Charles Lloyd - Forest Flower

This is a bit of a trip in the way back machine, but 'Forest Flower' is such a great album that I just felt the need to write a post about it after listening to it yesterday.

Recorded at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 (and reportedly the best selling jazz album ever recorded at Monterey), 'Forest Flower' shows Charles Lloyd and his excellent group incorporating some of the vibe from the San Francisco music scene at the time.  While the also excellent "Love In" from 1967 takes this a step further, Forest Flower is a first, tentative step toward what would become fusion, although still clearly a jazz recording.  Backing up Lloyd, who plays sax and flute, is a stellar band of Keith Jarrett on piano, Jack DeJohnette on drums, and Cecil McBee on bass.

The centerpiece of the album is the 18 minutes title track (broken into two parts, "Forest Flower-Sunrise" and "Forest Flower-Sunset").  The track is a beautiful, expansive work.  'Sorcery' is another excellent track, although much shorter.

The 'Forest Flower' CD also includes 1969's 'Soundtrack' album, making it a great 2-for-1 CD value at $10 or so.  My favorite cut on that album is 'Sombrero Sam' featuring some nice flute work by Lloyd.  There is also another version of the 'Forest Flower' suite, called 'Forest Flower '69'.  The band here is mostly the same, with Ron McLure taking over on bass.

For anyone coming from rock and looking to dip their toes into the jazz pool, 'Forest Flower' would be a good place to start.  I would be remiss to not mention that Lloyd continues to make excellent music to this day, his most recent release being 2010's 'Mirror', a very strong effort.  On the bootleg side his appearance at Monterey in 2006 (the 40th anniversary of the appearance where Forest Flower was recorded) was broadcast and is widely circulated - it's superb.  And a number of excellent Lloyd shows are available on the Dime torrent site.