longer what you think it is. It's not solid,

(44:11):
you know, the relative. It's not like the absolute. You know.
The absolute is we're all spirits on a human journey.
And when you play this indigenous art form, something happens
that takes you to another place where you don't have
any limitations like the relative. And so that's what draws

(44:34):
us to this music. It's the music of freedom and wonder.
So by him backing over his alto and he was
working day job down at Bullocks or something, driving an elevator,
you know, it's like the Arment store one of downtown.
Yeah it was wasn't Wilson and knows downtown, main part
of downtown. But he would go down and park the

(44:54):
freight elevator in the basement in practice, you know. So
he you know what you have to do because you
love the music so much, you know. And I'm drunk
with that, you know. It's like Duke Allenton told my mother,
you know, she said he wants to be a musician
so bad, you know, And Johnny Hodges said well, and

(45:14):
Duke said well no, no, no, no no, And they
both said no. When my mother said, he wants to
be a musician, and they said no, And so my
mother said why, He said, this life is too hard.
Make that boy be a doctor, lawyer or Indian chief,
none of this stuff, you know. And so but by
this time I'm bit by the cobra. So there's nothing

(45:35):
I could do but play the music. Years later, as
nine or ten or something like that, years later, in
my mid twenties with the band with Keith Jarret and
Jack de Jenett and Cecil McBee, we were in on
tee and we kind of tore the place up and

(45:56):
and Duke said, well, if that guy keeps stirring his suit,
one day he's going to have something. But what he
didn't understand I was the guy he was trying to
say from doing this, you know. But I was yond saving,
you know. Now, had I been a doctor, a lawyer
in the chief, I wouldn't have met Dorothy, and we
wouldn't we we wouldn't be on our path together, you know.

(46:19):
So it's like who you gonna serve? You know. So
in that we we were we were practicing, playing all
that stuff. I always loved his cosmology though, and you know,
he could write these tunes and they're beautiful man. And
so one day we had a particular argument. He always

(46:40):
was trying to tell me the chord can't resolve and
stuff like that, you know. So we had five our
phone conversations and we were just so deep off into.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
The chord can't resolve.

Speaker 4 (46:51):
Yeah, he didn't believe in that. So anyway, he he
was trying to explain to me why a chord can't resolve,
you know. Anyway, so he just takes Stanley Crouch. You
would laugh, and he'd say to me, man, you know,
or that talks all that stuff, he said, but when
he starts playing that music, he said, it makes you cry.

(47:13):
And you can hear children on the playground playing. You know,
he can take you right to a state, you know,
lonely woman and all that stuff. And so this particular
day he walks over to my house and he takes
out his horn. We must have serious arguments or something
around that period. He takes out his horn and he

(47:35):
plays the lowest note B flat on the horn, and
the next note he played was the highest note on
the horn, F and he chromatically brought them together like that.
But he's like, like, what happened to Cherry and Billy Higgins.
He squashed the hole of the molecule, molecular structure. So

(47:57):
at that point you understand what I say. He did
lowest note, highest note, and then you come up the
next lowest note, the next lowest high note, and he
did it all in a nanosecond. And I never heard
one to do that in my life. At which point
I bowed down and we never had another argument. Wow,
because I wasn't about to argue with somebody who can. Uh.
It's kind of like bird discovered the Adam and train

(48:19):
smashed it. It was kind of we had a conversation
like that.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
You know.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
Yeah, did you spend time with Eric Dolphie?

Speaker 4 (48:27):
I did. Now. Eric Dolphin is an interesting guy. He
he mastered the saxophone in fluting, all the clarinets and stuff.
There's a guy named Buddy Collette who was the mentor
to first Charlie Mingus, Eric Dolphie, myself, James Newton. He
he a lot of people that I don't even know,

(48:50):
and so he helped us all. And Buddy Collette was
he was a mentor. He told Mingus used to play
cello and the little bull legged kid be walking by
his house. He said, if you get a bass, I'll
put you in the band. Yeah, okay, So he gets
the bass, and then with Eric, he began to teach

(49:12):
Eric and get him up because seemed Buddy Kleg is
the first guy who could got in the studios because
he could play all the flutes and clarinets and would win.
And so the white guys in the studio in those days,
some of them wanted to be fair and they wanted
to have some brothers in there. You know, it was
kind of lonely in there because they they had heard

(49:33):
that's the young and bird and Lady Day and all that.
So they got Buddy in there. But the thing is
that Eric, he was sent Eric to different teachers, and
Eric got so off into the etymology of the of
the thing of the mechanics of mastering the instruments. The

(49:54):
Buddy told him one day, okay, no more, that's it.
No more studying with all these esoteric masters. That's it.
And so you know, yeah, we played in Gerald Wilson's
big band together two alto's, Harold An Walter Bent and
I don't remember who's playing baritone. Elma Hope was out
here for a time. He played in that group with us. Wow,

(50:16):
and he he was he came out to La from
New York. Uh, that's what o'nett said to me. He said, Man,
you know, I'm tired of his playing these gigs. He said,
I write all this music. He said. I could be
like Beto and I could be home with my woman,
you know, having a good time, I don't you know,
And down at Sephanie Hall they could be playing my music.

(50:38):
And sure enough, one time he was playing the five
spot and Leonard Beernstein jumped up on the stage and
hugged him, you know, told him how beautiful his music was.
Now you think you think about that. If Ornett had
jumped up on the stage at Philharmonic Hall or somewhere
and and told Lynny he didn't play Vogler that well tonight,

(50:59):
or told him he did a good job, he'd probably
been arrested. You know. It's kind of like that stuff
over in Israel or or October sixth the brothers had
gone in there with some sheddies and stuff. Them brothers
have all been mowed down, but instead they switched the
game around. So when you see too much stuff like that,
it it hurts. And uh, fair play or something you know,

(51:22):
it's not it's not it's not uh in the game.
So when I come out of the house, I wear
my beanie cap and my jacket and stuff so I
can be warm, just in case Caesar sends the gendarmes
down to mess with us, you know. And the weird
it's weird, the things that a brother has to think about,
you know. It's uh, that's why I live like I do.

(51:46):
You know, I live quiet. The wolf's at the door,
you know, and you try to do the best you
can for me. But uh, I didn't know that my
lifestyle would be so expensive. It's it's it's kind of
expensive to live simply, you know. And that's the way
we live with with no neighbors and and acreage. You know.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
After this break, we're back with the rest of our
conversation with Charles Lloyd. Here's the rest of the conversation
between down was Charles Lloyd and myself.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Can you talk a little bit about your friendship with
Booker Little.

Speaker 4 (52:26):
Yeah, Booker little uh he he and I met at
about thirteen or fourteen. Booker first of all the creators.
That's still the thing about God. You know, there's something
beautiful about taking care of his children. You know, if
I wonder though, why the game is still rigged. But

(52:49):
so I get to New York and it's a Monday
night and Booker is playing down in bird Land and
I was staying across the street to Alvin Hotel, and
I went down. I said, Booker, I'm here. He said,
where are you staying. I said, I'm staying to Alvin.
He said, no, you're not. You're coming home with me.
So he was twenty two, and he took me home
with him, and I was ready to jump into the

(53:12):
fast lane because I'm in Mecca now, in Apple, you know.
And he said, no, it's not about that, It's about character.
What I came to find out was that he was
a realized soul. He left a few months several months
later at twenty three, and he took me apart because

(53:32):
in high school we would go to the library and
listen to bar talk string quartets and stuff, and discuss music.
Thing about bar talk is that he would take his
folk themes and he would put Bibonacci kind of number
of stuff they had gotten from Egypt, and he would
make these formulations and it was very beautiful what he

(53:53):
was doing, and that's what I do. I take my
folk songs, you know. And if you listen to my
new record, what's my new record call? I almost say
which way is East? But that's not the new record,
that's the one with Higgins. The sky will still be
there tomorrow. We may not be there tomorrow, but the
sky will be And I'm trying to so Booker. He

(54:15):
straightened me out, and he told me about character, and
he was an enlightened soul. And I have not met
anyone in this music as advanced as he was spiritually.
And he set me on the path. I asked some detours.
Booker left at twenty three. He came home at Christmas time.

(54:36):
He was a year ahead of me in school, and
he's two weeks younger than me. April second would be
his birthday. We had to make out we make a
tribute to him every year. So he came home from
school at eighteen. We were both eighteen, and Clifford Brown
had died, and Clifford was his hero, and he was
killed in a car accident playing with Max Roach on

(54:59):
the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Booker was crying. We were hanging
out and he said, you know, cliff is gone, and
Clifford was twenty five, and Booker said, why couldn't it
have been me? He was eighteen, So you don't know,
no young people ready to sacrifice or to put themselves
in harms way like that to do and fure enough.

(55:22):
Booker left at twenty three, but the creator had prepared him.
He was advanced. He had a sister, Vera, a little
who was an opera singer. Dorothy and I have a
picture from our world travels. We have a picture with
Beerer with the Pope. Yeah. I mean, so he comes
from some deep stuff, and all of our stuff is
very deep. The music, you know, the stuff I'm talking about,

(55:44):
praise and bird and all of that. You know. It's
like like I wanted to Mary lady day and you know,
give her the long driveway and stuff, you know, And
you know, because she was singing just to me. So
I put my radio on the pillow and I'd listened
late at night. You know, I could hear, you know.
Booker also had Cohen Hawkins Colman Hawkins hid who was

(56:07):
a master of modernity and the tenor saxophone, and he
knew his harmonies. He also played cello and and he
commissioned Booker to write music for an architect for him.
The day they were in the recording studio, that was
the day Booker left town. And everybody was looking for

(56:27):
the music and looking for Booker. And I knew his lady, Matil,
and to this day I saw the music on the piano,
but the music has never been found, you know. And
but he did write it. He also wrote the music
for trains, Africa Brass and all the all the brass,

(56:48):
and he he he did a beautiful thing. Man, if
you haven't listened to Africa Brass, check it out the
brass they're doing Booker, Booker taught him how to do that.
You know. There was a guy named Bob Norton was
a French horn player and he was on that too,
But all the all of so Booker, Booker, he was

(57:10):
very modern, very very special. He didn't have a big
love Ornett though, and I was hoping that he'd lived
long enough that we could have bridged that gap. But
Booker was he was, I mean, you know, he took Eric.
Of course, Eric was was very schooled and Booker was

(57:34):
very schooled. But Booker also was a wise man. And
his music, that stuff he did out front on candid
with with another friend of my California, Don Friedman, great pianists,
and he's on that record. I was so happy to

(57:55):
see and Eric Dolphins on their record. I was happy
to see Memphis and Cali all mixed up in there together.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
You know, did you get what he said when he
said it's all about it's about character. Did you get
it right away?

Speaker 4 (58:09):
No, what happened was that I heard it. But when
I moved out here, I started studying Vedanta and that's
Shri Rama Krishna. And he is one of the last
guys who came through here with the goods. And he
was born eighteen thirty eight. He lived fifty years, so
he left town in eighteen eighty eight. But he made

(58:29):
twelve guys saw me. Ivivakonando was his main cat that
he made. He made all these guys. And he was
so called illiterate in India, but he had the sacred tablets inside,
so he'd start. We were living in Bigxur and I
got deep off into Vedanta because I was studying the
wisdom of the ancients because I'm not going to go
in the public way anymore and play. And I was

(58:52):
playing outside the nature of the giant redwoods, and these
beautiful clouds who come over and say hello to me,
and the sun would break through, and I had all
these birds and animals and mountain lions and deer and
stuff would come around our property there. So I came
down to Santa Barber to the Vedanta bookstore, and I

(59:13):
was asking some deep questions about the infinite and this
young nun said, well, I don't know. I don't know
about that. I don't know how to answer that. And
then suddenly an old nun came out of the back
of the bookstore and she said, do you meditate? And

(59:36):
I said yes, I've been meditating for twenty thirty years.
She said, has it changed your character? And there was Booker.
It hit me, man, so it all Booker has been
guiding me all this time. And when she says it
changed your character, it was like playing this music the

(01:00:01):
lifestyle and how it's set up in the setup of
the world and you playing in beer taverns. You know.
It's it's kind of a different mill year, you know.
And so I had to get off the bus, you know,
and go into the woods and to refine myself because
Booker had laid it on me. It's not about the

(01:00:23):
fast lane, it's about character. Booker left at twenty three,
and when I stayed with him, he was always cautioning me.
You know, I was in a marriage at that time
that didn't work out. And when it didn't work out,
Dorothy and I admit, but she had moved to Europe

(01:00:44):
because she didn't want to be a part of breaking
up some family or so. And when she heard I
was gotten a divorce, she came back and we've been
together ever since, you know. So it's like, but she
also knows more cosmology about all this stuff than me.
She knows that we lived in other lives together, you know,

(01:01:04):
And you can get her a few to talk about
that stuff. She's wise, you know, and Booker and so
what I'm getting at is it took me a long
time to straighten up and fly right, you know, And
I'm so thrilled that his really beautiful thing. A lot
of guys can play a lot of stuff, you know.

(01:01:25):
But what I'm trying to do is sing a song
and tell a story. And when when the alignment is right,
the work on my character, it enhances the beauty of
my sound because the old guy has told me those
notes don't mean anything unless you have a beautiful sound.
So I'm all my life working on my sound, you know.

(01:01:46):
And then the beautiful thing about Buddy Collette, he said
to me, I know you want to play. I started
teaching school. When I graduated mess C, I didn't have
any bread or anything. And all my friends had gone
to New York or that, and Higgins and Scott and
Cherry and Charlie and they all left. So I was
out here in California and another pineapple would hit me

(01:02:08):
on the head or something, and I wasn't in the sleepwalking,
so I couldn't wait to get back to New York.
But the thing is that Lo and Behold, you know,
I go east, I come back west, you know, go east,
So I go all around the globe, you know. But
I have a nest now, and I have a mate
that's with me and cares about what we're doing, and

(01:02:30):
so we live spiritual life and it's quiet and simple.
And then I had a notion about three years ago
before COVID hit, that I wanted still wanted to change
the world with the beauty of music, and Lo and Behold,
COVID came in and so it took us three years
to make this record, and we finally I got the

(01:02:54):
right people to make it the right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
The response has been incredible. Have you read all the
articles from me?

Speaker 4 (01:03:01):
I try not to read all that stuff. You know why,
because when you tell me it's gone triple platinum, I'll
believe you. You know, but right now it's still ten
cents of dance, and you you.

Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
Know that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:15):
I don't know, well, I know, but I'm trying to
tell you that the man is knocking, the wolf is
knocking at the door, and we we love our simple retreat,
and I need you to pick up the tempo and
find some way that I can get that thing through
the under the See what happened to me in the sixties.
We had to breakthrough because I had played Monterey Jazz Festival,

(01:03:37):
and then I came into San Francisco to play a
club called El Matador, and then there was a group
up the street called the Committee, which was like Belushi
and those guys what were they called in Chicago City
on second So they were like that, and these guys said, man,
we don't even listen to jazz, we don't even like it,
But man, we come back to hear you guys every
night after we close our theater down there at their

(01:03:59):
own theater up up on Broadway, and the club was
on Broadway. And this one of the guys, Morgan Upton,
he said, you know, men, there's this place to fill morning.
There's two thousand kids over the laying on the floor
listening to music. I think you should go there and
play one Sunday. I said, who plays there? He said
Muddy Waters And I said, oh, McKinley, Morganfield, I know

(01:04:22):
those guys, you know, and so Chuck Berry and stuff,
you know. And so he took me over there and
I was supposed to play for a half hour and
hour and a half. They wouldn't let us off the stage.
So Graham started booking its bill Graham and and you know,
then that circuit opened up for me. And it's kind
of like FM radio became free form. You know. They

(01:04:48):
play Grateful Dead, and they played me and Grateful Dad
was walking around with dream Weaver. They loved that record,
you know. And then they are all those bands in
San Francisco wanted to be on the same shows with us.
Of course, all those guys are billionaires now and I'm
still out here trying to get the cart working, you know,
get my car on the shop.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Did you want to lean into the success of forest
Flower and no?

Speaker 4 (01:05:14):
Hold success? That's dangerous stuff, you know. I love the music.
I was told if I would play forest Flower the
same way, with the same booring solo every night, they
could get me over. But I like to go exploring
every night because when you go exploring, you don't come
back the same you get. You find things you find,

(01:05:35):
not diamond mines of gold Man's. You find sandalwood forests
and stuff like that. So I'm not wired, probably for
being the media commands always at his best. I'm looking
for something else, and what I'm looking for is looking
for me. It is too late for me to change
my stripes, you know. I mean, look what Quincy did

(01:05:57):
he found? You know? He was always on the path,
you know. But you know Michael Jackson, all that stuff
he produced, you know, and then he fans you know,
some people. But I can only focus on nothing against
what he's doing. He's a wise man, you know, but

(01:06:20):
he's seen it all, you know. I think if you
stay over here too long, you might get burned or something.
And I haven't seen anybody, as I say, get out
of here alive yet. And the way we live it's
very beautiful, but it's almost like my what do you
call it? It's attributed to my spiritual life. I'll just
put it that way. And again, you asked me about

(01:06:42):
Booker Little. Booker Little was the most evolved soul that's
ever played this music, and he never Here's the thing
we come through. Here, we sing our song, nobody knows us,
and we're gone.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
Is it?

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
You know? I'm seventy two. I'm starting to see some
of my friends splitting. You're a few years older, you're
eighty six. Is it weird being like one of the
last guys standing from your era.

Speaker 4 (01:07:13):
Last of the Mohiggins. Yeah, it's I didn't plan on it,
you know. I never thought i'd be around this time
this long. But now the health issues that are hitting
me now, and I haven't finished my work, you know,

(01:07:33):
and uh, maybe this record that that you have, that
that you are so touched by, and it's it seems
to be speaking to people. We played up there in
the last festival we played and the people people went gaga,
you know. So I don't know what to say about

(01:07:54):
any of it. But I just told you what I've
learned to live with. We come through here, we sing
our song, nobody knows this's and we're gone. I have
to go down with the ship. I'm not prepared to
pick up soap and do some funny stuff. It's not
it's not in my DNA. And I got all that
mixed up genealogy in there too, And so there must

(01:08:17):
be a reason the create or brought me through here.
And Billy Higgins pulling my coat when I was getting
ready to pull back in two thousand, it uh, I
realized that that I must go down with the ship.
And so so be it. I suppose, you know, we

(01:08:37):
I suppose our blessing of living in Paradise with Dorothy
is it is a beautiful thing. So and I'm thankful,
and I'm trying to prepare myself to go out. I
remember we had a guru, our guru swam me Retationanda
from from Hini and he he was leaving town and

(01:09:05):
he was in the hospital and they had him hooked
up to all these wires and stuff, and he was
leaving and he was going into Mahasamadi and all of
a sudden, these doctors and stuff. They start pulling the
wires and start doing stuff. And he came down to
them and he said, what are you doing. They said, well,
we're trying to say if you keep you here, He said,

(01:09:27):
can't you see that I'm trying to leave, you know?
So a wise man. See, here's the thing. When you leave,
make sure you go out awake, because if you go
out conscious, you can make your matriculation to the other shore.

(01:09:47):
As I understand it from the wisdom of the ancients.
With modernity, you can go to the other shore without impediments.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
Even you mentioned all these great jasmine from Los Angeles.
I was thinking about a bass player from here who
passed not long ago, Henry Grimes's cious.

Speaker 4 (01:10:08):
If you he wasn't from here. I knew him in
New York. We played together a lot. I met him
in New York and he had an apartment up on
the West Side and we'd go up jam and play
all the time. And he played a lot of gigs
with me in New York in the early days. It
was a coterie of young musicians, Herbie Hancock and Ron
Carter and Tony Williams, Jack Pete Laroque. Yeah, I knew

(01:10:34):
Grimes He was a sweetheart. Yeah, And I also knew
him after he had had that, he came back out
here and was on scared row or something. I ran
into him later after he was being second coming, you know,
and he was very still, very sweet but quiet, you know. Yeah,

(01:10:55):
I knew him. Something I want to tell you about
Buddy Collette is that he was one of the guys
for the Underground Railroad. He would take people to another
kind of place, you know, meaning that he was playing
on Groucho Mark's show. Groucher liked him and they would
go to lunch and stuff together. And he said, one

(01:11:17):
day a guy came over to Groucher and said, Groucher,
you know a big boy, you know from studios and stuff.
He said, Groucher, where do you keep your money? Groucher said,
I keep it in treasuries and grout Buddy was. Buddy
told me the story and he said, well, doesn't pay
very much, does it. Groucher says, it does if you

(01:11:38):
have enough. So meaning that Buddy told me that, and
I always wanted to. I tried to dabble in investing
and stuff like that with a little chump change that
I've had, and it never went so far, but I'm
thinking about that now. With my little pennies and nickels dimes,

(01:12:01):
I just put them in treasuries and see if I
can get Dorothy's substraight. Now, but someday you need to
talk to her because she she did a film on me.
Did you ever see it? I didn't see Ers into Infinity.
Find it right, put it down in your phone. Errors
into Infinity. It's very very Booker's in there, everybody's in there. Yeah,

(01:12:27):
but it collects in there, you know. So people talk
to me about writing a book all the time. But
I watched her film in uh a big ears in Knoxville.
We played a concert with Jason Moran and Larry Grenadere's
such an Eric Harlan and they showed Dorothy's film and

(01:12:48):
it brought I was had tears all during the film
throughout it, and it's it's two hours of you can
get it on Amazon or something eras Into Infinity. It's
worth seeing. Yes, a lot of history.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
There is a question I'd like to ask, just because
you know, having grown up in South Los Angeles, myself
and I always heard about Central Avenue, being as you're
from Memphis and you had beal Street, and you were
out here in Central Avenue was still something of a
lot being alive.

Speaker 4 (01:13:18):
Towards the end of it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
Yeah, what was what was Central Avenue like? And how
did that compare to a place like Beal Street.

Speaker 4 (01:13:25):
I would go play these sessions. Uh, there was still
some remnants of it. I'll leave you with something really interesting.
Nat Cole was playing over the bird was Colman Hawkins
was would play over there too. Dig this Colman Hawkins
was living over there. And I don't know what that
area is called now. It's over by sc but it's

(01:13:46):
a little loftier up in the up up in the
Adams district over there by the little little leafy over there.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:13:54):
I guess the white folks would move further west or something.
But Colman was living in this excuse me, in this
room in house. You know, they had this big old mansions.
They turned him into rooms and stuff. And he would
come home at night from playing on Central Avenue, and
he had a chrystler and he'd leave his windows down
in his car because you know, it's hot in the

(01:14:16):
summer and so, and he have his horn on the
back seat and he go upstairs and go to bed.
So what do you think happened to his horn?

Speaker 1 (01:14:24):
Stolen?

Speaker 4 (01:14:25):
Never? Never? No, because that's Colemenhawkins and he's fuel in
the universe. And the pimps and the drug dealers. No,
don't mess with that horn because he's a holy man.
His horn was never tampered with. That's that's deep to me. Man.
You know, people know some places, some things you don't

(01:14:47):
mess with. You know. You know, it's like, don't put
this stuff on the air because it's not presentable, and
and the stuff that I'm talking about, uh, you know,
it's it's my life and nobody's interested in it. And
h but what I've seen, what I've seen, and what

(01:15:08):
I understand from the situation, I know what's going on,
but I can't say what's going on because those who
say don't those who know don't say, and those who
say don't know. But I know what's happening. I know
what time it is. That's why I lived quietly away
from the maddening crowd. And I don't bother nobody, and

(01:15:29):
I expect the same.

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
You talk about. You guys just worked together.

Speaker 4 (01:15:35):
He was a freedom fighter from Hungary and he came
over here and I met him when I first joined Chico,
Chico had him in the band for a couple of weeks,
but Chico fired him and got some guy, journeyman guitar
player from Philadelphia to come. And so when Chico started

(01:15:59):
up again, I was gonna leave because he was playing straight.
I had some good, good arrangement stuff, but I had
I was, I had this be in my bonnet to uh,
to light the thing up I wanted. I had to
play this indigenous art for him how it was given
to me. And he said, no, you can stay, Please stay.

(01:16:21):
He said, let's organize the band around what you want
to do. We made those records passing through Man from
two worlds, different stuff anyway, and he said, who you
wanted the band? I said, the first guy we're going
to get is that guitar player you fired.

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:16:35):
It was a good boar. And I brought Albert Stinson then,
who grew up with Bobby Hutchison over in Pasadena. So
I got those guys and uh, and I brought a
guy out from Memphis, Garnet Brown, a trombone player who
played with us for a while. Yeah and yeah, it
was like that, what was your question? He was great,

(01:16:57):
He was a freedom fighter. He was out there in
the streets in Hungary. Came over here with a broken heart.
They lived in a camp somewhere, he told me. Came
around the corner and there was his fiance and the
mud with some other guy. And he never healed from that,
and he he was devoted to the music. But later
on fast laying got him out here, you know. But

(01:17:18):
the beautiful thing is, we like fast cars. We used
to raise Porsches and Ferraris and stuff and went and
we weren't no longer together. But he was living out here,
and I'd moved back to here when I moved to
Malibu in sixty nine. And uh, there used to be
a freight company called Flying Tiger, and you could fly
your car out from New York for three hundred dollars.

(01:17:39):
So I would take my car out to La Guardio
Kennedy wherever it was, and they put my Ferrari on
a thing and I'd fly out on tw and i'd
go to the freight and get my car and drive
up the coast, you know. So but one day something
happened to my car, and I called Pietro Rulei, who
was who ran Hollywood Sports Cars, and he came to

(01:18:01):
the straight and helped me out, and the Boar came
with him because we hit We were in different camps
by that time, and we had such a beautiful reunion
and we made a record together. I can't remember that record.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
Is that waves?

Speaker 4 (01:18:15):
Yeah, he's on that. But the best music so far
has been Don's latest record with me. So I'm happy
that in my lifetime I've been able to grow in
the music and not bore myself or others.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
You know from my ears.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
From my ears, the way I hear you and Gollo,
it's the same as you and Jason Moran, like you
and Jason Moran sound incredible to me.

Speaker 4 (01:18:45):
I was playing a concert at Carnegie Hall with an
Indian group I have with zakiir Hussein and Eric Harlan,
and I didn't know Jason, but he came to that concert,
and Jason came and he said and so he told
Eric he wanted to play with me, and I didn't

(01:19:06):
really know his music. But then Jerry Allen was playing
with me. He was a wonderful pianist. Uh and she
got her bookings mixed up and she can only do
half of a long European tour so I didn't want
to do that because you know, as I said, we
come back, go exploring, come back, not the same. But
I want to build on what we did, what we

(01:19:28):
were doing, and keep going higher. And so Eric called
me and said, Jason wants to play with you, because
he'd already said that, and I didn't say anything, and
he said he understands. And when he said that, I
said welcome. So that's when Jason came in two thousand
and six and he, uh, yeah, we've had some wonderful

(01:19:51):
moments together. Yeah, kind of like what I had with Higgins,
you know that period in the earlier period with the
original quartet, you know, with Keith and Jack, that was special. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:05):
Did you get to play with scottland Fower?

Speaker 4 (01:20:07):
Very much? Scott and I were best friends, you know.
He he also was a clarinet player.

Speaker 3 (01:20:13):
Did you know that I knew it came from uh
lyrical melodic?

Speaker 4 (01:20:17):
Yeah he got oh yeah, yeah, he he was. He
was fantastic. He's he set a standard that I haven't
seen nobody surpass yet. And uh so, although I was
in Memphis with all that rich community, Phineas Newborn and
all of that, and then when I came out here.
There was on thatt Eric Dolphine and Jerald Wilton's big

(01:20:38):
band with Harold Land and a lot of a lot
of people. And then then came these young guys you
know down Cherry and Charlie Hayden and uh, Scotty. Scotty
and I played together a lot, a lot of gigs,
and then he got a call to come back to
New York. Uh that's how he left here. You won't

(01:20:58):
believe this. He he got a call to play with
a singer, Dick Himes, and he was gonna be Elvin
was playing drums, come on yow. So that that's that
was a trio back dig Hymes. I don't know who's
playing piano. But then later on he morphed into Bill
Evans and then he he came out here on a
tour later with Ornette. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:21:19):
So.

Speaker 4 (01:21:20):
But we played just gigs around town. And I had
a gig at a place called the Dragon Wick in
Pasadena for many years when I was in college, and
Scotty and I would play there. Yeah, Higgins, you.

Speaker 3 (01:21:32):
Know, was he playing that style?

Speaker 1 (01:21:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:21:35):
Then yeah he could do that. Yeah, he took that.
You know what he did one day he came over
to my house near sc because I'd moved off that
campus because I couldn't deal with that, And and he had
written out Bird solo to uh, just friends. No, well
I don't. He wrote it out for me. You know.

(01:21:55):
He was like a gift to me, you know, because
there's such a beautiful solo that Bird plays on just Friends.
But Scotty know he was. He was like one of
a kind, you know, as Booker was, as as so
many of these great saints are, you know, saints and sages.
That's what came through here, and the country doesn't know

(01:22:17):
it's indigenous art form or appreciates it, and so sometimes
it kind of blows me away. And so I live
in the woods now and I don't take no prisoners.
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:22:30):
Did you meet the Beach Boys through meditation? No?

Speaker 4 (01:22:33):
Beach Boys were fans of mine. They they had heard
that I was a meditator. And Mike Love is born
on my same birthday. He's three years younger than me,
March fifteenth, and they were seeking me out and I
didn't know their music. And then someone played a Wild

(01:22:54):
Honey for me and I like that, and then they
played pet Sounds and that was it. And then Mike
Love was always coming to Malibu with fruits and offerings
and stuff, you know, and so we became close. But
I hadn't know I left Big, I left Malibu. I
was hanging out with Peter Fonda when he made that

(01:23:15):
film Easy Rioter and Larry Hagman all that in the
Colony and Burgess marriage. But when Peter made that film,
we would go sailing. A guy named John Kelly, who
ran the studio, would give us his sailboat, and uh,
we would go sailing. And I didn't have any so
I left Malibu and I didn't have any economics. So

(01:23:38):
we were living in Big Sir Dorothy and me, and
we built a humble, simple house up there, Japanese country house,
and Mike Love. They made Brian's studio available to me,
and that's when I made, uh some of those records
that you may may not know about. And the Beach
Boys sang on some of those records with me. That

(01:24:01):
record waves is the Waves of I don't know what
it was, but anyway, all life is.

Speaker 3 (01:24:07):
One yeah life ye warm waters.

Speaker 4 (01:24:11):
Yeah. They but they gave me their studio, an engineer
and and Brian would be upstairs in his bed with
the sandbox and stuff, and he'd come downstairs and started singing.
He called the boys and they all come over and
we'd made they sing on my record. So that was
a beautiful thing. You know. I had an idea years
ago when I used to play what's the club call

(01:24:32):
over there? Shelley's Manhole or something, but anyway, and around
the back street that was a little in the alley
back there were some little clubs back they were starting
up in the in the doors and uh and and uh.
Roger McGuinn what was his girl? Called the Birds they
were So I liked the Birds, and so I was
on Columbia. They were on Columbia. So I told a

(01:24:53):
guy named Billy James, who was a functionary Columbian, and
I said, man, I want to do a record with
these guys, the Birds and me. And he took it
upstairs and they said never. We're not going to let
that happen. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:25:07):
I'm sure Crosby was a fan Davy Cross and as
a friend he was big friends with Spencer Dryden, who
played drums with the Airplane and Spencer and I used
to play jazz gieks together.

Speaker 1 (01:25:21):
Before he was in the airplane two four.

Speaker 4 (01:25:22):
Yeah, before he was an airplane and then he went
up there. Yeah, and they would always meet me whenever
I came to town. He and Grace had hooked up,
and uh, they'd bring me offerings and stuff, put peru
on the table. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):
One thing I wanted to go back to is you
mentioned the plantation in West Arkansas, West Memphis, Arkansas.

Speaker 1 (01:25:44):
Excuse me? And is it true? Elvis would come in.

Speaker 4 (01:25:48):
He would come in every night to hear hear his
play because he loved Calvin. And Calvin was a showman too.
He could he could play the guitar, and he could
jump real high in the sky and he shake his
legs and stuff. And Elvis couldn't do that with the guitar,
but he saw el so Calvin shaking his legs, so
he copped that. And he and he was always at

(01:26:10):
There's a book called uh quiet as his cap uh
and uh I think Calvin wrote it about Phineas and uh,
but Elvis is in there. He would come over their
house for death. Elvis was a truck driver. He drove
drove some kind of he was iceman, electrician or electrical.
He drove some kind of trucks and uh, but he

(01:26:31):
was over there every night to hear flee. You know.
He loved he loved Calvin.

Speaker 1 (01:26:35):
You know, did he throw you when he became what he?

Speaker 4 (01:26:38):
Yeah, it did throw me. One day in Montecito, where
we lived, I ran into uh, Priscilla at some big
party the tennis buddy was having. He had big great
Gaspia state and stuff like that, George Washington Smith, big
old Spanish flea. Anyway, I ran a lot of people there,

(01:26:59):
but bash Car menning. Do you know about him? He ran?
He ran what was it called? It wasn't capital, It
was the whole e m I he wrote, he ran.
I said, man, how did you do that? He's Indian?
From from Indian? I said, how did you do that?
He said, old Charles. I just failed up.

Speaker 3 (01:27:17):
That.

Speaker 4 (01:27:18):
That's cute that he could say that Priscilla. So I said,
I saw Priscilla at this party. So I said, Priscilla,
can I speak to you? And she looked at me
and she said, she said, this guy's hitting on me,
you know, I mean I could see in her eyes
when she was She said sure. Yeah. So we went
side and talked. You know, I said, I'm from Memphis.

(01:27:39):
She said, you're from Memphis. She didn't believe it. I said,
you know, I always had problems with this Elvis thing.
You know, he took another man's song, you know, and
he took it to the penthouse, you know, and Capital
Gains and all that stuff. I said, how did he
feel about that? And she said to me, he felt

(01:27:59):
very inadequate. And she said he would go around to
the black churches on Sunday and put watts one hundred
dollars bills in the in the offering. Yeah. So when
she said that, he kind of disarmed me, you know,
because I didn't. I didn't know him except I used
to record a lot over at Sun Records because they

(01:28:20):
didn't have us horns come in and play behind stuff.
But I didn't. I never played on his records. But
he would come to the Plantation in every night to
check us out. It was like, is like looking behind
looking behind the door?

Speaker 1 (01:28:35):
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:28:36):
Was it a rough scene like in the Memphis Club?
Did did you like have to fight your way out? Sometimes?

Speaker 4 (01:28:42):
Well, it was very rough in the sense that with
Willie Mitchell, I was playing his band and we had
to come across the bridge at one hundred and twenty
miles an hour with the with the John Darmes whatever
you call those guys following us, you know, because the
word had gotten out that we were socializing, you know,
and they didn't they didn't like that. You know. Let

(01:29:03):
me tell you something funny about Central Avenue. So nat
Cole was playing over there too, and one night the
club he was playing in, Cap Calloi came in and
so he ran over to his table. Oh, mister Callierry,
oh please please, I'm so happy to meet you. And
he was bowing down and stuff, you know, and he said,
I'm I'm playing piano. He said, I'm just starting to sing,

(01:29:26):
you know. Can you give me any advice, any anything
to help me? You know? He said yes, he none
see it. And that took that to the bank, you know,
he just took it. He just so he heard that.
So that's what you have to do. Yeah. Yeah, someone

(01:29:50):
referred to tont in my record. I was shocked the
new record Dorothy Harley or something sent me. The guy
said this record. He said, I love nat Cole. He
said this record is smooth like that coal, but it's
not lightweight, you know. Yeah, So that's that's good to
pull off something that it's kind of like we did

(01:30:14):
in the sixes. You get under the transom before it's illegal.
Don you could? You could take this record a long
way if you could find the right conduit and somebody
like this brother here who cares. But there are people
out there, are sensitives. See. My notion is that they're
still sensitives in this world. And that thing up on

(01:30:36):
the board on the wall there on the screen, says McIntosh. Well,
when we were young kids, we loved McIntosh and Morants
and we were trying to get the best equipment because
we loved to play live, and what we heard live
you couldn't hear on these little speakers and stuff, you know.
And J B. LANs and they had this big paragon

(01:30:57):
speakers and stuff, you know. And so because all my
life we were trying to put the pursuit was to
get up so close to the music, you know, And
this record that we just made it gets pretty close,
you know. And I'm really I'll stand by it.

Speaker 3 (01:31:13):
Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 (01:31:14):
It's a beautiful record. You heard it. Yeah, it's a
gorgeous record. Thank you, it is, I mean, and you've
made a lot of great music over the last decade,
decade and a half. But this again record is very big.

Speaker 4 (01:31:27):
Big head off to Dawn because he he heard it
and he knew what it was, and he heard us
when when we were kids, you know, and he was
a kid, and uh he he likes truth and love
and that's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 2 (01:31:43):
Well, thank you so much for doing this, Charles. I mean,
what what, I don't even make difference.

Speaker 4 (01:31:49):
We do what you can do.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
Between you and Dorothy's absolute history.

Speaker 4 (01:31:52):
You need to talk to Dorothy, Man, you need to
talk to her. You should watch the documentary Get It Infinity. Yeah,
it's it's major. I just had tears the whole thing. Man.
And uh some of the comments from the people, had
a little Q and A after some of the comments,
well beyond man, I didn't know anybody was listening. So

(01:32:14):
I should I shouldn't complain or or I should just
be thankful.

Speaker 3 (01:32:21):
Yeah, well it's I guess the point is it's probably
having a greater effect than you think.

Speaker 4 (01:32:29):
What you're doing. Well, those guys say, show me.

Speaker 2 (01:32:37):
Thanks so much to the great Charles Lloyd for opening
up to Don Wiz and myself about his time growing
up in Tennessee, his experiences at usc and beyond. You
can hear his new album This Guy will be there tomorrow,
along with some of our other favorite tracks featuring or
by Charles Lloyd at our playlist at broken record podcast
dot com or in the show notes for this episode.

(01:32:58):
You can also listen to this interview on other recent
episodes at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, and
be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken
Record Pod. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record.
Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with
marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
is Ben Tollinay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.

(01:33:21):
If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four
ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus.

Speaker 1 (01:33:34):
On Apple podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show,
please remember to share, rate.

Speaker 2 (01:33:39):
And review us on your podcast app.

Speaker 1 (01:33:42):
Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.

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