Saxophonist and composer Charles Lloyd has been a strong and important voice in the jazz world since the late 1950s. This freewheeling, fascinating unauthorized biographybased on twenty years' worth of interviews covers the extreme ups and downs of an uncommonly eventful life, often in the musician's own words.

The story begins in the heated musical milieu of Memphis in the Forties and Fifties, where Lloyd grew up with Phineas Newborn Jr. and Booker Little and cut his professional teeth as a teen playing with such blues giants as Howlin' Wolf. After high school, he moved to Los Angeles, where he attended USC and began to work with the Gerald Wilson and Chico Hamilton bands, Scott LaFaro, Gbor Szab, Don Cherry, and others. Following a notable stint with Hamilton's ensemble, contributing compositions and arrangements as well as playing, Lloyd joined Cannonball Adderley's band and moved to New York. There he worked with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Richard Davis, Henry Grimes, Roy Hay