Charles Lloyd - Arrows Into Infinity

I'm not always bitter. I'm not always happy.

I'm not always laughing. I'm no Tom.

I don't do a number for somebody.

Again, it's life. It's all and everything.

I mean, you don't...

Am I screaming sometimes? Am I bitter?

Hell, yes, I'm bitter.

I mean, I've got a insane amount of dues that I've paid.

If I could articulate it,

I guess, you know, I wouldn't have the need to play it.

I got off the bus. I became quiet.

It's high thinking. It's about elevation.

You can't shoot an arrow into infinity if you're always in motion, you know.

You have to pull the bow back, you know.

Then the arrow can fly.

Well, I'm Pisces first, you know.

The water sign. I'm fish.

When I was born...

When my mother was pregnant, there was a big flood in Memphis.

And this thing was set up for me to come.

Thus passed the great flood of 1937.

In 20 days, enough rain to cover the 207,000 square miles

of the watershed with water a foot deep.

That's more than 176 billion tons.

I was born by the river

In a little tent

Oh, and just like the river, I've been running ever since

It's been a long

A long time coming

But I know a change gonna come

Oh, yes, it will

I come from this rich tradition,

and you stand on the shoulders of a lot of greats.

Phineas Newborn was our J.S. Bach and mentor.

He was coming out of Art Tatum and Bud Powell.

Duke Ellington's band, Count Basie,

and Billy Eckstine and Diana Washington...

all these people would come through my town of Memphis,

and my mother had a large house, and they would room with us

because there wasn't hotels for these great musicians

in abundance or suitable,

and I was a little kid, but I couldn't wait for them wake up

so I could pounce, you know.

I had some questions, you know.

I wanted to know about Bird.

But the thing about Charlie Parker

was that when I heard him at about nine or ten

and that whole tradition of deep swing,

but with such grace and such elegance...

They changed the harmonic landscape also.

Rhythmically, they freed the beat up.

These guys before would play...

You know, it was like covered wagon-style, you know.

And Charlie Parker and Max Roach, they freed that stuff up, man,

and it hasn't been the same since that,

and I'm in that tradition.

So you learned your licks and you were working as a side man

with people like Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King and Johnnie Ace.

Bobby "Blue" Bland, all those guys.

The thing about Howlin' Wolf... That's Chester Burnett.

He was a very big man,

and he would play these little schoolhouses in the South, you know.

And there would be a potbelly stove or something in the middle.

It's nighttime, you know, gambling in the backroom.

There's com-liquor fingers going on

and all kinds of gunshots going off outside and stuff like that,

and we were playing this music.

But Howlin' Wolf would shake, shake, shake those little schoolhouses,

he was so powerful.

First dollar I ever made was with Charles...

Charles Lloyd, bless him.

Charles called me. He said, “Hey, I got a gig for you.“

I said, 'All right.'

He said, "It's a picnic.“

I thought, “Okay, where is it?'

I said, "Who all is gonna go?'

He said, “Me and you.'

Just alto and trumpet?

I said, "Let's go.'

So Charles came and got me.

We went, played the picnic.

I think Charles gave me a little bit bigger portions of money.

How much more, I can't remember that part.

And I think some of the tunes we was playing back in that day

was a tune called “Red Top.“

My little red top

See how you got me spinnin'

Goin' round and round

We must have did pretty good

'cause we didn't have no trouble getting the taste of change, so...

See, I got a chance to catch the last, last tail end

of the old, old pioneers

to the beginning of the new, new era of music was coming through,

like Phineas and Charles Lloyd.

I was born on the river, and Memphis is on the Mississippi River.

Oh, I see.

And I live by the sea now, in New York.

When I was living in New York, there's the Hudson River.

When I first got to New York, I checked into the Alvin Hotel

where Prez, Lester Young, had lived.

I was in Mecca. I'm in Manhattan, you know.

And that first night I went down to Birdland,

which is a few doors from the Alvin Hotel,

and I saw my friend Booker Little from high school.

And Becker's first thing out of his mouth was,

"Where are you staying?"

Booker was working at Birdland that night,

and I said, "I'm staying across the street at the Alvin.'

He said, "No, you're not. Go pack your bags up.

You're coming home with me.“

So he would talk to me long hours into the night,

kind of tuning me up because I was ready to jump into the fast lane.

"I'm in New York, man,“ you know.

And he said, “No, it"s not about that. It's about character.“

And he was 22 years old.

He left a year later, and he was a realized soul,

and he just told me, he said, "Those days are over, man.

It's about character."

l joined Chico, recommended by a wonderful sage, Buddy Collette.

I knew that once Chico asked for somebody...

He said, "Who can play out there?'

And I'm thinking, "Who have I met?'

And I said, "There's one guy, Charles Lloyd.

He plays alto, but I think he'll do good for you

because you're the kind of guy that can have that lead spot.“

And he needed somebody like a Charles.

That's what I was looking for.

You can't find these kind of players.

I was heaven, man, you know. That was the big time, you know.

Well, see, it's all possible. That was the way I was.

If a person could play, then I would send them in.

- So you just put me on an airplane. - Yeah, and it all worked out.

When I was 17 and I got my fake ID from Tijuana,

I was in Shelly's Manhole, and I saw Chico, Chico Hamilton.

And there was this very eccentric sax player, brand-new.

And wow.

Captivated all of us.

Yeah, I was an alto player when I first joined Chico Hamilton,

but Coltrane and Sonny Rollins really inspired me to pick up the tenor

because I could play very high on the alto,

but if I moved to tenor, I would have some standard-bearers

in front of me that would make me step up more,

so it gave me more range.

I met Charles when he was playing with Chico Hamilton.

And Charles was a very serious guy.

I remember very distinctly that at a certain point,

we were talking about freedom

and what someone could play harmonically

if one heard something.

Charles said something to the effect that...

I don't remember which note he referred to,

but it was a note that would have totally conflicted

with a particular chord.

And he said, "Well, at SC, they would tell you

that you couldn't play that note on that chord.“

He said, "But I've come to learn that if you actually hear that,

that's the note you should play.'

The first thing that made an impression on me with Charles Lloyd

was his compositions.

And that group was the group with Gabor Szabo and Albert Stinson.

Everything good that happened in my life happened because of Albert.

He was a genius, and we didn't know it, you know.

He was just Albert at the time.

Then when I would go to the Dragonwick

and I would see him playing with Charles,

it was awesome.

In 1962, '63, they made a string of albums.

You know, it was just like one of those combinations that was made in heaven.

He and Gabor... I mean, the way they meshed

and the way Gabor brought his compositions to life

was just extraordinary.

We were playing a club in Toronto, and we heard Cannonball was playing,

and we thought, “Oh, Al, we got to go catch that.“

So, in between sets where we were playing,

we went over to the Friar's Club,

and that's where they were playing,

and it was Cannonball and Nat, Joe Zawinul,

and they had this new guy, Charles Lloyd.

Charles had such a powerful presence,

not only a sound and a style and everything,

but just standing there, he had a presence.

There was something in him really set apart from everybody else.

Cannon and the Quintet were all dressed in black mohair gig suits

and the thin ties that were the style of the time and white shirts,

and here was this guy dressed in a gray three-piece Italian suit

with this flourishing silk tie and these wire-rimmed glasses,

and he looked like a professor from Dartmouth.

It's a mental image that I'll never forget...

this guy standing there in the middle of these other people

looking like they're from Venus and he's from Mars,

and when he played, he played Charles Lloyd.

To all those people in Wichita, we'd like to remind you

that this is happening live in the Far East.

And for the first number, we'd like to bring Charles Lloyd out

on a big round of applause to play a piece

that was composed specially for Slugs' called 'Slugs' Blues.“

Let's give him a big hand for 'Slugs' Blues.“

The most vivid memory I have with Charles

is playing at a club called Slugs' in New York.

It was fantastic. It was kind of like, you know, the Wild West.