Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: A conversation with Charles Lloyd feels like a veritable interaction
Speaker 2: with the pages of history. I was continuously surprised throughout
Speaker 2: my conversation with Charles, along with Don was about the
Speaker 2: depth of his experiences and the wisdom too. Charles is
Speaker 2: an ordinately beautiful tenor player from Memphis, Tennessee, who grew
Speaker 2: up at a time when the region was brimming with talent.
Speaker 2: Elvis Presley, Helen Wolfe, Junior Parker, Billy Lee, Riley, B. B. King,
Speaker 2: and so many more were from there or made their
Speaker 2: careers there. It was also a popular destination for toring artists,
Speaker 2: giving a young Charles an incredible musical education. On today's
Speaker 2: episode of Broken Record, another in our series celebrating the
Speaker 2: eighty fifth anniversary of Blue Note Records, I have Don's
Speaker 2: my co host, and we talked to Charles Lloyd about
Speaker 2: his colorful upbringing in Memphis and about the early Last Angels,
Speaker 2: Jazzy and he became a part of after moving to
Speaker 2: California to attend usc This conversation goes a lot of places,
Speaker 2: from Elvis to Quincy Jones, to the Beach Boys and
Speaker 2: far beyond. And please be sure to check out his
Speaker 2: wonderful new album out on Blue Note. The Sky will
Speaker 2: be there tomorrow. This is Broken Record liner Notes for
Speaker 2: the Digital Age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Mitchman.
Speaker 2: Here's Don Was and myself from Amazon Music Studio one
Speaker 2: twenty six in Culver City, California with Charles Lloyd. To
Speaker 2: see the full video version of this episode, go to
Speaker 2: YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast.
Speaker 3: I would love to start at the beginning. I remember
Speaker 3: one time you told me that you had like African
Speaker 3: Choctaw Irish and Mongolian.
Speaker 4: Little jerky in there too with the Chocto. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: I don't bring all my guns out right away or
Speaker 4: arrows into infinity. Yeah. Well what happened was, let's see,
Speaker 4: a future slave ship came over here and brought some people.
Speaker 4: But before my eldest were already here. Sally Sunflower white Cloud.
Speaker 4: It was my great grandmother, and I have her songs.
Speaker 4: And then on Mary Flowers side, that's on my grandfather's side,
Speaker 4: Sally Sunflower white Cloud. On my mother's side there was
Speaker 4: Mary Flowers who was married to Bud Maccombe from Ireland.
Speaker 4: And I don't know a lot about the direct brothers
Speaker 4: and the Mongolian I asked my grandmother, where did we
Speaker 4: come from? And she said Mongolia. And then I looked
Speaker 4: at a map and somebody told me the Barons Street.
Speaker 4: They walked across the barren streets to get over here,
Speaker 4: because there was a time when you could walk across. Okay,
Speaker 4: So we go far back, Caw. But my great great
Speaker 4: grandmother was Hagar right, And Dorothy knows my history because
Speaker 4: she went down south Mississippi and did the serious digging
Speaker 4: and went behind the counter and went into the archives.
Speaker 4: The problem is that Hagar, this is deep. No one
Speaker 4: responds to it, but I need to bring it out.
Speaker 4: She was taking a ten years old from her parents
Speaker 4: down in Mississippi by slave owner up in Balivard, Tennessee,
Speaker 4: need him Ingram, and he proceeded to rape on her
Speaker 4: ten year old girl. She's pedophile stuff. And at thirteen
Speaker 4: she had my great grandfather, Ben Ingram Senior. And this
Speaker 4: guy had the nerve when his daughter got married with
Speaker 4: his white wife to give my great grandmother, great great
Speaker 4: grandmother and her child Ben as a wedding gift to
Speaker 4: his daughter. So, man, I got some serious beefs about
Speaker 4: this stuff that's going on, and it's still going on,
Speaker 4: and I'm kind of blowing fuses as a young man
Speaker 4: at Blue Fuses. Now I can't afford to blow fuses.
Speaker 4: So what I have to do now is to go
Speaker 4: back on the south and make some music that can
Speaker 4: heal the world. But that's naive because I thought I
Speaker 4: was doing that when I was a young man, and
Speaker 4: some people heard it. But in two thousand, Master Higgins,
Speaker 4: Billy Higgins, said he wanted to come up to visit
Speaker 4: us at our compound, and he wanted us to do
Speaker 4: some work that was that he could only do with me.
Speaker 4: So he brought all of his drums and all of
Speaker 4: his instruments, guitars from Africa, from all that Moorys stuff,
Speaker 4: and we began to go at it for about a week.
Speaker 4: Dorothy made the wonderful veggies for us. At the time
Speaker 4: he showed up, I'd been fasting for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 4: and I told him that I was going to go
Speaker 4: back into the forest and give it up again. And
Speaker 4: he's two years older than me, and I met him
Speaker 4: when I first came out here in fifty six at
Speaker 4: a jam session where he was there and Ornett was there,
Speaker 4: and he and I had a bonding instantly. Ornett came
Speaker 4: to this jam session and he played. But I was
Speaker 4: new in town, and there's a place called the Stadium
Speaker 4: Club over by USC. Now that I look back on USC, men,
Speaker 4: there's some stuff that's very disturbing to me that I
Speaker 4: had to do my own personal research on. I got
Speaker 4: so many balls in the air. But anyway, so Arnett
Speaker 4: was let up on the stage and they were playing
Speaker 4: what is this thing called Love? So what on that
Speaker 4: play was the Etymology of Love? And they invited him
Speaker 4: off the bandstand because he wasn't adhering to just running
Speaker 4: the changes. He was talking about the real deal and
Speaker 4: I heard it and I love something about it. He
Speaker 4: had to suspend us on and he had this homemade
Speaker 4: outfit that was very special. We used to go to
Speaker 4: a tail in Memphis called Paul the Tail, and there
Speaker 4: was another one called Collettes. They were both on Beale Street.
Speaker 4: So I had my stuff that I had to change
Speaker 4: up real soon. I had twenty five inch knees and
Speaker 4: eighteen inch bottom. I remember that, you know specific about that.
Speaker 4: But when I got out here, they were wearing those
Speaker 4: little uh yeah, she knows, okay, So my stuff was
Speaker 4: too out for school. So I had to find a
Speaker 4: way to make my stuff work anyway, because I was
Speaker 4: in it, but I wasn't of it. And I had
Speaker 4: some songs to sing. And when I was a little boy,
Speaker 4: Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges, those people stayed at our
Speaker 4: house because we had a large house and they weren't
Speaker 4: adequate hotels for these musicians. So the lady from the
Speaker 4: theater called my mother and said, you know, can you
Speaker 4: help us out and accommodate some quality of people.
Speaker 3: So Duke Ellington stayed at your house.
Speaker 4: Yes, so did Lionel Hampton, so did special various people.
Speaker 4: I met Quincy Jones during that period. He was playing
Speaker 4: trumpet with Loonel Hampton. Quincy was he was five years
Speaker 4: older than myself. But he was a little bitty, little
Speaker 4: skinny guy and I was a little bitty, little skinny guy.
Speaker 4: And I was about nine and so he would have
Speaker 4: been five years he was about sixteen. Yeah, And so
Speaker 4: we had a simpatico and when I came to California,
Speaker 4: he would turn people on to me to do sessions
Speaker 4: and stuff. You know, he was like it in those
Speaker 4: days for the jazz community. He was like networker and
Speaker 4: he knew, he knew where stuff was, and people would
Speaker 4: call me from Capitol your company in different companies, and
Speaker 4: I'd go do sessions. That was very special, and I
Speaker 4: always remember that, and I think he's the one who
Speaker 4: recommended me to Cannonball Attilie when you Latiith left. That
Speaker 4: was in sixty four and Joe Sabeu was in that band,
Speaker 4: Sam Jones, Lewis Hayes and Cannon's brother Nat. So I
Speaker 4: played with that sex Step for going on two years.
Speaker 4: And then I had a b in my bonnet that
Speaker 4: I need to express Eibo, my stuff, personal music that
Speaker 4: I had to make because when I was with Chico,
Speaker 4: I had replaced Eric Dolphy Chico Hamilton, Sorry, thank you.
Speaker 4: And what happened was that Chico made me music director
Speaker 4: and so I'd written all this music when I was
Speaker 4: a canniball. He said we'll be playing we'll play your
Speaker 4: music too. But he also had he was a racking
Speaker 4: tour and stuff, you know, and he was good at
Speaker 4: the microphone and handling people and stuff like that. In
Speaker 4: cordiality anyway, So I was there for a couple of years.
Speaker 4: Then when I started my own band, when I was
Speaker 4: a canniballist Keith Jarrett had heard me in Boston. He
Speaker 4: was going to school at Berkeley and he was playing
Speaker 4: upstairs and we were playing downstairs at he said, I
Speaker 4: want to play with you. I said, well, you know,
Speaker 4: when the time comes, you know, I'll let you know.
Speaker 4: And then when the time came, Goborzabo, who had been
Speaker 4: playing with me with Chico, I called him, and Pete
Speaker 4: Larocca and oh Alvert Stenson wonderful basis that people don't
Speaker 4: know because he left early too. He left in his twenties,
Speaker 4: early twenties, around that age that guys leave town. But
Speaker 4: he was even younger than that, and he and Bobby
Speaker 4: Hutcheson had grown up in Pasadena and he was a
Speaker 4: genius in Scott LaFaro and Charlie Hayden were the young Lions.
Speaker 4: But sparky Alvert Stenson had a strong sound, real woody,
Speaker 4: you know, and he loved wilbur Ware and so he
Speaker 4: came from there anyway.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, there's so many places I want to go
Speaker 3: back to. Yeah, so you talked about Higgins coming.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Higgins was playing that jam session to everybody loved
Speaker 4: Billy Higgins because no matter how you played behind the beat,
Speaker 4: on the beat, whatever he could make you a tailor
Speaker 4: made suit, because that's that's what he fixed your stuff
Speaker 4: up right up. You know. They finally let me play
Speaker 4: at the end of the session because I'm young kids
Speaker 4: sitting over there with an alto and that was my
Speaker 4: instrument that started off. And finally let me on the
Speaker 4: band stand. But it was strange because they didn't invited
Speaker 4: on that off prior set. But On that comes up
Speaker 4: to me with his splendid outfit that he had made
Speaker 4: it home, and he said, you know, you can really
Speaker 4: play the saxophone, but that don't have a lot to
Speaker 4: do with music. And so I said, wow, you know,
Speaker 4: I'd been in Memphis with George Coleman and Hank Craft
Speaker 4: and Frank Strojan Booker, Little my Master and all the
Speaker 4: cats in Memphis and there it was a rich tradition.
Speaker 4: Phineas Newborn was our js Bock and he was our
Speaker 4: hero in Memphis and he always was extremely special by On.
Speaker 4: That's saying that he didn't say it with hostility. It
Speaker 4: wasn't harsh. It was you know where he talks. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you can't ready place apo. They don't have a lot
Speaker 4: to do with me, so it was sweet. So somehow
Speaker 4: he and I lived several blocks from each other. He
Speaker 4: would come over to my house, I'd go to his house,
Speaker 4: and we began to go at it, you know, with
Speaker 4: the music. And I was coming from a lot of
Speaker 4: modern tradition. It's like the old guys in Memphis said
Speaker 4: to me, you know you playing all those notes because
Speaker 4: i'd heard bird. You know, so you're playing all those notes,
Speaker 4: but they don't mean anything without a beautiful sound. So
Speaker 4: I started practicing long tones. Phineas Newborn hurt me on
Speaker 4: an amateur show and I won first prize. I was
Speaker 4: about nine or ten, and he said, you need lessons bad.
Speaker 4: When I walked into the wings, he takes me around
Speaker 4: the corner on Beal Street to Irving Reason, a great
Speaker 4: alto player, and left me say you need lessons. And
Speaker 4: so I didn't get to get rich before I learned
Speaker 4: how to play. I had to focus on the music,
Speaker 4: and so Irving was great for me. Phineas kept kept
Speaker 4: on top of me, and then maybe I was twelve
Speaker 4: or thirteen, he put me in band with his brother
Speaker 4: Calvin and in his father's band, playing at the plantation
Speaker 4: in Over across the river. In West Memphis, Arkansas. So
Speaker 4: we played this several nights a week, seven nights, six seven,
Speaker 4: and then I had gigs with all those blues guys too,
Speaker 4: and my favorite was Howling Wolf, Junior Parker, Johnny A's
Speaker 4: BB King, Roscoe Gordon, on and on anyway, So I
Speaker 4: had lots of deep experiences with those blues guys because
Speaker 4: they could reach the back of the hall or the
Speaker 4: schoolhouse or wherever we were playing, and they were communicators,
Speaker 4: you know. And I somehow got infected by that because
Speaker 4: I was moved by how women would throw their panties
Speaker 4: on the stage and do stuff of surrender, do you know,
Speaker 4: without And I'm a little kid, you know, I'm not
Speaker 4: ready for that lane yet, but I saw something in
Speaker 4: there that was frightening and intriguing and interesting, you know.
Speaker 4: So I didn't have the chops yet for any of that.
Speaker 1: But uh was Hubert someone with Wolf?
Speaker 4: That different cast? Play with Wolf? You know.
Speaker 1: It's like talking to Quincy Jones.
Speaker 4: You've done everything, no, no, but Quincy well, he's a
Speaker 4: special guy. I don't know him now, you know. I'm
Speaker 4: sure if we saw each other, Well, no, I do.
Speaker 4: I shouldn't talk like that, you know. I was playing
Speaker 4: at montro a few years ago and he came backstage.
Speaker 4: He was pulling on my coat when I walked near
Speaker 4: the near the edge of the stage, and he remembered
Speaker 4: you from uh from oh well, no, throughout he's remembered.
Speaker 4: We're cordial, you know, and it's just that, Uh. I've
Speaker 4: been drunk with this music. And what my idea was
Speaker 4: was to change the world with the beauty of music.
Speaker 4: And I'm still at it. But I went away for
Speaker 4: a while because I blew fuses as a young man,
Speaker 4: because the setup was so unfair and so gross that
Speaker 4: you know, it didn't work for me, and I began
Speaker 4: to medicate myself too, you know. So I had a
Speaker 4: lot of stuff I had to deal with. But when
Speaker 4: I first got to New York, I checked into the
Speaker 4: Alvin Hotel where Prais had lived, and Prais died there.
Speaker 4: And that's too young, correct, And that's too young, Yes,
Speaker 4: my hero. I've gone around the world in a plane,
Speaker 4: but I've come back to Prais because he was the
Speaker 4: poet of the music. That's why when you hear this
Speaker 4: new record, don that we made it Prais's He came
Speaker 4: and visited me, you know. And Pras died on March fifteenth,
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty nine, I believe, and I just turned twenty one.
Speaker 4: Whenever I turned twenty one. The chronology may elude me,
Speaker 4: but I think I have some mystical notion that Pres said, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm leaving town, but let's see what you can do
Speaker 4: with this stuff. So I have notions like that, not
Speaker 4: illusions of grand shurt. I got that when I was
Speaker 4: a little kid, but Phineas nipped that in the bud.
Speaker 4: But anyway, I'm just I'm a lone man on the mountain,
Speaker 4: as you know, and I'm trying to sing this song.
Speaker 4: And I told Master Higgins when he came up at
Speaker 4: that time in two thousand, that I was getting ready
Speaker 4: to go back into the forest. You know, I've been
Speaker 4: in Big Sur for a decade or more. And he said, well,
Speaker 4: I said, nobody cares about this music, and he said,
Speaker 4: fuck them, we care. It was such a strong rebuke.
Speaker 4: And Master Higgins was always He's very special, as I
Speaker 4: just told you, and everybody wanted Billy to play with him.
Speaker 4: You know, you know that Recordly Morgan made Sidewinder, Well,
Speaker 4: he and Billy was on that record. Along with Barry Harris,
Speaker 4: and I think Higgins told me something also almost had
Speaker 4: a profound effect on me, like my great great grandmother.
Speaker 4: It was like they were up in Harlem looking for
Speaker 4: the man because they needed their medicine and they were
Speaker 4: in bad shape, and they went to every bar in
Speaker 4: Harlem and Sidewinder was playing on the box everywhere. It
Speaker 4: was the fuel. It was lifting up the The whole
Speaker 4: darm of the planet was being held up by that song.
Speaker 4: So what happened was that they couldn't find the man.
Speaker 4: He wasn't in any bar. And they finally found him
Speaker 4: and he was sitting there very areadype, you know, with
Speaker 4: his vaunts and stuff, and they said we need our mens,
Speaker 4: and he said, They said, but we're two dollars short.
Speaker 4: And he looked at them and he said, I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: I can't help you guys, you know. And after these
Speaker 4: guys it lit up the planet with Sideline. He can't
Speaker 4: help them, and you know, so there's a lot of injustice,
Speaker 4: you know, personal that not to mention the foulness of
Speaker 4: man's inhumanity to the man and throwing rocks at each
Speaker 4: other for thousands of years, and this stuff has been
Speaker 4: bothering me lately, and I've got to shake it off
Speaker 4: because this morning it hit me real hard. You know.
Speaker 4: I have friends all around the world, and folks aren't
Speaker 4: being treated right, you know, and these giant politicians they've
Speaker 4: pad their pockets and stuff. But we need sages to
Speaker 4: help humanity, you know. So it's so back to my song.
Speaker 4: I'm making this music that the heel of planet. So
Speaker 4: I'm and I keep coming up short, you know, and
Speaker 4: it's troubling to my nervous system to be kind candid
Speaker 4: with you. I can't tell you something, Charles Sure.
Speaker 3: I heard you play for the first time in the
Speaker 3: mid sixties. I saw you play live, oh you fourteen fifteen,
Speaker 3: and your music impacted my life so tremendously. So you
Speaker 3: may not see the full impact. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: Maybe the whole society didn't change, but on a personal level,
Speaker 3: just the tone of your instrument. That's why the tone
Speaker 3: of your instrument is one of the constants in my life,
Speaker 3: you know, in my adult life, and it has such
Speaker 3: soothing and healing properties. You may not see that that
Speaker 3: part of it that may not turn up at a concert,
Speaker 3: that certainly won't turn up in a newspaper, but enter
Speaker 3: joy and peacefulness from that. And I'm just one person.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 3: I know you sold a million copies of forest Flower.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I appreciate that. I think I'm probably here
Speaker 4: because of you, because the whole recording industry was run
Speaker 4: like a plantation system as far as I could see
Speaker 4: in my lifetime early on.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back with more from Charles Lloyd after
Speaker 2: the break. We're back with Charles Lloyd in conversation with
Speaker 2: Don was and me.
Speaker 4: Well, the thing is that I was reading something the
Speaker 4: other day and it told me that JA Music sells
Speaker 4: two of the records sales. I don't want to believe that.
Speaker 4: Accept that. It's kind of like I would wonder why
Speaker 4: people don't vote to have somebody who could have more
Speaker 4: caring at least because it's it's all corrupt. But what
Speaker 4: I'm saying is that it hurts me. You're gonna have
Speaker 4: to edit this because I'm sure not much of it's useful.
Speaker 3: But it's beautiful, man, It's like a solo. Well you did, ah, The.
Speaker 1: Thing is beautiful.
Speaker 4: The thing is that I'm troubled by the condition of
Speaker 4: the condition. And you know, Dorothy going down south with
Speaker 4: my cousin Selene, and they going back there. It's a
Speaker 4: funny thing Dorothy told me. When she and my cousin
Speaker 4: went to the archives or where the record County Hall
Speaker 4: where the records are kept, they said they want to
Speaker 4: look into the records, and oh they're here, you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: because they knew they were dirty, and they said, oh,
Speaker 4: they've come to see the records. And so she looked
Speaker 4: up Sally Sunflower, White Cloud and all these indigenous folks
Speaker 4: that I have some blood with, and I love all people.
Speaker 4: You know. When I came out here to Cali, I
Speaker 4: was about to tell you about my USC experience, and
Speaker 4: I got upset with myself. The other day at some
Speaker 4: of my research. There's this guy named Rufus von Kleinschmidt
Speaker 4: who was the He had been a president of USC,
Speaker 4: I think from twenty one to forty six or somewhere
Speaker 4: in the twenty fourth and he now when I went
Speaker 4: to SC I started in fifty six and there was
Speaker 4: a genius in the dorm. His name was Milton Oldham
Speaker 4: and he was from Asbury Park, New Jersey, and he
Speaker 4: was so brilliant. He was like lit up. You know,
Speaker 4: it's a little guy, you know, about five feet two
Speaker 4: or three. But he was like a light bulb, you know,
Speaker 4: and he would do everybody's homework and help everybody in
Speaker 4: the dorm. I got to the dorm Anias Hall in
Speaker 4: the summer of fifty six because I was run out
Speaker 4: of town. I was playing in West Memphis with Willie Mitchell,
Speaker 4: and those girls liked us a lot. It was a
Speaker 4: white dance hall called Danny's, and we'd have to run
Speaker 4: back across the bridge and Willie's Pontiac car whatever it
Speaker 4: was doing one hundred and twenty whatever it would do,
Speaker 4: because we were always being chased and stuff, you know.
Speaker 4: And my stepfather sold cars and in the black part
Speaker 4: of the dealership, you know, he would get referred girls
Speaker 4: and stuff, and you take care of the guys, you know,
Speaker 4: with some change, you know. And somebody called him from
Speaker 4: the police station and said they're coming to rest your
Speaker 4: son tomorrow night, you know, because they've been pooling around
Speaker 4: with those girls. And so when when he goes to
Speaker 4: work tomorrow night, just want to let you know he's
Speaker 4: on the list, which point my mother said, no, he's not.
Speaker 4: And my stepfather also worked on the railroad, pulling forward
Speaker 4: this stuff, so he put me in a first class
Speaker 4: drawing room, a on the plane, on the on the train,
Speaker 4: and took me across the country. That's how you ended
Speaker 4: up it in La I got there in the summer.
Speaker 4: I was supposed to start in the in the ball
Speaker 4: but when I got there, i'd all had a lot
Speaker 4: of solicitations from fraternities offering me to take residents there
Speaker 4: for summer because they would collect bread. You know, they
Speaker 4: have some tenants in the house, you know, till the
Speaker 4: boys get back. So and then I told some guys
Speaker 4: in the dorm that all those returnities had been trying
Speaker 4: to send me solicitations. They laughed. I didn't quite understand.
Speaker 4: When I checked into the dorm, it was summertime. There
Speaker 4: were no people of color there. So what they did
Speaker 4: was they put me with a Hawaiian you did, Ken Purdle,
Speaker 4: and his mother was Hawaii and his father was a
Speaker 4: Howlly from England or something. You know. This guy later
Speaker 4: committed suicide. He joined one of those fraternities. But what
Speaker 4: happened was it backfired on him because he couldn't go
Speaker 4: fully with the program. And so when you.
Speaker 1: You couldn't shake not being fully white, you couldn't shake
Speaker 1: not being fully white.
Speaker 4: And somewhere in there because it was a very racist
Speaker 4: time in the fifties. It still is, you know, it
Speaker 4: was so overt. Then we're getting back to vun Kleinschmidt,
Speaker 4: Rufus vun Clinschmidt. Whenever I've told people about him, so
Speaker 4: you have to be careful because there's some stuff out
Speaker 4: there protecting him. No one has ever taken that in
Speaker 4: an interview for me, and I often wondered why, so
Speaker 4: I said, I'm going to look up. I don't know
Speaker 4: why I didn't do it. Earlier. Milton Oldham was in
Speaker 4: a club called the Squires and they and they're going
Speaker 4: to have a parade for the alumni, and so the
Speaker 4: alumni rufus unclimbed and has to preview the parade to
Speaker 4: see how's going. And when he saw Milton in the parade,
Speaker 4: he said, no, can't happen. So the alumni, we don't.
Speaker 4: And then I came to find out that he was
Speaker 4: a Nazi and he'd gone over there and fraternized with
Speaker 4: Hitling all those guys and stuff and during and he
Speaker 4: denied it and kind of liked that, but and so
Speaker 4: somehow somebody would bring it up and he would, so, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're gonna do something about that. Never did anything about anything.
Speaker 4: And so the reason I'm telling you this now you
Speaker 4: don't have to use this for the interview, but somebody
Speaker 4: in has to know what's going on. And so I'm
Speaker 4: studying all this stuff. And then lo and behold, I
Speaker 4: read I did a lot of research that they've taken
Speaker 4: his name. He af After he was the president for
Speaker 4: those ten twenty years, he became what do you call
Speaker 4: it in lawyer? Lawyer and they call it a counsel.
Speaker 4: He's upstairs, he's controlling the dance, you know. So he
Speaker 4: wouldn't let Milton. He said, no, Milton, can't. Can't march,
Speaker 4: you know, with the Squires. And that was very hurtful
Speaker 4: because Milton was a pure soul and he wasn't even
Speaker 4: tainted by I don't think he even growing up in
Speaker 4: Ashbury Park, that's different than growing up in Memphis. I
Speaker 4: don't think he was. He was. I don't think he
Speaker 4: even knew that he was black, you know, he was.
Speaker 4: He was so well modulated, you know, I know. So
Speaker 4: what I'm getting at is that he was a special
Speaker 4: guy man, and we used to hang out and dorm
Speaker 4: in these rooms and stuff, you know, and and we
Speaker 4: would always end up in Milton's room because he was
Speaker 4: he was a like magnet, you know, he was he
Speaker 4: was keeping the dharma, upholding the dharma like Preis and
Speaker 4: Bird and Train and all of that, you know. So
Speaker 4: they just said, I keep looking, and I find out
Speaker 4: recent just recently, USC has taken his name off of
Speaker 4: a building and they put a Native American guy's name
Speaker 4: on there too. Late. But anyway, pardon that, but stuff
Speaker 4: has been bothering me lately. I'm checking it out. But
Speaker 4: then I'm here. I am trying to sing a song
Speaker 4: about tenderness. I am a tender worry. I'm not going
Speaker 4: to lie to anybody, you know, because but tenderness, you know,
Speaker 4: that takes me back to Preis, because and then Preis
Speaker 4: was messed up in the arm in dB blues, the
Speaker 4: detension barriers blues and stuff, you know, and it's light.
Speaker 4: When will it end? When will it quit? The beautiful
Speaker 4: thing I'm trying to say to you, Dahn, is that
Speaker 4: I went away. I left Atlantic. They blackballed me. I
Speaker 4: couldn't record with anyone else before anyone else because they
Speaker 4: said I still owe them records and anyway. But I
Speaker 4: came out here. I made my getaway. Beginner's changed, not
Speaker 4: nothing serious, but I did by home in Malibu Colony,
Speaker 4: which was interested in sixty nine. When I left, he
Speaker 4: left Atlantic, and I left New York in the music
Speaker 4: industry because I I had blown too many fuses and
Speaker 4: I had left Atlantic. I wouldn't give them any more records.
Speaker 4: They went from giving. At one point, I wanted to
Speaker 4: move up to Woodstock with Bob Dylan was a neighbor
Speaker 4: in the village, and he moved up to Woodstock and
Speaker 4: Robbie Robinson the band. Those guys were friends and fans
Speaker 4: and all of that. And so I'd go up and
Speaker 4: hang out with Robbie and stay at his house, and
Speaker 4: he'd take me over to Dylan's place. And the thing
Speaker 4: is that, so Dylan comes up to me. We were
Speaker 4: hanging out at Grossman's house. Dylan comes up to me
Speaker 4: and said, Robbie, say you moving out to the West Coast.
Speaker 4: And I said, well yeah, And he said, well don't
Speaker 4: do that. That place is going to fall into the ocean.
Speaker 4: And I said, well, Bob, you've written some nice lyrics,
Speaker 4: but so be it. You know, I've got to do
Speaker 4: it my way. Then one day I'm at my house
Speaker 4: on the beach and I look out there and there's
Speaker 4: the band standing almost near my house taking a photo,
Speaker 4: you know. So I went out and saw leave on
Speaker 4: and robbing all the guys and Rick and stuff. So
Speaker 4: I said, what's going on, guys, And they said, well,
Speaker 4: Bob just brought us out here. I said, oh, the
Speaker 4: same guy who told me don't move out here because it's,
Speaker 4: you know, too file of the village. No, that's a
Speaker 4: different story. So I always followed my own bells, and
Speaker 4: that leads me to what I just slipped it said
Speaker 4: to When I moved to where Dorothy and I live
Speaker 4: now in Martacito, I said to the guys, I said,
Speaker 4: I'm going to buy this piece of land out here.
Speaker 4: You know this guy. They said, you don't want to
Speaker 4: move out there's too far out the village. I said, well,
Speaker 4: I used to play with Holland Woolf and Junior Park
Speaker 4: and they used to sing, I'm gonna move wall on
Speaker 4: the outskirts of town. Don't want nobody coming out there
Speaker 4: messing around. So I knew what was good for me.
Speaker 4: The iceman, the mailman, you know. So anyway, now, everybody
Speaker 4: wants to live out there, you know, and the girl
Speaker 4: who seriously swaps houses and stuff and different people move,
Speaker 4: they all move near me. And Dorothy's made a beautiful
Speaker 4: world for me there, and I do want to be
Speaker 4: able to live in my lifetime with my creativity. And
Speaker 4: this music is ten cents of dance. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 4: It's it's but it's shiny, but it's it doesn't They
Speaker 4: just raised my insurance thirty percent and this and that,
Speaker 4: you know, back in so the inflation or whatever, inflation
Speaker 4: blues or whatever. So I just thought wow. But anyway,
Speaker 4: so what happened was a friend, Steve Cloud, who was
Speaker 4: managing Keith Jarrett, called me and said, man, you see
Speaker 4: him wants you to come over there. Because I was
Speaker 4: in Big Sir, and I wasn't recording or even interested.
Speaker 4: He said, man, you see him really wants you. So
Speaker 4: I said, well, what does that mean? He said, means
Speaker 4: that you'll get a straight count, but it'll be the
Speaker 4: slow burn. It won't be you know, the big program.
Speaker 4: So I said, well, if it's honest and straight. So
Speaker 4: I went with that, and but I was always I
Speaker 4: wrote a lot of music and I needed to have
Speaker 4: my children, my masters, so to say. And we could
Speaker 4: never work that out with Manfred. And although it was
Speaker 4: supposed to have been an enlightened situation, it didn't get
Speaker 4: enlightened enough for me, and so we had we had problems,
Speaker 4: and also he would I got to the point where
Speaker 4: with Higgins and the records, I was Dorothy and I
Speaker 4: were producing all the records after the first ones, and
Speaker 4: we made a record Fish out of Water. It was
Speaker 4: the first one with Manfred, and they told me he
Speaker 4: was a strange guy. So I said, well, I'm just
Speaker 4: going to do my music, and I played about five
Speaker 4: pieces and he pushed the talk button and said, don't
Speaker 4: you want to come in and hear something? So I
Speaker 4: went into the studio and I had tears because what
Speaker 4: I had heard in my mind's here. It was on
Speaker 4: the tape and there's a guy named jan Eric Kungshag
Speaker 4: I think was his name, Norwegian or yeah, I think
Speaker 4: a Norwegian guy, and he had captured it because before
Speaker 4: it was always you know, engineers were some some I
Speaker 4: wasn't getting close enough to the music, so that that
Speaker 4: touched me very much. And if you ever listen to
Speaker 4: that record, Fish out of Water, you can you can
Speaker 4: hear every instrument clearly, and the whole thing is is
Speaker 4: what I'm trying to get at. It's all a union,
Speaker 4: you know. It's it's an amalgam of spirits on a
Speaker 4: human journey. And that's what we were doing. But we
Speaker 4: could gets only so far. Then here you come along,
Speaker 4: and you I have a friend in New York, Nate Chennon.
Speaker 4: He's a journalist, and he said, you know, Don Was
Speaker 4: told me you could bust his story. He said, Don
Speaker 4: Was told me that when he takes over Blue Note,
Speaker 4: the first artist he wants to sign is Charles Lloyd.
Speaker 4: And then you came up with flowers and sweets and stuff,
Speaker 4: you know, and a pure heart. But by this time
Speaker 4: I was fragile, and it's hard to believe what anyone says,
Speaker 4: you know, because we live in our own world and
Speaker 4: we don't bother people and make sure you leave us alone.
Speaker 4: You know. Finally, what didn't work in America finally works
Speaker 4: with you because you have this big years and appreciate
Speaker 4: and big heart, and you didn't do me wrong. And
Speaker 4: you came and you let me keep my children, and
Speaker 4: you in it for the music and you wanted to
Speaker 4: see the best of that, and that's why we drive
Speaker 4: down here because I'm at a different stage where I'm
Speaker 4: not ready to go anywhere now because now they got
Speaker 4: me in the medical clinics and I got medical problems,
Speaker 4: and you know, I didn't have that stuff before, never,
Speaker 4: and I haven't done non prescription drugs in many, many decades.
Speaker 4: So I didn't know why me. But you know, I
Speaker 4: guess chronology is some strange stuff. I haven't seen anybody
Speaker 4: get out of here live yet. It's something that I'm
Speaker 4: interested in, but I haven't seen anybody pull it off.
Speaker 4: You know. I did learn to swim underwater. I was
Speaker 4: a junior lifeguard. I'm at Jamal was really touched by
Speaker 4: that because Jamille Nassa played bass with him and he's
Speaker 4: from Memphis, and he told him and he grew up
Speaker 4: at Hineas and he told him all about my junior
Speaker 4: lifeguard stuff. But I would practice swimming underwater, and I'm
Speaker 4: trying to learn how to breathe. It's a concept, but
Speaker 4: it's not a reality. But I keep working on it,
Speaker 4: and I almost pulled it off sometimes where I could.
Speaker 4: I thought I was staying under for a long long time,
Speaker 4: and I went to Toledo in Ohio and I won
Speaker 4: diving contests and stuff like that. I told you about Easel.
Speaker 4: You know, there was this guy in my neighborhood. We
Speaker 4: could only go to the swimming pool two or three
Speaker 4: months in the summer because they said we got to
Speaker 4: give him that at least, you know, stuff, And they
Speaker 4: had their pools all year round. And we'd go to
Speaker 4: Mississippi out of Memphis and there was clear water, you know,
Speaker 4: and the grand stuff for the other tribe. And so
Speaker 4: I thought this was pretty out there. But so we
Speaker 4: couldn't wait for the pool open. And my mother was
Speaker 4: very wise. That was earlier property. When I was eight
Speaker 4: or nine, she bought a house. She bought some lots
Speaker 4: across the street from the Orange Mound playground, so I
Speaker 4: had access, you know, and it was beautiful. I had
Speaker 4: almost a little world. My grandfather was a wise guy,
Speaker 4: and he had sixteen hundred acres in Mississippi, and so
Speaker 4: he knew Faulkner and all that stuff. And I would
Speaker 4: go through his orchards and all of that, you know.
Speaker 4: But what I'm getting at this really touching is that
Speaker 4: we couldn't wait for the pool open. So somebody knew
Speaker 4: how to get up under the wire fence in the back.
Speaker 4: And so we would go and we would swim at night,
Speaker 4: you know, because they got the water in there, but
Speaker 4: they're not gonna open it for a week or two.
Speaker 4: So we would go every night and swim. But Ezil
Speaker 4: went up on the diving board, the high board, and
Speaker 4: h one night we just couldn't wait, and he wanted
Speaker 4: to do a two and a half, you know, and
Speaker 4: so he could do a one and a half, but
Speaker 4: he wanted to make sure he could do a two
Speaker 4: and a half, and he went up on the board
Speaker 4: and uh, there was no water in the pool. And
Speaker 4: so uh, Ezell didn't come back the same. He stayed
Speaker 4: with us, but he was always kind of laughing and
Speaker 4: grinning like he knew what was happening. And in another way,
Speaker 4: and I walked to school past his house through a
Speaker 4: field every day, but he'd just be out there grinning
Speaker 4: at us all the time. That kind of hurt me
Speaker 4: a lot. You know. If the facilities had been as
Speaker 4: they should be available, we wouldn't have had to be
Speaker 4: such Wow guys. You know, one last thing I'd tell
Speaker 4: you about Higgins and Ornette because they were at this session,
Speaker 4: So at this jam session I told you about. Higgins
Speaker 4: told me that he and Don Cherrywood and Watts playing
Speaker 4: stickball out in the street. I would tell you this Don,
Speaker 4: So this is really good to know. And they were
Speaker 4: young musicians, you know, and they grew up in LA
Speaker 4: and they heard this wow sound coming from several blocks away,
Speaker 4: and they dropped his sticks and ball and started running
Speaker 4: to the sound. And they didn't know what it was,
Speaker 4: but it was compelling. And when they got there, it
Speaker 4: was Arnett in the music store trying not to read.
Speaker 4: So that was the start of them, because Ornett he
Speaker 4: it was the call. They heard it, you know, and
Speaker 4: they ran to it, you know. And so Ornette told
Speaker 4: me once he said, man, if you get four guys
Speaker 4: and they can leave in an ideal, he said, you can.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 4: He didn't say changed the world, but he said you can.
Speaker 4: You can achieve a lot. I don't know how he
Speaker 4: how he put it, because he and I would have
Speaker 4: all these discussions and such. But I've always loved that
Speaker 4: story that Higgins told me about that.
Speaker 3: What was it like to play with him?
Speaker 4: Play with with Arnett or Higgins?
Speaker 3: Arnett?
Speaker 4: This was great, man. See, as he said to me,
Speaker 4: you can really play the saxophone, but that doesn't have
Speaker 4: a lot to do with music. He had his own cosmology.
Speaker 4: He he could he could do the traditional thing. He'd
Speaker 4: heard bird, he'd gone through that. But he was from
Speaker 4: Texas Fort Worth and he'd play with those rhythm and
Speaker 4: blues bands too. And the guys take his horn and
Speaker 4: break it and beat him up and stuff on the road.
Speaker 4: But he never stopped either, you know, he just kept
Speaker 4: kept going. And Phineas Newborn was our js bock in Memphis,
Speaker 4: and he had me to learn all the standards and
Speaker 4: the changes and the harmonic modulations and and and how
Speaker 4: do you call it a play Cherokee and b Flatin? Now,
Speaker 4: let's play it in a Let's play it in e
Speaker 4: And George Coma was like a Santini kind of guy,
Speaker 4: you know, sergeant major on your case, you know. So
Speaker 4: we had a serious school there in Memphis. And uh
Speaker 4: and Brooker Little was my best friend in high school.
Speaker 4: And he's the one when I first got to New York.
Speaker 4: I did tell you that. He said, where are you staying?
Speaker 4: I told you that. So anyway, he weren't that basics
Speaker 4: weren't the tightest, but he had his cosmology. And as
Speaker 4: I said, he was playing the etymology of what is
Speaker 4: this thing called? If he wasn't playing the changes, you know,
Speaker 4: And so he had moved into harmolodics, as he called it,
Speaker 4: and he was playing the sound of the music, you know.
Speaker 4: And so we would argue, you know, and he said, well,
Speaker 4: you know you're not you know, you're not telling the story,
Speaker 4: you know, singing the song. And I said, well, but
Speaker 4: you you can't read or something, you know. He was
Speaker 4: a little shaky there, you know, and he said, well,
Speaker 4: I'll fix him. He can't. You walked over to my house.
Speaker 4: He had a STUDI Baker car. Don't know if you
Speaker 4: ever remember that they were made in the fifties where
Speaker 4: the front in the back you can't tell which is which.
Speaker 4: And I remember that we were at a jam session
Speaker 4: at the Little Chris Club over by Wrigley Field here
Speaker 4: in la and Watts and we would go to these
Speaker 4: jam sessions and we would come out we'd be so
Speaker 4: high from the music that Ornett was taking us home
Speaker 4: in his car. But because you can't tell which is
Speaker 4: the front and which is the back, he backed up
Speaker 4: and backed over his horn. And because we were high
Speaker 4: from the music, and the relative kind of recedes and
Speaker 4: it's no longer what you think it is. It's not solid,
Speaker 4: you know, the relative. It's not like the absolute. You know.
Speaker 4: The absolute is we're all spirits on a human journey.
Speaker 4: And when you play this indigenous art form, something happens
Speaker 4: that takes you to another place where you don't have
Speaker 4: any limitations like the relative. And so that's what draws
Speaker 4: us to this music. It's the music of freedom and wonder.
Speaker 4: So by him backing over his alto and he was
Speaker 4: working day job down at Bullocks or something, driving an elevator,
Speaker 4: you know, it's like the Arment store one of downtown.
Speaker 4: Yeah it was wasn't Wilson and knows downtown, main part
Speaker 4: of downtown. But he would go down and park the
Speaker 4: freight elevator in the basement in practice, you know. So
Speaker 4: he you know what you have to do because you
Speaker 4: love the music so much, you know. And I'm drunk
Speaker 4: with that, you know. It's like Duke Allenton told my mother,
Speaker 4: you know, she said he wants to be a musician
Speaker 4: so bad, you know, And Johnny Hodges said well, and
Speaker 4: Duke said well no, no, no, no no, And they
Speaker 4: both said no. When my mother said, he wants to
Speaker 4: be a musician, and they said no, And so my
Speaker 4: mother said why, He said, this life is too hard.
Speaker 4: Make that boy be a doctor, lawyer or Indian chief,
Speaker 4: none of this stuff, you know. And so but by
Speaker 4: this time I'm bit by the cobra. So there's nothing
Speaker 4: I could do but play the music. Years later, as
Speaker 4: nine or ten or something like that, years later, in
Speaker 4: my mid twenties with the band with Keith Jarret and
Speaker 4: Jack de Jenett and Cecil McBee, we were in on
Speaker 4: tee and we kind of tore the place up and
Speaker 4: and Duke said, well, if that guy keeps stirring his suit,
Speaker 4: one day he's going to have something. But what he
Speaker 4: didn't understand I was the guy he was trying to
Speaker 4: say from doing this, you know. But I was yond saving,
Speaker 4: you know. Now, had I been a doctor, a lawyer
Speaker 4: in the chief, I wouldn't have met Dorothy, and we
Speaker 4: wouldn't we we wouldn't be on our path together, you know.
Speaker 4: So it's like who you gonna serve? You know. So
Speaker 4: in that we we were we were practicing, playing all
Speaker 4: that stuff. I always loved his cosmology though, and you know,
Speaker 4: he could write these tunes and they're beautiful man. And
Speaker 4: so one day we had a particular argument. He always
Speaker 4: was trying to tell me the chord can't resolve and
Speaker 4: stuff like that, you know. So we had five our
Speaker 4: phone conversations and we were just so deep off into.
Speaker 1: The chord can't resolve.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he didn't believe in that. So anyway, he he
Speaker 4: was trying to explain to me why a chord can't resolve,
Speaker 4: you know. Anyway, so he just takes Stanley Crouch. You
Speaker 4: would laugh, and he'd say to me, man, you know,
Speaker 4: or that talks all that stuff, he said, but when
Speaker 4: he starts playing that music, he said, it makes you cry.
Speaker 4: And you can hear children on the playground playing. You know,
Speaker 4: he can take you right to a state, you know,
Speaker 4: lonely woman and all that stuff. And so this particular
Speaker 4: day he walks over to my house and he takes
Speaker 4: out his horn. We must have serious arguments or something
Speaker 4: around that period. He takes out his horn and he
Speaker 4: plays the lowest note B flat on the horn, and
Speaker 4: the next note he played was the highest note on
Speaker 4: the horn, F and he chromatically brought them together like that.
Speaker 4: But he's like, like, what happened to Cherry and Billy Higgins.
Speaker 4: He squashed the hole of the molecule, molecular structure. So
Speaker 4: at that point you understand what I say. He did
Speaker 4: lowest note, highest note, and then you come up the
Speaker 4: next lowest note, the next lowest high note, and he
Speaker 4: did it all in a nanosecond. And I never heard
Speaker 4: one to do that in my life. At which point
Speaker 4: I bowed down and we never had another argument. Wow,
Speaker 4: because I wasn't about to argue with somebody who can. Uh.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like bird discovered the Adam and train
Speaker 4: smashed it. It was kind of we had a conversation
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did you spend time with Eric Dolphie?
Speaker 4: I did. Now. Eric Dolphin is an interesting guy. He
Speaker 4: he mastered the saxophone in fluting, all the clarinets and stuff.
Speaker 4: There's a guy named Buddy Collette who was the mentor
Speaker 4: to first Charlie Mingus, Eric Dolphie, myself, James Newton. He
Speaker 4: he a lot of people that I don't even know,
Speaker 4: and so he helped us all. And Buddy Collette was
Speaker 4: he was a mentor. He told Mingus used to play
Speaker 4: cello and the little bull legged kid be walking by
Speaker 4: his house. He said, if you get a bass, I'll
Speaker 4: put you in the band. Yeah, okay, So he gets
Speaker 4: the bass, and then with Eric, he began to teach
Speaker 4: Eric and get him up because seemed Buddy Kleg is
Speaker 4: the first guy who could got in the studios because
Speaker 4: he could play all the flutes and clarinets and would win.
Speaker 4: And so the white guys in the studio in those days,
Speaker 4: some of them wanted to be fair and they wanted
Speaker 4: to have some brothers in there. You know, it was
Speaker 4: kind of lonely in there because they they had heard
Speaker 4: that's the young and bird and Lady Day and all that.
Speaker 4: So they got Buddy in there. But the thing is
Speaker 4: that Eric, he was sent Eric to different teachers, and
Speaker 4: Eric got so off into the etymology of the of
Speaker 4: the thing of the mechanics of mastering the instruments. The
Speaker 4: Buddy told him one day, okay, no more, that's it.
Speaker 4: No more studying with all these esoteric masters. That's it.
Speaker 4: And so you know, yeah, we played in Gerald Wilson's
Speaker 4: big band together two alto's, Harold An Walter Bent and
Speaker 4: I don't remember who's playing baritone. Elma Hope was out
Speaker 4: here for a time. He played in that group with us. Wow,
Speaker 4: and he he was he came out to La from
Speaker 4: New York. Uh, that's what o'nett said to me. He said, Man,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm tired of his playing these gigs. He said,
Speaker 4: I write all this music. He said. I could be
Speaker 4: like Beto and I could be home with my woman,
Speaker 4: you know, having a good time, I don't you know,
Speaker 4: And down at Sephanie Hall they could be playing my music.
Speaker 4: And sure enough, one time he was playing the five
Speaker 4: spot and Leonard Beernstein jumped up on the stage and
Speaker 4: hugged him, you know, told him how beautiful his music was.
Speaker 4: Now you think you think about that. If Ornett had
Speaker 4: jumped up on the stage at Philharmonic Hall or somewhere
Speaker 4: and and told Lynny he didn't play Vogler that well tonight,
Speaker 4: or told him he did a good job, he'd probably
Speaker 4: been arrested. You know. It's kind of like that stuff
Speaker 4: over in Israel or or October sixth the brothers had
Speaker 4: gone in there with some sheddies and stuff. Them brothers
Speaker 4: have all been mowed down, but instead they switched the
Speaker 4: game around. So when you see too much stuff like that,
Speaker 4: it it hurts. And uh, fair play or something you know,
Speaker 4: it's not it's not it's not uh in the game.
Speaker 4: So when I come out of the house, I wear
Speaker 4: my beanie cap and my jacket and stuff so I
Speaker 4: can be warm, just in case Caesar sends the gendarmes
Speaker 4: down to mess with us, you know. And the weird
Speaker 4: it's weird, the things that a brother has to think about,
Speaker 4: you know. It's uh, that's why I live like I do.
Speaker 4: You know, I live quiet. The wolf's at the door,
Speaker 4: you know, and you try to do the best you
Speaker 4: can for me. But uh, I didn't know that my
Speaker 4: lifestyle would be so expensive. It's it's it's kind of
Speaker 4: expensive to live simply, you know. And that's the way
Speaker 4: we live with with no neighbors and and acreage. You know.
Speaker 2: After this break, we're back with the rest of our
Speaker 2: conversation with Charles Lloyd. Here's the rest of the conversation
Speaker 2: between down was Charles Lloyd and myself.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about your friendship with
Speaker 1: Booker Little.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Booker little uh he he and I met at
Speaker 4: about thirteen or fourteen. Booker first of all the creators.
Speaker 4: That's still the thing about God. You know, there's something
Speaker 4: beautiful about taking care of his children. You know, if
Speaker 4: I wonder though, why the game is still rigged. But
Speaker 4: so I get to New York and it's a Monday
Speaker 4: night and Booker is playing down in bird Land and
Speaker 4: I was staying across the street to Alvin Hotel, and
Speaker 4: I went down. I said, Booker, I'm here. He said,
Speaker 4: where are you staying. I said, I'm staying to Alvin.
Speaker 4: He said, no, you're not. You're coming home with me.
Speaker 4: So he was twenty two, and he took me home
Speaker 4: with him, and I was ready to jump into the
Speaker 4: fast lane because I'm in Mecca now, in Apple, you know.
Speaker 4: And he said, no, it's not about that, It's about character.
Speaker 4: What I came to find out was that he was
Speaker 4: a realized soul. He left a few months several months
Speaker 4: later at twenty three, and he took me apart because
Speaker 4: in high school we would go to the library and
Speaker 4: listen to bar talk string quartets and stuff, and discuss music.
Speaker 4: Thing about bar talk is that he would take his
Speaker 4: folk themes and he would put Bibonacci kind of number
Speaker 4: of stuff they had gotten from Egypt, and he would
Speaker 4: make these formulations and it was very beautiful what he
Speaker 4: was doing, and that's what I do. I take my
Speaker 4: folk songs, you know. And if you listen to my
Speaker 4: new record, what's my new record call? I almost say
Speaker 4: which way is East? But that's not the new record,
Speaker 4: that's the one with Higgins. The sky will still be
Speaker 4: there tomorrow. We may not be there tomorrow, but the
Speaker 4: sky will be And I'm trying to so Booker. He
Speaker 4: straightened me out, and he told me about character, and
Speaker 4: he was an enlightened soul. And I have not met
Speaker 4: anyone in this music as advanced as he was spiritually.
Speaker 4: And he set me on the path. I asked some detours.
Speaker 4: Booker left at twenty three. He came home at Christmas time.
Speaker 4: He was a year ahead of me in school, and
Speaker 4: he's two weeks younger than me. April second would be
Speaker 4: his birthday. We had to make out we make a
Speaker 4: tribute to him every year. So he came home from
Speaker 4: school at eighteen. We were both eighteen, and Clifford Brown
Speaker 4: had died, and Clifford was his hero, and he was
Speaker 4: killed in a car accident playing with Max Roach on
Speaker 4: the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Booker was crying. We were hanging
Speaker 4: out and he said, you know, cliff is gone, and
Speaker 4: Clifford was twenty five, and Booker said, why couldn't it
Speaker 4: have been me? He was eighteen, So you don't know,
Speaker 4: no young people ready to sacrifice or to put themselves
Speaker 4: in harms way like that to do and fure enough.
Speaker 4: Booker left at twenty three, but the creator had prepared him.
Speaker 4: He was advanced. He had a sister, Vera, a little
Speaker 4: who was an opera singer. Dorothy and I have a
Speaker 4: picture from our world travels. We have a picture with
Speaker 4: Beerer with the Pope. Yeah. I mean, so he comes
Speaker 4: from some deep stuff, and all of our stuff is
Speaker 4: very deep. The music, you know, the stuff I'm talking about,
Speaker 4: praise and bird and all of that. You know. It's
Speaker 4: like like I wanted to Mary lady day and you know,
Speaker 4: give her the long driveway and stuff, you know, And
Speaker 4: you know, because she was singing just to me. So
Speaker 4: I put my radio on the pillow and I'd listened
Speaker 4: late at night. You know, I could hear, you know.
Speaker 4: Booker also had Cohen Hawkins Colman Hawkins hid who was
Speaker 4: a master of modernity and the tenor saxophone, and he
Speaker 4: knew his harmonies. He also played cello and and he
Speaker 4: commissioned Booker to write music for an architect for him.
Speaker 4: The day they were in the recording studio, that was
Speaker 4: the day Booker left town. And everybody was looking for
Speaker 4: the music and looking for Booker. And I knew his lady, Matil,
Speaker 4: and to this day I saw the music on the piano,
Speaker 4: but the music has never been found, you know. And
Speaker 4: but he did write it. He also wrote the music
Speaker 4: for trains, Africa Brass and all the all the brass,
Speaker 4: and he he he did a beautiful thing. Man, if
Speaker 4: you haven't listened to Africa Brass, check it out the
Speaker 4: brass they're doing Booker, Booker taught him how to do that.
Speaker 4: You know. There was a guy named Bob Norton was
Speaker 4: a French horn player and he was on that too,
Speaker 4: But all the all of so Booker, Booker, he was
Speaker 4: very modern, very very special. He didn't have a big
Speaker 4: love Ornett though, and I was hoping that he'd lived
Speaker 4: long enough that we could have bridged that gap. But
Speaker 4: Booker was he was, I mean, you know, he took Eric.
Speaker 4: Of course, Eric was was very schooled and Booker was
Speaker 4: very schooled. But Booker also was a wise man. And
Speaker 4: his music, that stuff he did out front on candid
Speaker 4: with with another friend of my California, Don Friedman, great pianists,
Speaker 4: and he's on that record. I was so happy to
Speaker 4: see and Eric Dolphins on their record. I was happy
Speaker 4: to see Memphis and Cali all mixed up in there together.
Speaker 1: You know, did you get what he said when he
Speaker 1: said it's all about it's about character. Did you get
Speaker 1: it right away?
Speaker 4: No, what happened was that I heard it. But when
Speaker 4: I moved out here, I started studying Vedanta and that's
Speaker 4: Shri Rama Krishna. And he is one of the last
Speaker 4: guys who came through here with the goods. And he
Speaker 4: was born eighteen thirty eight. He lived fifty years, so
Speaker 4: he left town in eighteen eighty eight. But he made
Speaker 4: twelve guys saw me. Ivivakonando was his main cat that
Speaker 4: he made. He made all these guys. And he was
Speaker 4: so called illiterate in India, but he had the sacred tablets inside,
Speaker 4: so he'd start. We were living in Bigxur and I
Speaker 4: got deep off into Vedanta because I was studying the
Speaker 4: wisdom of the ancients because I'm not going to go
Speaker 4: in the public way anymore and play. And I was
Speaker 4: playing outside the nature of the giant redwoods, and these
Speaker 4: beautiful clouds who come over and say hello to me,
Speaker 4: and the sun would break through, and I had all
Speaker 4: these birds and animals and mountain lions and deer and
Speaker 4: stuff would come around our property there. So I came
Speaker 4: down to Santa Barber to the Vedanta bookstore, and I
Speaker 4: was asking some deep questions about the infinite and this
Speaker 4: young nun said, well, I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 4: about that. I don't know how to answer that. And
Speaker 4: then suddenly an old nun came out of the back
Speaker 4: of the bookstore and she said, do you meditate? And
Speaker 4: I said yes, I've been meditating for twenty thirty years.
Speaker 4: She said, has it changed your character? And there was Booker.
Speaker 4: It hit me, man, so it all Booker has been
Speaker 4: guiding me all this time. And when she says it
Speaker 4: changed your character, it was like playing this music the
Speaker 4: lifestyle and how it's set up in the setup of
Speaker 4: the world and you playing in beer taverns. You know.
Speaker 4: It's it's kind of a different mill year, you know.
Speaker 4: And so I had to get off the bus, you know,
Speaker 4: and go into the woods and to refine myself because
Speaker 4: Booker had laid it on me. It's not about the
Speaker 4: fast lane, it's about character. Booker left at twenty three,
Speaker 4: and when I stayed with him, he was always cautioning me.
Speaker 4: You know, I was in a marriage at that time
Speaker 4: that didn't work out. And when it didn't work out,
Speaker 4: Dorothy and I admit, but she had moved to Europe
Speaker 4: because she didn't want to be a part of breaking
Speaker 4: up some family or so. And when she heard I
Speaker 4: was gotten a divorce, she came back and we've been
Speaker 4: together ever since, you know. So it's like, but she
Speaker 4: also knows more cosmology about all this stuff than me.
Speaker 4: She knows that we lived in other lives together, you know,
Speaker 4: And you can get her a few to talk about
Speaker 4: that stuff. She's wise, you know, and Booker and so
Speaker 4: what I'm getting at is it took me a long
Speaker 4: time to straighten up and fly right, you know, And
Speaker 4: I'm so thrilled that his really beautiful thing. A lot
Speaker 4: of guys can play a lot of stuff, you know.
Speaker 4: But what I'm trying to do is sing a song
Speaker 4: and tell a story. And when when the alignment is right,
Speaker 4: the work on my character, it enhances the beauty of
Speaker 4: my sound because the old guy has told me those
Speaker 4: notes don't mean anything unless you have a beautiful sound.
Speaker 4: So I'm all my life working on my sound, you know.
Speaker 4: And then the beautiful thing about Buddy Collette, he said
Speaker 4: to me, I know you want to play. I started
Speaker 4: teaching school. When I graduated mess C, I didn't have
Speaker 4: any bread or anything. And all my friends had gone
Speaker 4: to New York or that, and Higgins and Scott and
Speaker 4: Cherry and Charlie and they all left. So I was
Speaker 4: out here in California and another pineapple would hit me
Speaker 4: on the head or something, and I wasn't in the sleepwalking,
Speaker 4: so I couldn't wait to get back to New York.
Speaker 4: But the thing is that Lo and Behold, you know,
Speaker 4: I go east, I come back west, you know, go east,
Speaker 4: So I go all around the globe, you know. But
Speaker 4: I have a nest now, and I have a mate
Speaker 4: that's with me and cares about what we're doing, and
Speaker 4: so we live spiritual life and it's quiet and simple.
Speaker 4: And then I had a notion about three years ago
Speaker 4: before COVID hit, that I wanted still wanted to change
Speaker 4: the world with the beauty of music, and Lo and Behold,
Speaker 4: COVID came in and so it took us three years
Speaker 4: to make this record, and we finally I got the
Speaker 4: right people to make it the right.
Speaker 3: The response has been incredible. Have you read all the
Speaker 3: articles from me?
Speaker 4: I try not to read all that stuff. You know why,
Speaker 4: because when you tell me it's gone triple platinum, I'll
Speaker 4: believe you. You know, but right now it's still ten
Speaker 4: cents of dance, and you you.
Speaker 3: Know that.
Speaker 4: I don't know, well, I know, but I'm trying to
Speaker 4: tell you that the man is knocking, the wolf is
Speaker 4: knocking at the door, and we we love our simple retreat,
Speaker 4: and I need you to pick up the tempo and
Speaker 4: find some way that I can get that thing through
Speaker 4: the under the See what happened to me in the sixties.
Speaker 4: We had to breakthrough because I had played Monterey Jazz Festival,
Speaker 4: and then I came into San Francisco to play a
Speaker 4: club called El Matador, and then there was a group
Speaker 4: up the street called the Committee, which was like Belushi
Speaker 4: and those guys what were they called in Chicago City
Speaker 4: on second So they were like that, and these guys said, man,
Speaker 4: we don't even listen to jazz, we don't even like it,
Speaker 4: But man, we come back to hear you guys every
Speaker 4: night after we close our theater down there at their
Speaker 4: own theater up up on Broadway, and the club was
Speaker 4: on Broadway. And this one of the guys, Morgan Upton,
Speaker 4: he said, you know, men, there's this place to fill morning.
Speaker 4: There's two thousand kids over the laying on the floor
Speaker 4: listening to music. I think you should go there and
Speaker 4: play one Sunday. I said, who plays there? He said
Speaker 4: Muddy Waters And I said, oh, McKinley, Morganfield, I know
Speaker 4: those guys, you know, and so Chuck Berry and stuff,
Speaker 4: you know. And so he took me over there and
Speaker 4: I was supposed to play for a half hour and
Speaker 4: hour and a half. They wouldn't let us off the stage.
Speaker 4: So Graham started booking its bill Graham and and you know,
Speaker 4: then that circuit opened up for me. And it's kind
Speaker 4: of like FM radio became free form. You know. They
Speaker 4: play Grateful Dead, and they played me and Grateful Dad
Speaker 4: was walking around with dream Weaver. They loved that record,
Speaker 4: you know. And then they are all those bands in
Speaker 4: San Francisco wanted to be on the same shows with us.
Speaker 4: Of course, all those guys are billionaires now and I'm
Speaker 4: still out here trying to get the cart working, you know,
Speaker 4: get my car on the shop.
Speaker 1: Did you want to lean into the success of forest
Speaker 1: Flower and no?
Speaker 4: Hold success? That's dangerous stuff, you know. I love the music.
Speaker 4: I was told if I would play forest Flower the
Speaker 4: same way, with the same booring solo every night, they
Speaker 4: could get me over. But I like to go exploring
Speaker 4: every night because when you go exploring, you don't come
Speaker 4: back the same you get. You find things you find,
Speaker 4: not diamond mines of gold Man's. You find sandalwood forests
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. So I'm not wired, probably for
Speaker 4: being the media commands always at his best. I'm looking
Speaker 4: for something else, and what I'm looking for is looking
Speaker 4: for me. It is too late for me to change
Speaker 4: my stripes, you know. I mean, look what Quincy did
Speaker 4: he found? You know? He was always on the path,
Speaker 4: you know. But you know Michael Jackson, all that stuff
Speaker 4: he produced, you know, and then he fans you know,
Speaker 4: some people. But I can only focus on nothing against
Speaker 4: what he's doing. He's a wise man, you know, but
Speaker 4: he's seen it all, you know. I think if you
Speaker 4: stay over here too long, you might get burned or something.
Speaker 4: And I haven't seen anybody, as I say, get out
Speaker 4: of here alive yet. And the way we live it's
Speaker 4: very beautiful, but it's almost like my what do you
Speaker 4: call it? It's attributed to my spiritual life. I'll just
Speaker 4: put it that way. And again, you asked me about
Speaker 4: Booker Little. Booker Little was the most evolved soul that's
Speaker 4: ever played this music, and he never Here's the thing
Speaker 4: we come through. Here, we sing our song, nobody knows us,
Speaker 4: and we're gone.
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 3: You know? I'm seventy two. I'm starting to see some
Speaker 3: of my friends splitting. You're a few years older, you're
Speaker 3: eighty six. Is it weird being like one of the
Speaker 3: last guys standing from your era.
Speaker 4: Last of the Mohiggins. Yeah, it's I didn't plan on it,
Speaker 4: you know. I never thought i'd be around this time
Speaker 4: this long. But now the health issues that are hitting
Speaker 4: me now, and I haven't finished my work, you know,
Speaker 4: and uh, maybe this record that that you have, that
Speaker 4: that you are so touched by, and it's it seems
Speaker 4: to be speaking to people. We played up there in
Speaker 4: the last festival we played and the people people went gaga,
Speaker 4: you know. So I don't know what to say about
Speaker 4: any of it. But I just told you what I've
Speaker 4: learned to live with. We come through here, we sing
Speaker 4: our song, nobody knows this's and we're gone. I have
Speaker 4: to go down with the ship. I'm not prepared to
Speaker 4: pick up soap and do some funny stuff. It's not
Speaker 4: it's not in my DNA. And I got all that
Speaker 4: mixed up genealogy in there too, And so there must
Speaker 4: be a reason the create or brought me through here.
Speaker 4: And Billy Higgins pulling my coat when I was getting
Speaker 4: ready to pull back in two thousand, it uh, I
Speaker 4: realized that that I must go down with the ship.
Speaker 4: And so so be it. I suppose, you know, we
Speaker 4: I suppose our blessing of living in Paradise with Dorothy
Speaker 4: is it is a beautiful thing. So and I'm thankful,
Speaker 4: and I'm trying to prepare myself to go out. I
Speaker 4: remember we had a guru, our guru swam me Retationanda
Speaker 4: from from Hini and he he was leaving town and
Speaker 4: he was in the hospital and they had him hooked
Speaker 4: up to all these wires and stuff, and he was
Speaker 4: leaving and he was going into Mahasamadi and all of
Speaker 4: a sudden, these doctors and stuff. They start pulling the
Speaker 4: wires and start doing stuff. And he came down to
Speaker 4: them and he said, what are you doing. They said, well,
Speaker 4: we're trying to say if you keep you here, He said,
Speaker 4: can't you see that I'm trying to leave, you know?
Speaker 4: So a wise man. See, here's the thing. When you leave,
Speaker 4: make sure you go out awake, because if you go
Speaker 4: out conscious, you can make your matriculation to the other shore.
Speaker 4: As I understand it from the wisdom of the ancients.
Speaker 4: With modernity, you can go to the other shore without impediments.
Speaker 2: Even you mentioned all these great jasmine from Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about a bass player from here who
Speaker 2: passed not long ago, Henry Grimes's cious.
Speaker 4: If you he wasn't from here. I knew him in
Speaker 4: New York. We played together a lot. I met him
Speaker 4: in New York and he had an apartment up on
Speaker 4: the West Side and we'd go up jam and play
Speaker 4: all the time. And he played a lot of gigs
Speaker 4: with me in New York in the early days. It
Speaker 4: was a coterie of young musicians, Herbie Hancock and Ron
Speaker 4: Carter and Tony Williams, Jack Pete Laroque. Yeah, I knew
Speaker 4: Grimes He was a sweetheart. Yeah, And I also knew
Speaker 4: him after he had had that, he came back out
Speaker 4: here and was on scared row or something. I ran
Speaker 4: into him later after he was being second coming, you know,
Speaker 4: and he was very still, very sweet but quiet, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I knew him. Something I want to tell you about
Speaker 4: Buddy Collette is that he was one of the guys
Speaker 4: for the Underground Railroad. He would take people to another
Speaker 4: kind of place, you know, meaning that he was playing
Speaker 4: on Groucho Mark's show. Groucher liked him and they would
Speaker 4: go to lunch and stuff together. And he said, one
Speaker 4: day a guy came over to Groucher and said, Groucher,
Speaker 4: you know a big boy, you know from studios and stuff.
Speaker 4: He said, Groucher, where do you keep your money? Groucher said,
Speaker 4: I keep it in treasuries and grout Buddy was. Buddy
Speaker 4: told me the story and he said, well, doesn't pay
Speaker 4: very much, does it. Groucher says, it does if you
Speaker 4: have enough. So meaning that Buddy told me that, and
Speaker 4: I always wanted to. I tried to dabble in investing
Speaker 4: and stuff like that with a little chump change that
Speaker 4: I've had, and it never went so far, but I'm
Speaker 4: thinking about that now. With my little pennies and nickels dimes,
Speaker 4: I just put them in treasuries and see if I
Speaker 4: can get Dorothy's substraight. Now, but someday you need to
Speaker 4: talk to her because she she did a film on me.
Speaker 4: Did you ever see it? I didn't see Ers into Infinity.
Speaker 4: Find it right, put it down in your phone. Errors
Speaker 4: into Infinity. It's very very Booker's in there, everybody's in there. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but it collects in there, you know. So people talk
Speaker 4: to me about writing a book all the time. But
Speaker 4: I watched her film in uh a big ears in Knoxville.
Speaker 4: We played a concert with Jason Moran and Larry Grenadere's
Speaker 4: such an Eric Harlan and they showed Dorothy's film and
Speaker 4: it brought I was had tears all during the film
Speaker 4: throughout it, and it's it's two hours of you can
Speaker 4: get it on Amazon or something eras Into Infinity. It's
Speaker 4: worth seeing. Yes, a lot of history.
Speaker 2: There is a question I'd like to ask, just because
Speaker 2: you know, having grown up in South Los Angeles, myself
Speaker 2: and I always heard about Central Avenue, being as you're
Speaker 2: from Memphis and you had beal Street, and you were
Speaker 2: out here in Central Avenue was still something of a
Speaker 2: lot being alive.
Speaker 4: Towards the end of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was what was Central Avenue like? And how
Speaker 1: did that compare to a place like Beal Street.
Speaker 4: I would go play these sessions. Uh, there was still
Speaker 4: some remnants of it. I'll leave you with something really interesting.
Speaker 4: Nat Cole was playing over the bird was Colman Hawkins
Speaker 4: was would play over there too. Dig this Colman Hawkins
Speaker 4: was living over there. And I don't know what that
Speaker 4: area is called now. It's over by sc but it's
Speaker 4: a little loftier up in the up up in the
Speaker 4: Adams district over there by the little little leafy over there.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I guess the white folks would move further west or something.
Speaker 4: But Colman was living in this excuse me, in this
Speaker 4: room in house. You know, they had this big old mansions.
Speaker 4: They turned him into rooms and stuff. And he would
Speaker 4: come home at night from playing on Central Avenue, and
Speaker 4: he had a chrystler and he'd leave his windows down
Speaker 4: in his car because you know, it's hot in the
Speaker 4: summer and so, and he have his horn on the
Speaker 4: back seat and he go upstairs and go to bed.
Speaker 4: So what do you think happened to his horn?
Speaker 1: Stolen?
Speaker 4: Never? Never? No, because that's Colemenhawkins and he's fuel in
Speaker 4: the universe. And the pimps and the drug dealers. No,
Speaker 4: don't mess with that horn because he's a holy man.
Speaker 4: His horn was never tampered with. That's that's deep to me. Man.
Speaker 4: You know, people know some places, some things you don't
Speaker 4: mess with. You know. You know, it's like, don't put
Speaker 4: this stuff on the air because it's not presentable, and
Speaker 4: and the stuff that I'm talking about, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: it's it's my life and nobody's interested in it. And
Speaker 4: h but what I've seen, what I've seen, and what
Speaker 4: I understand from the situation, I know what's going on,
Speaker 4: but I can't say what's going on because those who
Speaker 4: say don't those who know don't say, and those who
Speaker 4: say don't know. But I know what's happening. I know
Speaker 4: what time it is. That's why I lived quietly away
Speaker 4: from the maddening crowd. And I don't bother nobody, and
Speaker 4: I expect the same.
Speaker 1: You talk about. You guys just worked together.
Speaker 4: He was a freedom fighter from Hungary and he came
Speaker 4: over here and I met him when I first joined Chico,
Speaker 4: Chico had him in the band for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 4: but Chico fired him and got some guy, journeyman guitar
Speaker 4: player from Philadelphia to come. And so when Chico started
Speaker 4: up again, I was gonna leave because he was playing straight.
Speaker 4: I had some good, good arrangement stuff, but I had
Speaker 4: I was, I had this be in my bonnet to uh,
Speaker 4: to light the thing up I wanted. I had to
Speaker 4: play this indigenous art for him how it was given
Speaker 4: to me. And he said, no, you can stay, Please stay.
Speaker 4: He said, let's organize the band around what you want
Speaker 4: to do. We made those records passing through Man from
Speaker 4: two worlds, different stuff anyway, and he said, who you
Speaker 4: wanted the band? I said, the first guy we're going
Speaker 4: to get is that guitar player you fired.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It was a good boar. And I brought Albert Stinson then,
Speaker 4: who grew up with Bobby Hutchison over in Pasadena. So
Speaker 4: I got those guys and uh, and I brought a
Speaker 4: guy out from Memphis, Garnet Brown, a trombone player who
Speaker 4: played with us for a while. Yeah and yeah, it
Speaker 4: was like that, what was your question? He was great,
Speaker 4: He was a freedom fighter. He was out there in
Speaker 4: the streets in Hungary. Came over here with a broken heart.
Speaker 4: They lived in a camp somewhere, he told me. Came
Speaker 4: around the corner and there was his fiance and the
Speaker 4: mud with some other guy. And he never healed from that,
Speaker 4: and he he was devoted to the music. But later
Speaker 4: on fast laying got him out here, you know. But
Speaker 4: the beautiful thing is, we like fast cars. We used
Speaker 4: to raise Porsches and Ferraris and stuff and went and
Speaker 4: we weren't no longer together. But he was living out here,
Speaker 4: and I'd moved back to here when I moved to
Speaker 4: Malibu in sixty nine. And uh, there used to be
Speaker 4: a freight company called Flying Tiger, and you could fly
Speaker 4: your car out from New York for three hundred dollars.
Speaker 4: So I would take my car out to La Guardio
Speaker 4: Kennedy wherever it was, and they put my Ferrari on
Speaker 4: a thing and I'd fly out on tw and i'd
Speaker 4: go to the freight and get my car and drive
Speaker 4: up the coast, you know. So but one day something
Speaker 4: happened to my car, and I called Pietro Rulei, who
Speaker 4: was who ran Hollywood Sports Cars, and he came to
Speaker 4: the straight and helped me out, and the Boar came
Speaker 4: with him because we hit We were in different camps
Speaker 4: by that time, and we had such a beautiful reunion
Speaker 4: and we made a record together. I can't remember that record.
Speaker 1: Is that waves?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's on that. But the best music so far
Speaker 4: has been Don's latest record with me. So I'm happy
Speaker 4: that in my lifetime I've been able to grow in
Speaker 4: the music and not bore myself or others.
Speaker 1: You know from my ears.
Speaker 2: From my ears, the way I hear you and Gollo,
Speaker 2: it's the same as you and Jason Moran, like you
Speaker 2: and Jason Moran sound incredible to me.
Speaker 4: I was playing a concert at Carnegie Hall with an
Speaker 4: Indian group I have with zakiir Hussein and Eric Harlan,
Speaker 4: and I didn't know Jason, but he came to that concert,
Speaker 4: and Jason came and he said and so he told
Speaker 4: Eric he wanted to play with me, and I didn't
Speaker 4: really know his music. But then Jerry Allen was playing
Speaker 4: with me. He was a wonderful pianist. Uh and she
Speaker 4: got her bookings mixed up and she can only do
Speaker 4: half of a long European tour so I didn't want
Speaker 4: to do that because you know, as I said, we
Speaker 4: come back, go exploring, come back, not the same. But
Speaker 4: I want to build on what we did, what we
Speaker 4: were doing, and keep going higher. And so Eric called
Speaker 4: me and said, Jason wants to play with you, because
Speaker 4: he'd already said that, and I didn't say anything, and
Speaker 4: he said he understands. And when he said that, I
Speaker 4: said welcome. So that's when Jason came in two thousand
Speaker 4: and six and he, uh, yeah, we've had some wonderful
Speaker 4: moments together. Yeah, kind of like what I had with Higgins,
Speaker 4: you know that period in the earlier period with the
Speaker 4: original quartet, you know, with Keith and Jack, that was special. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Did you get to play with scottland Fower?
Speaker 4: Very much? Scott and I were best friends, you know.
Speaker 4: He he also was a clarinet player.
Speaker 3: Did you know that I knew it came from uh
Speaker 3: lyrical melodic?
Speaker 4: Yeah he got oh yeah, yeah, he he was. He
Speaker 4: was fantastic. He's he set a standard that I haven't
Speaker 4: seen nobody surpass yet. And uh so, although I was
Speaker 4: in Memphis with all that rich community, Phineas Newborn and
Speaker 4: all of that, and then when I came out here.
Speaker 4: There was on thatt Eric Dolphine and Jerald Wilton's big
Speaker 4: band with Harold Land and a lot of a lot
Speaker 4: of people. And then then came these young guys you
Speaker 4: know down Cherry and Charlie Hayden and uh, Scotty. Scotty
Speaker 4: and I played together a lot, a lot of gigs,
Speaker 4: and then he got a call to come back to
Speaker 4: New York. Uh that's how he left here. You won't
Speaker 4: believe this. He he got a call to play with
Speaker 4: a singer, Dick Himes, and he was gonna be Elvin
Speaker 4: was playing drums, come on yow. So that that's that
Speaker 4: was a trio back dig Hymes. I don't know who's
Speaker 4: playing piano. But then later on he morphed into Bill
Speaker 4: Evans and then he he came out here on a
Speaker 4: tour later with Ornette. You know.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 4: But we played just gigs around town. And I had
Speaker 4: a gig at a place called the Dragon Wick in
Speaker 4: Pasadena for many years when I was in college, and
Speaker 4: Scotty and I would play there. Yeah, Higgins, you.
Speaker 3: Know, was he playing that style?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Then yeah he could do that. Yeah, he took that.
Speaker 4: You know what he did one day he came over
Speaker 4: to my house near sc because I'd moved off that
Speaker 4: campus because I couldn't deal with that, And and he had
Speaker 4: written out Bird solo to uh, just friends. No, well
Speaker 4: I don't. He wrote it out for me. You know.
Speaker 4: He was like a gift to me, you know, because
Speaker 4: there's such a beautiful solo that Bird plays on just Friends.
Speaker 4: But Scotty know he was. He was like one of
Speaker 4: a kind, you know, as Booker was, as as so
Speaker 4: many of these great saints are, you know, saints and sages.
Speaker 4: That's what came through here, and the country doesn't know
Speaker 4: it's indigenous art form or appreciates it, and so sometimes
Speaker 4: it kind of blows me away. And so I live
Speaker 4: in the woods now and I don't take no prisoners.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Did you meet the Beach Boys through meditation? No?
Speaker 4: Beach Boys were fans of mine. They they had heard
Speaker 4: that I was a meditator. And Mike Love is born
Speaker 4: on my same birthday. He's three years younger than me,
Speaker 4: March fifteenth, and they were seeking me out and I
Speaker 4: didn't know their music. And then someone played a Wild
Speaker 4: Honey for me and I like that, and then they
Speaker 4: played pet Sounds and that was it. And then Mike
Speaker 4: Love was always coming to Malibu with fruits and offerings
Speaker 4: and stuff, you know, and so we became close. But
Speaker 4: I hadn't know I left Big, I left Malibu. I
Speaker 4: was hanging out with Peter Fonda when he made that
Speaker 4: film Easy Rioter and Larry Hagman all that in the
Speaker 4: Colony and Burgess marriage. But when Peter made that film,
Speaker 4: we would go sailing. A guy named John Kelly, who
Speaker 4: ran the studio, would give us his sailboat, and uh,
Speaker 4: we would go sailing. And I didn't have any so
Speaker 4: I left Malibu and I didn't have any economics. So
Speaker 4: we were living in Big Sir Dorothy and me, and
Speaker 4: we built a humble, simple house up there, Japanese country house,
Speaker 4: and Mike Love. They made Brian's studio available to me,
Speaker 4: and that's when I made, uh some of those records
Speaker 4: that you may may not know about. And the Beach
Speaker 4: Boys sang on some of those records with me. That
Speaker 4: record waves is the Waves of I don't know what
Speaker 4: it was, but anyway, all life is.
Speaker 3: One yeah life ye warm waters.
Speaker 4: Yeah. They but they gave me their studio, an engineer
Speaker 4: and and Brian would be upstairs in his bed with
Speaker 4: the sandbox and stuff, and he'd come downstairs and started singing.
Speaker 4: He called the boys and they all come over and
Speaker 4: we'd made they sing on my record. So that was
Speaker 4: a beautiful thing. You know. I had an idea years
Speaker 4: ago when I used to play what's the club call
Speaker 4: over there? Shelley's Manhole or something, but anyway, and around
Speaker 4: the back street that was a little in the alley
Speaker 4: back there were some little clubs back they were starting
Speaker 4: up in the in the doors and uh and and uh.
Speaker 4: Roger McGuinn what was his girl? Called the Birds they
Speaker 4: were So I liked the Birds, and so I was
Speaker 4: on Columbia. They were on Columbia. So I told a
Speaker 4: guy named Billy James, who was a functionary Columbian, and
Speaker 4: I said, man, I want to do a record with
Speaker 4: these guys, the Birds and me. And he took it
Speaker 4: upstairs and they said never. We're not going to let
Speaker 4: that happen. You know.
Speaker 3: I'm sure Crosby was a fan Davy Cross and as
Speaker 3: a friend he was big friends with Spencer Dryden, who
Speaker 3: played drums with the Airplane and Spencer and I used
Speaker 3: to play jazz gieks together.
Speaker 1: Before he was in the airplane two four.
Speaker 4: Yeah, before he was an airplane and then he went
Speaker 4: up there. Yeah, and they would always meet me whenever
Speaker 4: I came to town. He and Grace had hooked up,
Speaker 4: and uh, they'd bring me offerings and stuff, put peru
Speaker 4: on the table. You know.
Speaker 2: One thing I wanted to go back to is you
Speaker 2: mentioned the plantation in West Arkansas, West Memphis, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Excuse me? And is it true? Elvis would come in.
Speaker 4: He would come in every night to hear hear his
Speaker 4: play because he loved Calvin. And Calvin was a showman too.
Speaker 4: He could he could play the guitar, and he could
Speaker 4: jump real high in the sky and he shake his
Speaker 4: legs and stuff. And Elvis couldn't do that with the guitar,
Speaker 4: but he saw el so Calvin shaking his legs, so
Speaker 4: he copped that. And he and he was always at
Speaker 4: There's a book called uh quiet as his cap uh
Speaker 4: and uh I think Calvin wrote it about Phineas and uh,
Speaker 4: but Elvis is in there. He would come over their
Speaker 4: house for death. Elvis was a truck driver. He drove
Speaker 4: drove some kind of he was iceman, electrician or electrical.
Speaker 4: He drove some kind of trucks and uh, but he
Speaker 4: was over there every night to hear flee. You know.
Speaker 4: He loved he loved Calvin.
Speaker 1: You know, did he throw you when he became what he?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it did throw me. One day in Montecito, where
Speaker 4: we lived, I ran into uh, Priscilla at some big
Speaker 4: party the tennis buddy was having. He had big great
Speaker 4: Gaspia state and stuff like that, George Washington Smith, big
Speaker 4: old Spanish flea. Anyway, I ran a lot of people there,
Speaker 4: but bash Car menning. Do you know about him? He ran?
Speaker 4: He ran what was it called? It wasn't capital, It
Speaker 4: was the whole e m I he wrote, he ran.
Speaker 4: I said, man, how did you do that? He's Indian?
Speaker 4: From from Indian? I said, how did you do that?
Speaker 4: He said, old Charles. I just failed up.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 4: That's cute that he could say that Priscilla. So I said,
Speaker 4: I saw Priscilla at this party. So I said, Priscilla,
Speaker 4: can I speak to you? And she looked at me
Speaker 4: and she said, she said, this guy's hitting on me,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean I could see in her eyes
Speaker 4: when she was She said sure. Yeah. So we went
Speaker 4: side and talked. You know, I said, I'm from Memphis.
Speaker 4: She said, you're from Memphis. She didn't believe it. I said,
Speaker 4: you know, I always had problems with this Elvis thing.
Speaker 4: You know, he took another man's song, you know, and
Speaker 4: he took it to the penthouse, you know, and Capital
Speaker 4: Gains and all that stuff. I said, how did he
Speaker 4: feel about that? And she said to me, he felt
Speaker 4: very inadequate. And she said he would go around to
Speaker 4: the black churches on Sunday and put watts one hundred
Speaker 4: dollars bills in the in the offering. Yeah. So when
Speaker 4: she said that, he kind of disarmed me, you know,
Speaker 4: because I didn't. I didn't know him except I used
Speaker 4: to record a lot over at Sun Records because they
Speaker 4: didn't have us horns come in and play behind stuff.
Speaker 4: But I didn't. I never played on his records. But
Speaker 4: he would come to the Plantation in every night to
Speaker 4: check us out. It was like, is like looking behind
Speaker 4: looking behind the door?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: Was it a rough scene like in the Memphis Club?
Speaker 3: Did did you like have to fight your way out? Sometimes?
Speaker 4: Well, it was very rough in the sense that with
Speaker 4: Willie Mitchell, I was playing his band and we had
Speaker 4: to come across the bridge at one hundred and twenty
Speaker 4: miles an hour with the with the John Darmes whatever
Speaker 4: you call those guys following us, you know, because the
Speaker 4: word had gotten out that we were socializing, you know,
Speaker 4: and they didn't they didn't like that. You know. Let
Speaker 4: me tell you something funny about Central Avenue. So nat
Speaker 4: Cole was playing over there too, and one night the
Speaker 4: club he was playing in, Cap Calloi came in and
Speaker 4: so he ran over to his table. Oh, mister Callierry,
Speaker 4: oh please please, I'm so happy to meet you. And
Speaker 4: he was bowing down and stuff, you know, and he said,
Speaker 4: I'm I'm playing piano. He said, I'm just starting to sing,
Speaker 4: you know. Can you give me any advice, any anything
Speaker 4: to help me? You know? He said yes, he none
Speaker 4: see it. And that took that to the bank, you know,
Speaker 4: he just took it. He just so he heard that.
Speaker 4: So that's what you have to do. Yeah. Yeah, someone
Speaker 4: referred to tont in my record. I was shocked the
Speaker 4: new record Dorothy Harley or something sent me. The guy
Speaker 4: said this record. He said, I love nat Cole. He
Speaker 4: said this record is smooth like that coal, but it's
Speaker 4: not lightweight, you know. Yeah, So that's that's good to
Speaker 4: pull off something that it's kind of like we did
Speaker 4: in the sixes. You get under the transom before it's illegal.
Speaker 4: Don you could? You could take this record a long
Speaker 4: way if you could find the right conduit and somebody
Speaker 4: like this brother here who cares. But there are people
Speaker 4: out there, are sensitives. See. My notion is that they're
Speaker 4: still sensitives in this world. And that thing up on
Speaker 4: the board on the wall there on the screen, says McIntosh. Well,
Speaker 4: when we were young kids, we loved McIntosh and Morants
Speaker 4: and we were trying to get the best equipment because
Speaker 4: we loved to play live, and what we heard live
Speaker 4: you couldn't hear on these little speakers and stuff, you know.
Speaker 4: And J B. LANs and they had this big paragon
Speaker 4: speakers and stuff, you know. And so because all my
Speaker 4: life we were trying to put the pursuit was to
Speaker 4: get up so close to the music, you know, And
Speaker 4: this record that we just made it gets pretty close,
Speaker 4: you know. And I'm really I'll stand by it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful record. You heard it. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: gorgeous record. Thank you, it is, I mean, and you've
Speaker 1: made a lot of great music over the last decade,
Speaker 1: decade and a half. But this again record is very big.
Speaker 4: Big head off to Dawn because he he heard it
Speaker 4: and he knew what it was, and he heard us
Speaker 4: when when we were kids, you know, and he was
Speaker 4: a kid, and uh he he likes truth and love
Speaker 4: and that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for doing this, Charles. I mean,
Speaker 2: what what, I don't even make difference.
Speaker 4: We do what you can do.
Speaker 1: Between you and Dorothy's absolute history.
Speaker 4: You need to talk to Dorothy, Man, you need to
Speaker 4: talk to her. You should watch the documentary Get It Infinity. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's it's major. I just had tears the whole thing. Man.
Speaker 4: And uh some of the comments from the people, had
Speaker 4: a little Q and A after some of the comments,
Speaker 4: well beyond man, I didn't know anybody was listening. So
Speaker 4: I should I shouldn't complain or or I should just
Speaker 4: be thankful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's I guess the point is it's probably
Speaker 3: having a greater effect than you think.
Speaker 4: What you're doing. Well, those guys say, show me.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much to the great Charles Lloyd for opening
Speaker 2: up to Don Wiz and myself about his time growing
Speaker 2: up in Tennessee, his experiences at usc and beyond. You
Speaker 2: can hear his new album This Guy will be there tomorrow,
Speaker 2: along with some of our other favorite tracks featuring or
Speaker 2: by Charles Lloyd at our playlist at broken record podcast
Speaker 2: dot com or in the show notes for this episode.
Speaker 2: You can also listen to this interview on other recent
Speaker 2: episodes at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, and
Speaker 2: be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken
Speaker 2: Record Pod. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record.
Speaker 2: Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with
Speaker 2: marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
Speaker 2: is Ben Tollinay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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Speaker 1: Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.