“We played the Royal Albert Hall in 1964,” says Charles Lloyd, recollecting his first ever UK performance. “Packed it to the rafters.” He was 26, playing tenor saxophone in Cannonball Adderley’s majestic band and getting his first taste of a world beyond US jazz and blues clubs. “I’m looking forward to returning,” says Lloyd of this weekend’s appearance at the EFG London jazz festival.
Now 83, he speaks in a drawl that mixes jazz argot and spiritual entreaties – he says he spent the pandemic “building steps”, meaning to a higher plane rather than a DIY project – and is raring to re-engage with an audience. “I’ve been playing in front of audiences since I was nine. Been a professional musician since I was 12. It’s what I do.”
What Lloyd “does” is work alongside more giants of contemporary music than possibly anyone else alive. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, he grew up in a hotbed of jazz, blues and country music: Phineas Newborn and Booker Little, two Memphis jazz prodigies, were his closest teenage associates, but young Charles found playing blues paid best.