Charles Lloyd: Manhattan Stories

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Pete La Roca
Charles Lloyd (ts, f)
Ron Carter (b)
Pete La Roca (d)

Label:

Resonance Records

August/2014

RecordDate:

1965

Resonance Records continue to do the impossible by finding recorded material so rare that even the artists themselves never know it existed. These tracks come from 1965, the year when Lloyd recorded his second album for Columbia called Of Course, Of Course! The personnel are the same except that Pete La Roca on drums replaces Tony Williams who appeared on the album. This two CD set contains just six tracks, three on each CD, so each song – ‘Sweet Georgia Bright’, ‘How Can I Tell You’, ‘Lady Gabor’, ‘Slug's Blues’, ‘Lady Gabor’ and ‘Dream Weaver’ – represents an extended performance, the shortest of them ‘How Can I Tell You’ is 11mins 57secs. One of the problems of longer performances is that the more they are extended, the more they have a tendency to sag in the middle, and sometimes this is true of some tracks here. However, what emerges is the close musical relationship between Lloyd and Szabó, who had come together a couple of years earlier in the Chico Hamilton Quintet. It is to these players the bulk of soloing belongs, and these two sessions– one live at Judson Hall in Manhattan on 3 September 1965, the other from Slug's Saloon sometime in 1965 – reveal a rich potential that was never ultimately fulfilled. If one was to crystal-ball gaze, the more introspective disposition of this music seems at one remove from Lloyd's and Szabó's work with Chico Hamilton, and perhaps Lloyd realised this; just a matter of weeks later he reformed a new band with Keith Jarrett on piano, Cecil McBee on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. It would be this band that would take Lloyd to the acclaim he enjoyed in the closing years of the 1960s, a band whose more extrovert disposition seemed more in keeping with the times. Even so, these tracks are a valuable historical document, capturing four talented young musicians at work, and even if there's a bit of dodgy intonation from time to time, the intensity of the music more than compensates.

Follow us

Jazzwise Print

  • Latest print issues

From £5.83 / month

Subscribe

Jazzwise Digital Club

  • Latest digital issues
  • Digital archive since 1997
  • Download tracks from bonus compilation albums during the year
  • Reviews Database access

From £7.42 / month

Subscribe

Subscribe from only £5.83

Never miss an issue of the UK's biggest selling jazz magazine.

Subscribe

View the Current
Issue

Take a peek inside the latest issue of Jazzwise magazine.

Find out more