Michael Fremer

You never know what to expect when you call up someone to conduct an interview. In the case of Charles Lloyd, all I knew was what I heard on record over his 60 or so year vinyl and CD recorded output. That told me Lloyd was adventurous, eclectic, at one time idealistic, spiritual, and you might say over-optimistic, and someone willing and eager to mix it up within various musical genres. He's played with some of the world's greatest musicians both as a band member and as a leader. The latest release, the deluxe box 8 recorded two years ago, celebrated in concert his 80th birthday. Were it not for the Coronavirus outbreak he'd either now be on tour, or preparing to tour and too busy to talk, so getting this interview was kind of a lucky break.

These two releases, one culled from a 2006 Rhino Tony Joe White compilation and the other a new one from APO (an Analogue Productions label) are naturals for a linked review.

Car stereo as high-performance audio goodwill ambassador got another boost recently, when Audi announced a partnership with Bang and Olufsen to develop a new, high-performance sound system for Audi’s luxury A8 model. The Lexus–Mark Levinson trip I took recently and wrote about in the May “Analog Corner” paid another kind of dividend: a writeup in Motor Trend that included a sidebar about the sound, quoting my assessment of the Levinson system and mentioning Stereophile.

Not sure what's more amazing: how many recordings Alfred Lion produced for Blue Note, or how many great ones have remained in the vaults. Over the past few years, numerous unreleased Blue Notes have finally been released and none are sub-par "leftovers".