LATEST ADDITIONS

My first live encounter with Dianne Reeves was at a Town Hall jazz benefit concert honoring “heroes and victims” of September 11th held that December. The array of talent included Jason Moran, Brad Mehldau, Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Béla Fleck, Benny Golson, Joe Lovano and many others, but the appearance that stayed with me was Ms. Reeves’s. She literally lit up the stage with both positive energy and a big voice that was stunning for its clarity, phrasing precision and tonal purity. Forget the technical perfection though, Reeves connected with a directed force that no other performer that evening matched. It’s a force you will feel on every track on this effervescent disc.

Editor's note: The album covers accompanying this survey appear separately in our "photo gallery" which can be accessed near the bottom of the home page. We are proud to have Elliot Kallen's byline appear on musicangle.com

(This is a survey of the recorded output of saxophonist Charles Lloyd, from his first appearance on record with the Chico Hamilton band to his present work on the ECM label as leader. As such, it's not a detailed listing of every single date he's done, merely my personal choices for content, interest, or historical context. I've used the framework of an interview with Lloyd to flesh out some of the circumstances and musical environments that helped produce the albums. In other words, if I've left out one of your favorite Lloyd sessions...get over it.)—EK

In the middle 1960's, Charles Lloyd's jazz group was a bona fide phenomenon. Audiences connected with their vibrant blending of jazz improvisation and propulsive rock rhythms. They were the first jazz group booked into the premiere rock palace of the day, the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. They brought their heady concoction of musical freedom to virtually every corner of the globe, and were received as avatars in the process. Critics were often divided, but the audiences, mostly composed of younger people, were immediately drawn to the band's sound. An album recorded live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Forest Flower, sold like a rock album.

65 year old former "stoner comic" Tommy Chong was sentenced to 9 months in the Federal slammer and forced to fork over 120,000 dollars by a foolish, mean-spirited Federal judge in Pittsburgh, PA yesterday, convicted of selling so-called "drug paraphernalia" over the Internet.

The Beatles made four unforgettable live appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, February 9, 16, 23rd 1964, and one more, over a year and a half later on September 12, 1965. While the fourth was almost anti-climactic, the first three rightly retain a mythological status, with an amazing 73 million Americans tuning in for The Beatles’s first appearance. In those pre-VCR, pre-400 cable channels days, The Beatles literally appeared out of nowhere, drove the teenagers in the audience crazy, and then disappeared, leaving the kids gasping for air and wondering whether they’d actually seen their idols, or hallucinated them. There would be no taped playback at home, or excerpts on “Entertainment Weekly.” The Beatles didn’t make “the rounds” and visit other shows, because there really weren’t any. Some still shots in Life or in some teenybopper magazine were the best that could be hoped for.