Photo courtesy of Jazz Fest Wien Team on Flickr.
Charlie Parker, incidentally, was conceived in Memphis. The place of conception is what is most important and so, I come from something that is very rich. Looking back on it now, it was very fortuitous and a beautiful place to be born and all my high school peers and classmates were great musicians. Booker Little was my best friend in high school. He was a young trumpeter that died before your age, Fred. He died at twenty-three in New York. When I first got to New York, I lived with him. He was a wise man at the time. You see, Fred, time doesn’t exist and when a man’s ready to go, when he has realized, fortunately, it is better to go when you’re awake and driving with your headlights on, rather than being asleep. Sleepwalking is not something that I have ever been interested in. I like the fully awoke stage and wake up and realize our true nature, the divinity, which is our birthright, but we have to work through all of the ignorance and hypnosis that we go through in life, forgetting who we really are in the game. The purpose of life is to know God.
— Charles Lloyd from an interview with Fred Jung on Jazz Weekly.
‘Booker’s Garden,’ written by Charles Lloyd and performed live with his quartet on the album Rabo de Nube.
Charles Lloyd, flute | Jason Moran, piano | Reuben Rogers, bass | Eric Harland, drums
