THE CHARLES LLOYD QUARTET – Love-In (Atlantic – SD 1481 / LP-1967)

Label: Atlantic – SD 1481

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo / Country: US / Released: 1967

Style: Post Bop, Avant-garde Jazz, Modal

Recorded live at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco 1967.

Design [Cover Design] – Stanislaw Zagorski

Photography By [Cover Photo] – Jim Marshall

Liner Notes – George Avakian

Engineer [Recording Engineer] – Wally Heider

Producer – George Avakian

Matrix / Runout (Label Matrix Side 1): ST-A-671029 - A

Matrix / Runout (Label Matrix Side 2): ST-A-671030 - B

A1 - Tribal Dance .......................................................................................... 10:03

A2 - Temple Bells ............................................................................................ 2:44

A3 - Is It Really The Same? ........................................................................... 5:45

A4 - Here There And Everywhere .................................................................. 3:40

B1 - Love-In .................................................................................................... 4:44

B2 - Sunday Morning ..................................................................................... 7:55

B3 - Memphis Dues Again / Island Blues ....................................................... 8:57

Personnel:

Charles Lloyd – tenor saxophone, flute

Keith Jarrett – piano

Ron McClure – bass

Jack DeJohnette – drums, percussion

Round five decades after the event, saxophonist Charles Lloyd's Love-In, recorded live at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium in 1967, where his quartet was opening for the Butterfield Blues Band—the first jazz group ever to play that venue, the counterculture's West Coast music hub, endures as much as an archaeological artifact as a musical document. From sleeve designer Stanislaw Zagorski's treatment of Rolling Stone photographer Jim Marshall's cover shot, through the album title and some of the track titles ("Tribal Dance," "Temple Bells"), and the inclusion of John Lennon and Paul McCartney's "Here There and Everywhere," Love-In's semiology reeks of the acid-drenched zeitgeist of the mid 1960s, a time when creative music flourished, and rock fans were prepared to embrace jazz, provided the musicians did not come on like their parents: juicers dressed in sharp suits exuding cynicism.

It is likely that more joints were rolled on Love-In's cover than that of any other jazz LP of the era, with the possible exception of saxophonists John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1965) and Pharoah Sanders's Tauhid (Impulse!, 1967). Chet Helms, a key mover and shaker in the West Coast counterculture, spoke for many when he hailed the Lloyd quartet as "the first psychedelic jazz group."

It is to Lloyd's credit that, at least in the early stages of his adoption by the counterculture, he resisted dumbing down his music. The adoption stemmed from Lloyd's espoused attitude to society, his media savvy, his sartorial style and his sheer nerve in playing jazz in the temples of rock culture. He took the quartet into the Fillmore West three years before trumpeter Miles Davis took his into the Fillmore East—as documented on Live at the Fillmore East, March 6 1970: It's About That Time (Columbia)—by which time his pianist, Keith Jarrett, and drummer, Jack DeJohnette, were members of Davis' band (although Jarrett didn't appear at the 1970 gig).

"I play love vibrations," Lloyd told Time Magazine. "Bringing everyone together in a joyous dance."

Love-In was the follow-up to the amazing Dream Weaver, the debut of the Charles Lloyd Quartet. Love-In was recorded after the 1966 summer blowout and showed a temporary personnel change: Cecil McBee had left the group and was replaced by Ron McClure. McClure didn't possess the aggressiveness of McBee, but he more than compensated with his knowledge of the modal techniques used by Coltrane and Coleman in their bands, and possessed an even more intricate lyricism to make up for his more demure physicality. Of the seven selections here, four are by Lloyd, two by pianist Keith Jarrett, and one by Lennon/McCartney ("Here, There and Everywhere"). Certainly the '60s youth movement was making its mark on Lloyd, but he was making his mark on them, too. With young Jarrett in the mix, turning the piano over in search of new harmonic languages with which to engage not only Lloyd as a soloist but the rhythm section as well, things were certainly moving across vast terrains of musical influence and knowledge. Drummer Jack DeJohnette took it all in stride and tried to introduce as many new time signatures into the breaks as he could get away with, allowing the ever-shifting chromatics in Jarrett's playing to be his cue from 7/8 to 9/8 to 12/16 and back to equal fours ("Sunday Morning," "Temple Bells," "Memphis Dues Again"), no matter what the musical style was. And there were plenty, as Lloyd led the excursion from post-bop to modal to blues to Eastern raga to cool and back. On Love-In, everything was jazz for the Charles Lloyd Quartet, and what they made jazz from opened the music up to everybody who heard it. The album is a lasting testament to that cultural ecumenism.

Review by Chris May / Thom Jurek

If you find it, buy this album!