Tyler, Charles (Lacy)

Tyler, Charles (Lacy), avant-garde jazz baritone and alto saxophonist; b. Cadiz, Ky, July 20,1941; d. June 27, 1992. He started on piano then took up clarinet in college. He also studied the alto sax before playing the baritone in an army band. He moved to Cleveland in 1960, where he played with Albert Ay 1er. He later moved to N.Y. and played with Ayler’s group (1965-66). He led his own group, and worked with others. In the late 1960s, he moved to Calif., and taught music for four years at Merritt Coll. and worked with Arthur Blythe, David Murray, and Bobby Bradford. When he returned to N.Y. in 1976, he began leading his own quartet, sextet, and big band. Through the later 1970s, he worked with Dave Baker, Dewey Redman, Frank Lowe, Steve Reid, and Cecil Taylor, and recorded and played with the Billy Bang Ensemble in 1981 and 1982. He then toured Europe with Sun Ra, settling in Denmark in 1984; he moved to France a year later. He continued to work through the late 1980s in Europe, returning to N.Y. in the early 1990s shortly before his death.

Discography

Charles Tyler Ensemble (1966); Eastern Man Alone (1967); Charles Tyler Live in Europe (1978); Saga of the Outlaws (1980); Folk and Mystery Stories (c. 1980); Sixty Minute Man (1981); Autumn in Paris (1988); Mid Western Drifter (1992). Ayler: Bells; Spirits Rejoice. Played C-melody sax on a bootleg album with Ayler and Omette Coleman on trumpet.

—Lewis Porter