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

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THE CHARLES LLOYD QUARTET – Journey Within (Atl – SD 1493 / LP-1967)

Label: Atlantic – SD 1493

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo, Monarch / 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] – Edmund Shea

Back liner photo – J. Carrol Parslow

Liner Notes – George Avakian

Engineer [Recording Engineer] – Wally Heider

Producer – George Avakian

Matrix / Runout (Label Matrix Side 1): ST-A-671135-MO - A

Matrix / Runout (Label Matrix Side 2): ST-A-671136-MO - B

Note:

Label variation with MO, indicating it was pressed at Monarch Records Pressing Plant.

A1 - Journey Within ..................................................................................... 11:35

A2 - Love No. 3 ............................................................................................. 5:40

B1 - Memphis Green ..................................................................................... 9:15

B2 - Lonesome Child .................................................................................. 10:50

        a) Song

        b) Dance

Personnel:

Charles Lloyd – tenor saxophone, flute

Keith Jarrett – piano, soprano saxophone

Ron McClure – bass

Jack DeJohnette – drums, percussion

Journey Within is a live album by jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd recorded at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco 1967 at the same concert that produced Love-In and performed by the Charles Lloyd Quartet featuring Keith Jarrett, Ron McClure and Jack DeJohnette.

Between 1966 and 1969, Lloyd and band made eight albums for Atlantic Records: Dream Weaver, Forest Flower, The Flowering, In Europe, Love-In, Journey Within, In the Soviet Union, and Soundtrack. Only Dream Weaver was a studio date; all the others were live recordings, mostly featuring music unavailable elsewhere. Almost all of them are currently out of print.

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KENNY WHEELER – Gnu High (LP-1976)

Label: ECM Records – ECM 1069

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album; Country: W. Germany - Released: 1976

Style: Post-Bop, Contemporary Jazz

Recorded June 1975, Generation Sound Studios, New York City.

Composed By – Kenny Wheeler

Engineer – Tony May

Mixed By – Martin Wieland

Photography By [Cover] – Tadayuki Naito

Producer – Manfred Eicher

A  - Heyoke . . . 21:47

B1 - 'Smatter . . . 5:56

B2 - Gnu Suite . . . 12:47

Kenny Wheeler – fluegelhorn

Keith Jarrett – piano

Dave Holland – bass

Jack DeJohnette – drums

Pure Lyricism from the Trumpet

From Louis Armstrong through Dizzy Gillespie and the hard bop master Woody Shaw, the trumpet has usually attracted extroverts and dazzlers. Kenny Wheeler, the enormously talented trumpeter and composer, began to change that in the 1970s—his playing emphasizes softer textures and less grandstanding approaches. On the astounding Gnu High, he plays the flügelhorn, a close relative of the trumpet that has a slightly more rounded tone, and favors scampering, musing phrases over reveille bursts that scream, "Look at me!" With this record and several that follow it, Wheeler suggests that brass can sing, and sing sweetly.

Few jazz musicians treat it that way. And even fewer write tunes that demand such tonal nuance. Wheeler specializes in languid, questioning themes that practically force him to think in expansive terms when soloing. The title suite, which lasts nearly thirteen minutes, moves through long rubato passages into broken samba-like grooves and, eventually, a more assertive choppy swing. When Wheeler makes his entrance, he doesn't barge in; rather, he glides, taking care not to step too heavily on any one beat. Follow closely as he develops his solos, however: Wheeler frequently ventures into the trumpet's extreme upper register, where brute force is often needed, and somehow hangs onto his innate sense of lyricism. Believe the title: His high notes are a new kind of high.

Gnu High is also notable as the rare date from this period where Keith Jarrett appears in a supporting role. The pianist totally "gets" Wheeler's tunes—at times on "Smatter," which features a solo-piano interlude, Jarrett generates flowing melodies with such facility, you might think he wrote the tune. That's also a function of tone: Because Wheeler's sound is so warm and inviting, everyone around him plays that way too.

When Kenny Wheeler expatriated from his native Canada to England, it was not headline news. But upon the release of Gnu High, he became a contemporary jazz figure to be recognized, revered and admired. Playing the flugelhorn exclusively for this, his ECM label debut, Wheeler's mellifluous tones and wealth of ideas came to full fruition. Whether chosen in collaboration with label boss Manfred Eicher or by Wheeler alone, picking pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette was a stroke of genius. They support the elongated and extended notions of Wheeler's in many real and important ways. What is also extant is a sense of self-indulgence, real for listeners with short attention spans. "Heyoke" is such a piece rife for this discussion at nearly 22 minutes. This lilting waltz is at once atmospheric and soulful, a fairly fresh and inventive style turned more dramatic near the finish of this magnum opus. It's all fueled by the reinvented swing of DeJohnette. Jarrett's vocal whining is kept in check, as his pretty pianistics buoy Wheeler's notions in Zen inspired time and eventually no time improvisations. "Gnu Suite" is similarly rendered in an unforced 4/4 rhythm, but Wheeler is more animated. There's a plus-plus solo from Holland before the group merges into a floating and flowing discourse again in free time. The special track is "Smatter" and at just under six minutes works better, not only for radio airplay, but also in its concise melodic construct by means of the regal and happy persona Wheeler portrays. Pure melody and a repeated anchoring seven-note phrase insert sets this tune apart from the rest. It also clearly identifies the warm and cool stance only Wheeler wields, making seemingly simple music deep and profound. Certainly this was an auspicious starting point, albeit long winded, for a magical performer whose sound and smarts captured the imagination of so many fellow musicians and listeners from this point onward.

Review by Michael G. Nastos

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CHARLES LLOYD QUARTET – The Flowering (LP-1971)

Label: Atlantic – SD 1586

Format: Vinyl, LP; Country: US - Released: 1971

Style: Free Improvisation
Recorded in concert at Aulean Hall, Oslo, Norway, 1971

Artwork [Cover Painting] – Jacques Richez

Design [Front Cover] – Haig Adishian

Design [Rear Cover] – Alyse Koylan

Engineer – Meny Bloch

Producer, Liner Notes – George Avakian

A1 - Speak Low . . . 8:26

A2 - Love-In / Island Blues . . . 6:19

A3 - Wilpan's . . . 6:39

B1 - Gypsy '66 . . . 14:11

B2 - Goin' To Memphis / Island Blues . . . 7:04

CHARLES LLOYD – Flute, Saxophone

KEITH JARRETT – Piano

CECIL McBEE – Bass

JACK DeJOHNETTE – Drums

A great title for this one – as the set really features reedman Charles Lloyd flowering strongly – blooming into a richer expression of his talents than any one might have expected a few short years before! The album features Lloyd working with his groundbreaking quartet of Keith Jarrett on piano, Cecil McBee on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums – players who have a perfect rhythmic conception to take Charles to the place he wants to go with his reeds! Titles include "Speak Low", "Goin' To Memphis/Island Blues", "Gypsy 66", "Wilpan's", and "Love-In/Island Blues".

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