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PHOTO: ERIC DOLPHY (1928-1964)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/eric-dolphy-mn0000800100#biography
Eric Dolphy
(1928-1964)
Biography by Fred Thomas
Eric Dolphy's visionary spirit left an indelible impression on jazz, especially in shaping the earliest phases of the free jazz movement, but it also affected many facets of how the artform evolved through the early '60s. A composer and multi-instrumentalist who primarily played bass clarinet, flute, and alto sax, Dolphy is often credited with bringing bass clarinet into the jazz arena, and his approach to soloing on all of his instruments pushed the boundaries of bebop until the sounds resembled something new altogether. With improvisation characterized by wide intervals, contorting notes into non-musical or speech-like sounds, and unbridled, ecstatic expression, Dolphy's playing had a huge influence on John Coltrane as he moved away from structure and into free sounds. In addition to extensive work with Chico Hamilton, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, and others, Dolphy was a bandleader in his own right, creating new levels of excitement and abstraction on his groundbreaking Blue Note debut, 1964's Out to Lunch! Dolphy's life was tragically cut short that same year when he was just 36, his brief time on the planet impacting the entire timeline of jazz yet leaving so much unfinished. 
Dolphy was born in Los Angeles in 1928. He became interested in music early in life, starting out on clarinet and receiving a scholarship to study the instrument at the University of Southern California School of Music while he was just barely into his teens. At this point he had taken up oboe and saxophone as well, and his love of classical music had him working toward a future as a symphonic musician. His earliest recordings were made in 1949 when he played flute, clarinet, and alto and baritone sax on various sessions with drummer Roy Porter. After several years in the army, Dolphy returned to Los Angeles in 1953, where he played music in various incarnations throughout the rest of the '50s. His first big break came in 1958 when he joined Chico Hamilton's band. After a year of heavy touring, Dolphy left California for New York City, where he joined Charles Mingus' band and began accelerating the development of his distinctively curious and multifaceted instrumental voice. Dolphy quickly integrated into the New York scene, playing on multiple important records and live dates with Mingus, but also contributing to landmark albums from Oliver Nelson, Ron Carter, Gunther Schuller, Booker Little, and many more, all between 1960 and 1961. Dolphy played bass clarinet on the collective improvisation that became Ornette Coleman's 1961 album Free Jazz, giving a title to the burgeoning movement. In 1961 he officially joined John Coltrane's band after sitting in on many occasions, contributing to albums like Africa/Brass and Live! At the Village Vanguard, and playing a major influential role in Coltrane's shift from hard bop to more unrestricted sounds. 
Dolphy also came into his own as a leader during this time, recording a series of albums for the Prestige label beginning with formative sets such as 1960's Outward Bound and 1961's Out There. On these albums and others where he acted as a leader, Dolphy's innovations were at the fore. In addition to an uncommon fluidity between his various instruments and a playing style that was at times jarringly un-musical for its time, Dolphy was also one of the first to record unaccompanied horn solos on record, pre-dating other notable examples of this by several years. The love of classical music that had inspired him early on showed up as an influence on his compositions as well, setting him even further apart from his more traditionalist contemporaries. 
After playing with Coltrane for several years, Dolphy returned to working with Mingus, playing on 1963's Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus and joining the band on tour in 1964. The same year, he signed on with Blue Note and recorded his masterwork Out to Lunch! After the completion of a European tour with Mingus in early 1964, Dolphy opted not to return to the United States, hoping to find a better reception for his music, which was often rejected or misunderstood by American audiences. While getting his bearings in Europe, he recorded, wrote, and also performed occasional gigs with friends from the states who were passing through like Donald Byrd. He made plans to join Albert Ayler's band, and to start work with Cecil Taylor and others. In June of 1964, however, Dolphy became severely ill while performing in Berlin. He was hospitalized after collapsing on-stage. Reports vary, but one account posits that when he was admitted to the hospital, doctors assumed Dolphy was suffering a drug overdose, going on the stereotype of the time that jazz musicians were largely addicts. Because of this, he was treated for an overdose and left to ride the experience out. Not only was Dolphy not a drinker, smoker, or drug user of any kind, but he was also diabetic, and he died in the hospital on June 29, 1964, after slipping into a diabetic coma, a potentially avoidable fate brought on by neglect and prejudice.
Dolphy's legacy consistently echoed throughout jazz and other circles of music long after his death. Sessions he recorded during his lifetime were released posthumously, as were a wealth of archival recordings. Peers like Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Tony Williams, and many others all leaned into progressively further out playing styles pioneered by Dolphy, and subsequent generations of avant-gardists like the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Anthony Braxton used Dolphy's influence as a jumping off point for exploration of their own. Even experimental rock musicians like Frank Zappa found inspiration in Dolphy's innovative body of work, translating his irrepressible style into non-jazz idioms. It's impossible to know what Dolphy would have accomplished had he lived into his forties, but what he did leave behind, in just a sort time, comprises multiple lifetimes' worth of monumental creation.
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/eric-dolphy/
Eric Dolphy
Dolphy was one of several groundbreaking jazz alto players to rise to prominence in the 1960s. He was also the first important bass clarinet soloist in jazz, and among the earliest significant flute soloists; he is arguably the greatest jazz improviser on either instrument. On early recordings, he occasionally played traditional B-flat soprano clarinet. His improvisational style was characterized by a near volcanic flow of ideas, utilizing wide intervals based largely on the 12-tone scale, in addition to using an array of animal- like effects which almost made his instruments speak. Although Dolphy's work is sometimes classified as free jazz, his compositions and solos had a logic uncharacteristic of many other free jazz musicians of the day; even as such, he was definitively avant-garde. In the years after his death his music was more aptly described as being "too out to be in and too in to be out."
Dolphy was born in Los Angeles and was educated at Los Angeles City College. He performed locally for several years, most notably as a member of the big band led by Roy Porter. Dolphy finally had his big break as a member of Chico Hamilton's quintet, with Hamilton he became known to a wider audience and was able to tour extensively through 1958, when he parted ways with Hamilton and moved to New York City.
Dolphy wasted little time upon settling in New York City, quickly forming several fruitful musical partnerships, the two most important ones being with jazz legends Charles Mingus and John Coltrane, musicians he'd known for several years. While his formal musical collaboration with Coltrane was short (less than a year between 1961-62), his association with Mingus continued intermittently from 1959 until Dolphy's death in 1964. Dolphy was held in the highest regard by both musicians - Mingus considered Dolphy to be his most talented interpreter and Coltrane thought him his only musical equal.
Coltrane had gained an audience and critical notice with Miles Davis's quintet. Although Coltrane's quintets with Dolphy (including the Village Vanguard and Africa/Brass sessions) are now legendary, they provoked Down Beat magazine to brand Coltrane and Dolphy's music as 'anti- jazz.' Coltrane later said of this criticism "they made it appear that we didn't even know the first thing about music (...) it hurt me to see (Dolphy) get hurt in this thing."
The initial release of Coltrane's stay at the Vanguard selected three tracks, only one of which featured Dolphy. After being issued haphazardly over the next 30 years, a comprehensive box set featuring all of the recorded music from the Vanguard was released by Impulse! in 1997. The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings carried over 15 tracks featuring Dolphy on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, adding a new dimension to these already classic recordings. A later Pablo box set from Coltrane's European tours of the early 1960s collected more recordings with Dolphy for the buying public.
During this period, Dolphy also played in a number of challenging settings, notably in key recordings by Ornette Coleman (Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation), Oliver Nelson (The Blues and the Abstract Truth) and George Russell (Ezz- thetic), but also with Gunther Schuller and Max Roach among others.
Dolphy's recording career as a leader began with the Prestige label. His association with the label spanned across 13 albums recorded from April 1960 to September 1961, though he was not the leader for all of the sessions. Prestige eventually released a nine-CD box set containing all of Dolphy's recorded output for the label.
Dolphy's first two albums as leader were Outward Bound and Out There. The first is more accessible and rooted in the style of bop than some later releases, but it still offered up challenging performances, which at least partly accounts for the record label's choice to include "out" in the title. Out There is closer to the third stream music which would also form part of Dolphy's legacy, and reminiscent also of the instrumentation of the Hamilton group with Ron Carter on cello. Far Cry was also recorded for Prestige in 1960 and represented his first pairing with trumpeter Booker Little, a like-minded spirit with whom he would go on to make a set of legendary live recordings (At the Five Spot) before Little's tragic death at the age of 23.
Dolphy would record several unaccompanied cuts on saxophone, which at the time had been done only by Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins before him. The album Far Cry contains one of his more memorable performances on the Gross-Lawrence standard Tenderly on alto saxophone, but it was his subsequent tour of Europe that quickly set high standards for solo performance with his exhilarating bass clarinet renditions of Billie Holiday's God Bless The Child. Numerous recordings were made of live performances by Dolphy, and these have been issued by many sometimes dubious record labels, drifting in and out of print ever since.
20th century classical music also played a significant role in Dolphy's musical career, having performed and recorded Edgard Varèse's Density 21.5 for solo flute as well as other classical works, and participated heavily in the Third Stream efforts of the 1960s.
In July 1963, Dolphy and producer Alan Douglas arranged recording sessions for which his sidemen were among the leading emerging musicians of the day. The results were his Iron Man and Conversations LPs.
In 1964, Dolphy signed with the legendary Blue Note label and recorded Out to Lunch (once again, the label insisted on using "out" in the title). This album was deeply rooted in the avant garde, and Dolphy's solos are as dissonant and unpredictable as anything he ever recorded. Out to Lunch is often regarded not only as Dolphy's finest album, but also as one of the greatest jazz recordings ever made.
After Out to Lunch and an appearance as a sideman on Andrew Hill's Point of Departure, Dolphy left to tour Europe with Charles Mingus' sextet (one of Mingus' most underrated bands and without a doubt one of the most exciting) in early 1964. From there he intended to settle in Europe with his fiancée, who was working on the ballet scene in Paris. After leaving Mingus, he performed with and recorded a few sides with various European bands and was preparing to join Albert Ayler for a recording.
On the evening of June 28, 1964, Dolphy collapsed on the streets of Berlin and was brought to a hospital. The attending hospital physicians, who had no idea that Dolphy was a diabetic, thought that he (like so many other jazz musicians) had overdosed on drugs, so they left him to lie in a hospital bed until the "drugs" had run their course.
The notes to the Prestige nine-disc set say he "collapsed in his hotel room and when brought to the hospital he was diagnosed as being in a diabetic coma. After being administered a shot of insulin (apparently a type stronger than what was then available in the US) he lapsed into insulin shock and died."
Dolphy would die the next day in a diabetic coma, leaving a short but tremendous legacy in the jazz world, which was immediately honored with his induction into the Down Beat magazine Hall of Fame that same year. Coltrane paid tribute to Dolphy in an interview: "Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician."
Dolphy's musical presence was deeply influential to a who's who of young jazz musicians who would become legends in their own right. Dolphy worked intermittently with Ron Carter and Freddie Hubbard throughout his career, and in later years he hired Herbie Hancock, Bobby Hutcherson and Woody Shaw at various times to work in his live and studio bands. Out to Lunch featured yet another young lion who had just begun working with Dolphy in drummer Tony Williams, just as his participation on the Point of Departure session brought his influence into contact with up and coming tenor man Joe Henderson.
Carter, Hancock and Williams would go on to become one of the quintessential avant-garde rhythm sections of the decade, both together on their own albums and as the backbone of the second great quintet of Miles Davis. This part of the second great quintet is an ironic footnote for Davis, who was not fond of Dolphy's music yet absorbed a rhythm section who had all worked under Dolphy and created a band whose brand of "out" was unsurprisingly very similar to Dolphy's.
In addition, his work with jazz and rock producer Alan Douglas allowed Dolphy's unique brand of musical expression to posthumously spread to musicians in the jazz fusion and rock environments, most notably with artists John McLaughlin and Jimi Hendrix. Frank Zappa, an eclectic performer who drew some of his inspiration from jazz music, paid tribute to Dolphy's style in the instrumental The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue.
Eric Dolphy was a true original with his own distinctive styles on alto, flute, and bass clarinet. His music fell into the “avant-garde” category yet he did not discard chordal improvisation altogether (although the relationship of his notes to the chords was often pretty abstract). While most of the other “free jazz” players sounded very serious in their playing, Dolphy’s solos often came across as ecstatic and exuberant. His improvisations utilized very wide intervals, a variety of nonmusical speechlike sounds, and its own logic. Although the alto was his main axe, Dolphy was the first flutist to move beyond bop (influencing James Newton) and he largely introduced the bass clarinet to jazz as a solo instrument. He was also one of the first (after Coleman Hawkins) to record unaccompanied horn solos, preceding Anthony Braxton by five years.
Eric Dolphy first recorded while with Roy Porter & His Orchestra (1948-1950) in Los Angeles, he was in the Army for two years, and he then played in obscurity in L.A. until he joined the Chico Hamilton Quintet in 1958. In 1959 he settled in New York and was soon a member of the Charles Mingus Quartet. By 1960 Dolphy was recording regularly as a leader for Prestige and gaining attention for his work with Mingus, but throughout his short career he had difficulty gaining steady work due to his very advanced style. Dolphy recorded quite a bit during 1960-1961, including three albums cut at the Five Spot while with trumpeter Booker Little, Free Jazz with Ornette Coleman, sessions with Max Roach, and some European dates.
Late in 1961 Dolphy was part of the John Coltrane Quintet; their engagement at the Village Vanguard caused conservative critics to try to smear them as playing “anti-jazz” due to the lengthy and very free solos. During 1962-1963 Dolphy played third stream music with Gunther Schuller and Orchestra U.S.A., and gigged all too rarely with his own group. In 1964 he recorded his classic Out to Lunch for Blue Note and traveled to Europe with the Charles Mingus Sextet (which was arguably the bassist’s most exciting band, as shown on The Great Concert of Charles Mingus). After he chose to stay in Europe, Dolphy had a few gigs but then died suddenly from a diabetic coma at the age of 36, a major loss.
Virtually all of Eric Dolphy’s recordings are in print, including a nine-CD box set of all of his Prestige sessions. In addition, Dolphy can be seen on film with John Coltrane (included on The Coltrane Legacy) and with Mingus from 1964 on a video released by Shanachie. ~ Scott Yanow
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-eric-dolphy-deepened-my-love-of-jazz
How Eric Dolphy Sparked My Love of Jazzby Richard Brody
January 25, 2019
The New Yorker
I got into jazz because of Dave Brubeck, but jazz got into me because of Eric Dolphy. I had just turned fifteen when a random encounter with Brubeck’s music made me start listening curiously to New York’s jazz station at the time, WRVR; a few weeks later, when I heard the title tune of Dolphy’s 1960 album “Out There” on that station, it was a conversion experience. It instantly made jazz my prime artistic obsession and Dolphy my foremost musical hero. I had no idea that he was considered “out there” as an avant-gardist, revered by some and reviled by others for his musical audacity and originality—but I soon found myself delving deeply into Dolphy’s discography and then to records of other musicians directly or indirectly connected to him, such as John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Charles Mingus, and Albert Ayler.
Dolphy’s life was shockingly brief, his recorded legacy both delayed and truncated: he led only a handful of studio sessions and officially recorded concerts, starting in 1960, and he died in 1964, at the age of thirty-six. (At the time, he was in Europe, where he was planning to stay for an extended time because of critical hostility to his music in the United States and his resultant inability to pursue his career steadily here.) Nonetheless, his discography is copious, because he worked as a sideman in some major groups, including ones led by Mingus and Coltrane, and recorded generously with them—both officially and on bootlegs. There are also fine bootlegs of performances led by Dolphy—most, as a soloist with pickup rhythm sections (often, fine ones) in Europe, and a few, with his own groups, stateside.
The tracks on “Eric Dolphy, Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions,” a three-disk set, from Resonance Records, that is out on Friday, were recorded between July 1 and July 3, 1963, in New York. They were produced by Alan Douglas, a devoted and discerning producer who had previously recorded Coltrane, Taylor, Mingus, Jackie McLean, and other jazz luminaries (as well as the epochal album “Money Jungle,” featuring Duke Ellington, Max Roach, and Mingus) and would, later, record Jimi Hendrix. The Dolphy sessions were taped for Douglas’s own, short-lived record label, FM, which issued two LPs of them (“Conversations,” from 1963, and “Iron Man,” from 1968), both of which I owned and listened to excitedly, even as a teen-ager. The Resonance set includes two disks featuring the tracks from those albums, which, until now, have been available on CD only. What’s more, many hours of recordings from the week of sessions remained unissued, and “Musical Prophet” includes an entire disk-plus, eighty-five minutes’ worth, of alternate takes and also compositions that are being issued here for the first time. (It also includes a ninety-six-page booklet that’s teeming with information about and reflections on Dolphy, including interviews with Richard Davis and Sonny Simmons, two of the musicians who perform—brilliantly—on the album, and with other great musicians who knew him, including Sonny Rollins and Joe Chambers.)
Dolphy, born in Los Angeles in 1928, may have seemed like a late starter—his first major public role came in 1958, as part of the Chico Hamilton Quintet—but he was actually a precocious artist who cultivated his art devotedly, privately, and in the company of like-minded musicians who knew of his prodigious talent long before the world at large got to hear it. Dolphy practiced and studied obsessively; his fluency and proficiency rival Coltrane’s; in his years of study, he developed techniques and ideas that, when he did emerge publicly, in Hamilton’s group, were fully formed. His main instrument was alto saxophone, on which he has a full, ringing, siren-like tone that’s instantly recognizable; he also played flute, clarinet, and, especially, an instrument that hardly any other jazz musician used—the bass clarinet. His sound and style on it were so distinctive that, to this day, the instrument is closely identified with him.
Dolphy’s music emerged from the bebop revolution of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell and opened it into a new dimension. His music is tonal, largely related to the harmonic structure of the compositions he played (whether his own, other composers’, or American Songbook standards), but his sense of tonality is intricately chromatic and rendered all the more complex by his frequent, jolting leaps of wide intervals that make even harmonious lines sound disjunctive and bend the family resemblances of his solos toward modern, atonal composed music. That abstract mood is also reflected in the severe yet spontaneous logic of his solos—yet his multidimensional sense of form is as natural and intimate as breathing. Dolphy’s way with blue tones is angular, jauntily inflected, urbane; his music has the tangle and the clamor of city streets, the ferocity of crowds, the romanticism of late-night lights. At the same time, there’s an intensity to his playing that, too, is exemplary of jazz modernism; the emotional and intellectual stakes are enormous, and his sense of solitary dedication and introspective commitment provides a fierce, bright illumination.
What I thought I was hearing, when I first heard Dolphy, was intellectual realism, philosophical refractions of recognizable, passionate personal experiences; and the performances on “Musical Prophet” extend the range of those experiences beyond that of other releases. In an essay that’s included in the set’s extensive booklet, Douglas’s former associate Michaël Lemesre cites an interview in which Douglas recalled the origins of the session, the first to be made for FM: “We began with Eric Dolphy. I asked him what he wanted to record. He replied, ‘Just to play—nobody lets me make what I want—with musicians who I love.’ ” In “Musical Prophet,” Dolphy assembles an extraordinary and unusual batch of musicians, and he groups them in distinctive, revealing ways.
Dolphy’s studio recordings for other labels featured him in quartets or quintets, and, here, too, there are pieces placing Dolphy in the front line of a quintet alongside the trumpeter Woody Shaw, who was then eighteen years old and had been recruited by Dolphy to make his first recordings. Dolphy also plays several duets with the bassist Richard Davis that recall his duets with Mingus, and he plays a brief, scintillating unaccompanied piece for alto (“Love Me,” which is also heard in two wondrous alternate takes). What makes “Musical Prophet” unusual in the context of Dolphy’s oeuvre is that it includes three pieces for groups ranging from a sextet to the near-big-band assemblage of ten musicians, which also feature several powerful soloists alongside Dolphy—notably, the alto saxophonist Sonny Simmons, the flutist Prince Lasha, the saxophonist Clifford Jordan (best known for tenor, here playing soprano), and the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson.
These compositions’ orchestrations reflect an enduring interest of Dolphy’s, one that he hardly fulfilled. For instance, in his association with Coltrane, Dolphy orchestrated the big-band arrangements on Coltrane’s “Africa/Brass” album, from 1961; in 1960, and again in 1962, he performed as a soloist in the rigorous compositional context of works by Gunther Schuller; and, as in these earlier recordings, the ensemble’s interjections in the larger-group pieces in “Musical Prophet” provide the horn soloists with brusque and complex springboards for improvisation—and suggest the broader spectrum of Dolphy’s ambitions. Some of these larger pieces feature playful arrangements (notably, of Fats Waller’s “Jitterbug Waltz” and Simmons and Lasha’s “Music Matador”) with a theatrical flair akin to that of some of Mingus’s works; others have a fierce, eruptive density that reflects his interest in modern composed music.
Yet Dolphy was never able to maintain a steady working group for long, because he could never be sure of working steadily. The prospect of developing compositions for large ensembles was even more elusive, and “Musical Prophet” offers tantalizing hints of the directions that, with a little success and a little recognition, his work might have taken. Dolphy had expressed the desire to work with Taylor, a pianist whose thunderous and crystalline abstractions also expanded to original and large-scale group concepts—albeit ones that also, for financial reasons, were realized all too rarely.
At the same time, “Musical Prophet” catches Dolphy perched on the edge of a precipice of his own seeking. For all the demanding intellectual organization of his performances, his work always stretched tensely between sound and sense. Not only did he have a distinctive tone on all of his instruments, but his search for his own world of sound was as crucial as his search for notes—and his quest for a sound that was more than one note, or wasn’t necessarily a note at all but perhaps even a shout, a growl, a roar, or a cry, wove throughout his work and occasionally blazed forth in extraordinary outbursts. The musician of the times who most ardently pursued that ideal, Albert Ayler, was also in Europe in 1964, and Dolphy, who had just left Mingus’s band, was planning to join Ayler’s group. But, in West Berlin, in June of that year, he collapsed in a diabetic coma and never emerged. It went undiagnosed: local doctors reportedly assumed that Dolphy, as a black jazz musician, had a drug problem, and never checked his blood sugar. (Dolphy didn’t use drugs; for that matter, he didn’t drink or smoke cigarettes.)
Racism is the explicit subject of one of the performances included in “Musical Prophet,” the only one that wasn’t recorded by Douglas. That piece, “A Personal Statement,” a.k.a. “Jim Crow,” is a composition by the pianist Bob James, who is white; he wrote it for a quartet (himself, Dolphy—on alto, flute, and bass clarinet—a bassist, and a drummer), along with lyrics and vocalise performed by the countertenor David Schwartz with a fervent, keening air of lamentation. It’s neither a masterwork of composition nor of poetry, but, along with Dolphy’s superb solos, it further reflects his interest in blending improvisation with composition—and the curiosity, generosity, and sense of principle and purpose that are at the core of his own art.
There are other recordings of Dolphy that I listen to more frequently than those of “Musical Prophet”—especially ones, such as “Out There,” “In Europe, Vol. 3,” and “Last Date,” on which he’s the only wind-instrument soloist and where he solos at greater length, pursuing a rare and exalted sort of introspective intensity. But “Musical Prophet” offers thrills that are unique in Dolphy’s discography. It reaches very far afield, at the vanishing point of Dolphy-ism; it crystallizes ideas latent in Dolphy’s career at that time and points far in the direction of paths that lay open in his imagination. It makes clear that his work as an itinerant soloist and as a sideman wasn’t the result of his failure to develop his own group concept but the result of economics and of politics. “Musical Prophet” also features other wonderful musicians (notably, Simmons, whose solos are among the album’s high points) alongside Dolphy, whose opportunity to play in such varied and happily assembled groups gave rise to some sequences and moments of an astounding power. In college, I blew out a speaker listening to a solo by Dolphy on one of the tracks on this set (the piece titled “Iron Man”); for all its cerebral majesty, Dolphy’s playing was, for me, also noise music, a visceral blast of musical energy that outshocked all the electric guitars in my album collection. Here’s a Spotify playlist of some of my favorites of his recordings.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Richard Brody began writing for The New Yorker in 1999. He writes about movies in his blog, The Front Row. He is the author of “Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard.”
December 28, 2008
Out There: The Music of Eric Dolphy
'When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, into the air. You can never capture it again.'
http://stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=1051
A TRIBUTE TO ERIC DOLPHY
Click here to read an interview about Dolphy with Richard Davis
BOBBY HUTCHERSON
Vibraphonist, performed on Out to Lunch
I’m rehearsing with Eric at his loft — myself, Tony Williams, Richard Davis and a trumpet player named Eddie Armour. We were rehearsing for about an hour and a half. It was a cold winter day. All of a sudden, right in the middle of the tune, the trumpet player, Eddie, starts cussing and packing up his horn. We get to the end of the tune and Eddie says to Eric, “You’re nasty.” And Eric was real sweet, just like Trane was — you know, a real sweet cat. Eric said, “What?” Eddie says, “I don’t like you, I don’t like your music, and I’m not going to play this gig. I’m out of here. F you. F this band. That’s it. How do you like that?”
We’re all standing there thinking, “My God, how can this cat say this?” And he continues to put his horn away, clip the fasteners on his trumpet case. He grabs his coat, pulls his hat down and goes stomping to the door. He gets to the door — I mean, just yanks it open. The door hits the wall. Bam! He’s just about to go out the door.
Eric had just been sitting there with his head down. We’re all thinking, “Eric must feel horrible. What’s he going to do?” All of a sudden, Eric says, “Hey, Eddie.” Eddie turns around and says [in growling voice] “What?” Eric, with the most conviction and love, says, “If I can ever do anything you need, please don’t hesitate to call me. I’ll be there for you anytime.”
Whoa! And Eric was serious. With that, this cat really got upset — he slammed the door and stormed out. We just stood there all quiet. It was like he Sunday punched him with love. The lesson was, “Love conquers all,” you know? It’s like the devil couldn’t take that love, and this is what Eric was showing him. He went out that door with so much hate, but with a message that Eric still cared about him. This was one of the biggest lessons Eric showed me — that if you can forgive somebody right when they do the most horrible thing they can to you, you just immediately take the weight of what they did off your back and just make it this beautiful experience, so that you can go on and do the things you want to do during the day and not waste time with negative feelings and negative thoughts.
Well, we sat there quiet for two or three minutes — didn’t say anything. Then we went on with rehearsal and we never played so hard in our lives. We were just overcome. Then Eric called Freddie Hubbard, and that’s when we did Out to Lunch.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
A TRIBUTE TO ERIC DOLPHY (1928–1964)
Reflections on the virtuoso reedman, from his formative days in Los Angeles to his last date in Berlin
Also featured in the Jazz Issue, comments on Eric Dolphy from Bobby Hutcherson, Sonny Rollins, Ted Curson, Peter Brotzmann, Gary Giddins, Ira Gitler and more
RICHARD DAVIS
Bassist, performed on Out to Lunch
and Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
For more on Richard Davis, visit his website
Stop Smiling: When did you and Eric first meet?
Richard Davis: New York, 1961.
SS: You recorded some duets with Eric, including “Ode to CP” and “Come Sunday.” Can you talk about playing with Eric one-on-one?
RD: It was a delightful experience. Eric had a lot of ideas that I needed to hear — ideas that I was, in a sense, wanting to hear, because my ear was going in that same direction.
Eric had a very even temperament. He was angelic. It’s hard to say much about Eric that isn’t close to him being an angel. He had a way about him — he was just a sweet guy. Most people would say that about him. When I met his mother and father, I could see that they must have raised him that way. They were angelic types, too. I don’t think Eric worried about things that much. He would give money to people who didn’t have any — musicians would come to town and he’d give them money. Eric was an unusual guy. You could take him groceries sometimes. Somebody told me he gave other musicians his gigs. They’d come to town and he’d give them the gig.
Eric was an exceptional human being. We had the same car — he had a Volkswagen, I had a Karmann Ghia — and I said, “I can’t get this tire changed. It’s flat.” He was instructing me with what to do. Within two minutes he said, “I’ll be right there.” He lived 40 minutes from me. He came out there and changed that tire, man. He was that kind of guy — all giving.
SS: When you met his parents, was that in California?
RD: Yeah. I told Eric I was going out there. He gave me his mother’s address and told me to say hello. He called his mother, Sadie. He had a garage out there, which had been converted into a practice studio. I was in that studio and his mother would make me a glass of lemonade from a big lemon tree.
SS: Did Eric speak with you about his interest in birds and how he tried to replicate the sounds of birds in his music?
RD: No, Eric didn’t talk to me much about that. Eric talked to me mostly about encouraging me to use my bow more.
SS: When you would spend time together in New York, what were some of the things Eric enjoyed doing other than playing?
RD: Cooking swordfish steak. It was the first I’d ever heard of a swordfish steak. He went out to the neighborhood fish market, bought it and cooked it.
SS: When you two played together in New York and wanted to go out and celebrate after a great show, what kinds of things would Eric like to do?
RD: I think Eric would probably go hear some other musicians. We used to go hear Cecil Taylor a lot because he was working in the same neighborhood we were in, the Village. Eric was not a partygoer — he would go and hear other musicians.
SS: Did Eric like New York City?
RD: I never heard him say anything against New York City.
SS: How about yourself, did you take to it?
RD:
I had no problems. I lived there for 23 years, from 1954 to 1977. I
liked it because it was a place where everything could happen in music.
One day I’m working in a sawdust, gutbucket place, the next day I’m
working with Igor Stravinsky. It all rolled there.
SS: When Eric went to play overseas, did you stay in touch?
RD:
I never traveled with Eric. I remember seeing him off when he went on
that trip. I was working at Radio City Music Hall, and I went to say
goodbye to him. I had no idea that would be the last time I’d see him.
SS: Do you remember what you talked about?
RD:
I was a very busy studio musician, and Eric was beginning to get a lot
of work recording. He said, “I’m getting like you now. I’ll have to get a
date book.” I remember giving him a watch as a going-away present. And
that was it. Next thing I know, Charles Lloyd called me. Charles thought
I knew Eric had died. He was calling to give me condolences, because he
knew how tight Eric and I were. That was the first I’d heard of it. But
then I called Eric’s father, because I didn’t want to believe it. I
couldn’t say to his father, “Is Eric dead?” I just asked him how he was.
He said, “My boy is gone.” Then I knew Eric was gone.
Eric’s
girlfriend was with him in New York at some of those gigs. She said he
was playing more than she’d ever heard him play, and she heard him a
lot. She said he was trying to get it all out.
Eric Dolphy Quintet
Outward Bound
by Sean Murphy
6 February 2007
PopMatters
It will be difficult to avoid clichés here. In their defense, clichés originate from an authentic place; they are mostly an attempt, at least initially, to articulate something honest and immutable. And so: Eric Dolphy is among the foremost supernovas in all of jazz (Clifford Brown, Booker Little and Lee Morgan—all trumpeters incidentally—also come quickly to mind): he burned very brightly and very briefly, and then he was gone. Speaking of clichés, not a single one of the artists just mentioned—all of whom left us well before their fortieth birthdays—died from a drug overdose. Dolphy, the grand old man of the bunch, passed away at the age of 36, in Europe. How? After lapsing into a diabetic coma. Why? The doctors on duty presumed the black musician who had collapsed in the street was nodding off on a heroin buzz. To attempt to put the magnitude of this loss in perspective, consider that Charles Mingus, perhaps the most difficult and demanding band leader of them all, declared Dolphy a saint, and regarded his death as one of a handful of setbacks he could never completely get over. Dolphy holds the distinction of quite possibly being the one artist nobody has gone on record to say a single negative thing about. His body of work, the bulk of which was recorded during an almost miraculously productive five-year stretch, is deep, challenging, and utterly enjoyable. Outward Bound, then, holds a special place as his debut recording as a leader.
- Eric Dolphy: "GW" Video
- Eric Dolphy: "245" Video
http://www.allmusic.com/album/conversations-mw0000199276
AllMusic Review by Steve Huey
Music
Jazz Enigma of the ’60s Has an Encore
A New Focus on Eric Dolphy, in Washington and Montclair
MAY 27, 2014
New York Times
A Virtuoso Revisited
CreditFrancis Wolff/Mosaic Images, via CORBIS.
by BEN RATLIFF
New York Times
Though he had recorded a fair amount, especially in his last four years, culminating in the 1964 album “Out to Lunch!” and a Dutch performance recorded 27 days before his death and released as “Last Date,” there is still more to be known about what produced and drove him. Right now, a half-century after his death, might be a significant turning point. His musical papers have just been acquired by the Music Division of the Library of Congress, and his music, including pieces never performed before, will be played at a two-day festival in his honor, called Eric Dolphy: Freedom of Sound, this weekend in Montclair, N.J.
The papers were long in the possession of Dolphy’s close friends the composer Hale Smith, who died in 2009, and his wife, Juanita, who later gave them to the flutist and composer James Newton. The cache, five boxes of material, is available to scholars in the Library of Congress Performing Arts Reading Room. It includes several previously unperformed works, as well as extensions or alternative arrangements of Dolphy pieces, including “Hat and Beard,” “Gazzelloni” and “The Prophet.”
It also holds a key to how he thought and what he practiced: his transcriptions of other music, including bits of Charlie Parker and Stravinsky; Bach’s Partita in A minor for flute; and a bass-clarinet arrangement for Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. There are also many scales of Dolphy’s own devising, which he was using as the basis for improvisation; practice books and lead sheets; and a page of transcriptions of bird calls.
“The thing that really astounded me,” Mr. Newton said recently, “was that this was a person who thought very profoundly about the organization of his music.” Dolphy wrote out hundreds of his altered or “synthetic” scales. In some cases, including on the individual parts for “Out to Lunch!,” he wrote out the unusual scales beneath the composition, as a possible basis for improvisation.
“Eric was developing multiple styles of music simultaneously,” Mr. Newton continued. “There was this highly chromatic post-bop; then music that combined elements of jazz and contemporary classical; and jazz combined with world music.” (Dolphy, along with his friend John Coltrane, was listening to Hindustani music and the songs of the so-called Pygmy peoples of Central Africa.)
The festival, organized by the drummer Pheeroan akLaff and produced by his nonprofit organization, Seed Artists, will be held this Friday and Saturday at Montclair State University. It will include some of those previously unperformed works, which Mr. Newton is reasonably sure come from the end of Dolphy’s life. It will also include other Dolphy-related music performed by several generations of musicians, including Andrew Cyrille, Henry Threadgill, Don Byron, Vernon Reid, Oliver Lake, Marty Ehrlich, David Virelles, James Brandon Lewis and Dolphy’s former bandmate the 84-year old bassist Richard Davis.Dolphy, born in 1928, played alto saxophone, bass clarinet and flute. He grew up in Los Angeles and didn’t move to New York until the age of 30 — not the standard narrative of most great figures in jazz during that time. He was an only child, and a prodigy: While still in junior high, he won a two-year scholarship to study at the music school of the University of Southern California, and his parents built him a music studio behind the house.
Dolphy came into a compositional style that used wide interval jumps in various ways, sensuous or fractured. He also organized an original improvising language, both in and out of traditional Western harmony and jazz convention. He was influenced by, among others, Parker, Art Tatum and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as the microtones and quick-pivoting phrasing of bird song.
“In my own playing,” he told the critic Martin Williams in 1960, “I am trying to incorporate what I hear. I hear other resolutions on the basic harmonic patterns, and I try to use them. And I try to get the instrument to more or less speak — everybody does.”
Toward the end of his life, Dolphy wasn’t getting enough work playing his own music. He’d been derided in the jazz press, especially after touring with Coltrane in 1961 and 1962. “He was getting criticized even by friends,” Ms. Smith said.
He left New York for Europe in early 1964, to tour with Charles Mingus. (He eventually quit that tour, determined to work on his own in Europe and to settle down with his fiancée, the dancer Joyce Mordecai, who was living in Paris.) Before leaving, he dropped off his papers and other things, including tapes and a reel-to-reel recorder, with the Smiths. The tapes yielded “Other Aspects,” an album released in 1987. But the sheet music, finally given to Mr. Newton in 2004, took a while longer to be sorted out.
Among the never previously performed pieces scheduled for the weekend are an untitled solo bass-clarinet work, to be played by Mr. Byron; a short piece for flute and bass, “To Tonio, Dead”; and “Song F.T.R.H.” and “On the Rocks,” for jazz ensembles.
Those last two were written without tempo markings, but Mr. Newton and Mr. akLaff agree that they are to be played slowly. Mr. akLaff said the pieces could be described as ceremonial music, having a “deep, dark grandeur.” (Dolphy seemed to like word puzzles; we don’t know what F.T.R.H. stands for, nor the meaning of words written in pencil on one version of the score: “Split clock birds drink wood’s angel through longhouse.”)
If Dolphy didn’t have enough cultural capital at his death to inspire a school of imitators, he became a model for how to be dedicated and curious. Mr. Lewis, 30, a saxophonist who will perform in an ensemble on Saturday, said that Dolphy suggests “a figure determined to say what he had to say at the highest level in which he had to say it.” (Like everyone who talks about Dolphy, at a certain point Mr. Lewis just had to indicate an example and listen, agog: He specified Dolphy’s bass-clarinet solo on Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the A Train,” live with Mingus in 1964, which can be easily found on YouTube. )
“He’s just amazing,” Mr. Lewis added. “He sounds completely different than anyone else on stage, but he sounds confident.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 28, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Jazz Enigma of the ’60s Has an Encore.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
His improvisational style was characterized by the use of wide intervals, in addition to employing an array of extended techniques to emulate the sounds of human voices and animals.[5][6][7] He used melodic lines that were "angular, zigzagging from interval to interval, taking hairpin turns at unexpected junctures, making dramatic leaps from the lower to the upper register."[6] Although Dolphy's work is sometimes classified as free jazz, his compositions and solos were often rooted in conventional (if highly abstracted) tonal bebop harmony.[8][9][10]
Early life, family and education
Eric Dolphy was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.[11][12] His parents were Sadie and Eric Dolphy, Sr.,[13] who immigrated to the United States from Panama.[1] He began music lessons at the age of six, studying clarinet and saxophone privately.[14] While still in junior high, he began to study the oboe, aspiring to a professional symphonic career,[14] and received a two-year scholarship to study at the music school of the University of Southern California.[12] When aged 13, he received a "Superior" award on clarinet from the California School Band and Orchestra festival.[14] He attended Dorsey High School, where he continued his musical studies and learned additional instruments.[14] By 1946, he was co-director of the Youth Choir at the Westminster Presbyterian Church run by Reverend Hampton B. Hawes, father of the jazz pianist of the same name.[14] He graduated in 1947, then attended Los Angeles City College, during which time he played contemporary classical works such as Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat and, along with Jimmy Knepper and Art Farmer, performed with Roy Porter's 17 Beboppers,[14] He went on to make eight recordings with Porter by 1949.[1] On these early sessions, Dolphy occasionally played baritone saxophone, as well as alto saxophone, flute and soprano clarinet.
Dolphy entered the U.S. Army in 1950 and was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington.[15] Beginning in 1952, he attended the Navy School of Music.[7] Following his discharge in 1953, he returned to L.A., where he worked with many musicians, including Buddy Collette, Eddie Beal, and Gerald Wilson,[7] to whom he later dedicated the tune "G.W.", recorded on Outward Bound.[16] Dolphy often had friends come by to jam, enabled by the fact that his father had built a studio for him in the family's backyard.[12] Recordings made in 1954 with Clifford Brown document this early period.[17]
Dolphy had his big break when he was invited to join Chico Hamilton's quintet in 1958.[11] With the group he became known to a wider audience and was able to tour extensively through 1958–59, when he left Hamilton's group and moved to New York City.[7] Dolphy appears with Hamilton's band in the film Jazz on a Summer's Day playing flute during the Newport Jazz Festival of 1958.
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus had known Dolphy from growing up in Los Angeles,[18] and the younger man joined Mingus' Jazz Workshop in 1960, shortly after arriving in New York.[19] He took part in Mingus' big band recording Pre-Bird (sometimes re-released as Mingus Revisited), and is featured on "Bemoanable Lady".[20] Later he joined Mingus' working band at the Showplace during 1960 (memorialized in the poem "Mingus at the Showplace" by William Matthews),[21] and appeared on the leader's two Candid label albums, Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus and Mingus. Dolphy, Mingus said, "was a complete musician. He could fit anywhere. He was a fine lead alto in a big band. He could make it in a classical group. And, of course, he was entirely his own man when he soloed.... He had mastered jazz. And he had mastered all the instruments he played. In fact, he knew more than was supposed to be possible to do on them."[22] In the same year, Dolphy took part in the Mingus led Jazz Artist Guild project and its Newport Rebels recording session.[23]
Touring in Europe with Mingus in 1961, Dolphy continued on to perform as a solo artist, and he was recorded in Scandinavia and Berlin. (See The Berlin Concerts, The Complete Uppsala Concert, Eric Dolphy in Europe Volumes 1, 2, and 3 (1 and 3 were also released as Copenhagen Concert), and Stockholm Sessions.[24]) He was later among the musicians who worked on Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus in 1963, and is featured on "Hora Decubitus".
In early 1964, Dolphy returned to Mingus' working band,[7] now including Jaki Byard, Johnny Coles, and Clifford Jordan. This sextet worked at the Five Spot before playing at Cornell University and Town Hall in New York (both were recorded: Cornell 1964 and Town Hall Concert) and subsequently touring Europe. The short tour is well-documented on Revenge!, The Great Concert of Charles Mingus, Mingus in Europe Volume I, and Mingus in Europe Volume II.
Dolphy and John Coltrane knew each other long before they formally played together, having met when Coltrane was in Los Angeles with Johnny Hodges in 1954.[25][26] They would often exchange ideas and learn from each other,[27] and eventually, after many nights sitting in with Coltrane's band, Dolphy was asked to become a full member in early 1961.[28][29] Coltrane had gained an audience and critical notice with Miles Davis's quintet, but alienated some leading jazz critics when he began to move away from hard bop. Although Coltrane's quintets with Dolphy (including the Village Vanguard and Africa/Brass sessions) are now accepted, they originally provoked DownBeat magazine to brand Coltrane and Dolphy's music as 'anti-jazz'. Coltrane later said of this criticism: "they made it appear that we didn't even know the first thing about music (...) it hurt me to see [Dolphy] get hurt in this thing."[30]
The initial release of Coltrane's residency at the Vanguard selected three tracks, only one of which featured Dolphy. After being issued haphazardly over the next 30 years, a comprehensive box-set featuring the music recorded at the Vanguard was released on Impulse! in 1997, called The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings. The set features Dolphy heavily on both alto saxophone and bass clarinet, with Dolphy the featured soloist on their renditions of "Naima".[31] A 2001 Pablo box set, drawing on recordings of Coltrane's performances from his European tours of the early 1960s, features tunes absent from the 1961 Village Vanguard material, such as "My Favorite Things", which Dolphy performs on flute.[32]
Trumpeter Booker Little and Dolphy had a short-lived musical partnership.[33] Little's leader date for Candid, Out Front, featured Dolphy mainly on alto sax, though he played bass clarinet and flute on some ensemble passages. In addition, Dolphy's album Far Cry, recorded for Prestige, features Little on five tunes (one of which, "Serene", was not included on the original LP release).
Dolphy and Little also co-led a quintet at the Five Spot during 1961. The rhythm section consisted of Richard Davis, Mal Waldron and Ed Blackwell.[1] One night was documented and has been released as At the Five Spot (plus a Memorial Album) as well as the compilation Here and There. In addition, both Dolphy and Little backed Abbey Lincoln on her album Straight Ahead and played on Max Roach's Percussion Bitter Sweet. Little died at the age of 23 in October 1961.
Others
Dolphy also performed on key recordings by George Russell (Ezz-thetics), Oliver Nelson (Screamin' the Blues, The Blues and the Abstract Truth, and Straight Ahead), and Ornette Coleman (Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation and the Free Jazz outtake on Twins). He also worked and recorded with Gunther Schuller (Jazz Abstractions), multi-instrumentalist Ken McIntyre (Looking Ahead), and bassist Ron Carter (Where?).
Dolphy's recording career as a leader began with Prestige. His association with the label spanned 13 albums recorded from April 1960 to September 1961, though he was not the leader for all of the sessions. Fantasy released a 9-CD box set in 1995 containing all of Dolphy's recorded output for Prestige.[34]
Dolphy's first two albums as leader were Outward Bound and Out There; both featured cover artwork by Richard "Prophet" Jennings.[35][1] The first, sounding closer to hard bop than some later releases,[36][37] was recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, who shared rooms with Dolphy for a time when the two men first arrived in New York.[38] The album features three Dolphy compositions: "G.W.", dedicated to Gerald Wilson, and the blues "Les" and "245". Out There is closer to third stream music,[39] which would also form part of Dolphy's work, and features Ron Carter on cello. Charles Mingus's "Eclipse" from this album is one of the rare instances where Dolphy solos on soprano clarinet (others being "Warm Canto" from Mal Waldron's The Quest,[40] "Densities" from the compilation Vintage Dolphy,[41] and "Song For The Ram's Horn" from an unreleased recording from a 1962 Town Hall concert).
Dolphy occasionally recorded unaccompanied saxophone solos;[42] his only predecessors were the tenor players Coleman Hawkins ("Picasso", 1948)[43] and Sonny Rollins (for example, "Body and Soul", 1958),[44] making Dolphy the first to do so on alto. The album Far Cry contains his performance of the Gross-Lawrence standard "Tenderly" on alto saxophone,[45] and, on his subsequent tour of Europe, Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child" was featured in his sets.[46] (The earliest known version was recorded at the Five Spot during his residency with Booker Little.) He also recorded two takes of a short solo rendition of "Love Me" in 1963, released on Conversations and Muses.
Twentieth-century classical music was also part of Dolphy's musical career. He was very familiar with the music of composers such as Anton Webern and Alban Berg,[27] had a large record collection that included music by these composers, as well as by Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Bartók,[47] and owned scores by composers such as Milton Babbitt, Donald Erb, Charles Ives, and Olivier Messiaen.[48][49][50] He visited Edgard Varèse at his home,[51] and performed the composer's Density 21.5 for solo flute at the Ojai Music Festival in 1962.[52] Dolphy also participated in Gunther Schuller's and John Lewis's Third Stream efforts of the 1960s, appearing on the album Jazz Abstractions, and admired the Italian flute virtuoso Severino Gazzelloni, after whom he named his composition Gazzelloni.[53]
Around 1962–63, one of Dolphy's working bands included the pianist Herbie Hancock, who can be heard on The Illinois Concert, Gaslight 1962, and the unissued Town Hall concert with poet Ree Dragonette.
In July 1963, producer Alan Douglas arranged recording sessions for which Dolphy's sidemen were emerging musicians of the day, and the results produced the albums Iron Man and Conversations, as well as the Muses album released in Japan in late 2013. These sessions marked the first time Dolphy played with Bobby Hutcherson, whom he knew from Los Angeles, and whose sister he dated at one point.[54] The sessions are perhaps best known for the three duets Dolphy performs with bassist Richard Davis on "Alone Together", "Ode To Charlie Parker", and "Come Sunday"; the aforementioned release Muses adds another take of "Alone Together" and an original composition for duet from which the album takes its name.
In 1964, Dolphy signed with Blue Note Records and recorded Out to Lunch! with Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Tony Williams. This album features Dolphy's fully developed avant-garde yet structured compositional style rooted in tradition. It is often considered his magnum opus.[55]
European career
After Out to Lunch! and an appearance on pianist/composer Andrew Hill's Blue Note album Point of Departure, Dolphy left for Europe with Charles Mingus' sextet in early 1964. Before a concert in Oslo, Norway, he informed Mingus that he planned to stay in Europe after their tour was finished, partly because he had become disillusioned with the United States' reception of musicians who were trying something new. Mingus then named the blues they had been performing "So Long Eric". Dolphy intended to settle in Europe with his fiancée Joyce Mordecai, who was working in the ballet scene in Paris, France.[12] After leaving Mingus, he performed and recorded a few sides with various European bands, and American musicians living in Paris, such as Donald Byrd and Nathan Davis. Last Date, originally a radio broadcast of a concert in Hilversum in the Netherlands, features Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink, although it was not Dolphy's last public performance. Dolphy was also planning to join Albert Ayler's group,[11] and, according to Jeanne Phillips, quoted in A. B. Spellman's Four Jazz Lives, was preparing himself to play with Cecil Taylor.[56] He also planned to form a band with Woody Shaw, Richard Davis, and Billy Higgins,[57] and was writing a string quartet, Love Suite.[1]
Personal life and death
Dolphy was engaged to marry Joyce Mordecai, a classically trained dancer who lived in Paris.[12] He did not smoke[11] and did not use drugs or alcohol.[11][58]
Before he left for Europe in 1964, Dolphy left papers and other effects with his friends Hale Smith and Juanita Smith. Eventually much of this material was passed on to the musician James Newton.[12] It was announced in May 2014 that six boxes of music papers had been donated to the Library of Congress.[12][59]
On June 27, 1964, Dolphy traveled to Berlin, Germany, to play with a trio led by Karl Berger at the opening of a jazz club called The Tangent.[60] He was apparently seriously ill when he arrived, and during the first concert was barely able to play. He was hospitalized that night, but his condition worsened.[61] On June 29, Dolphy died after falling into a diabetic coma. While certain details of his death are still disputed, it is largely accepted that he fell into a coma caused by undiagnosed diabetes. The liner notes to the Complete Prestige Recordings box set say that Dolphy "collapsed in his hotel room in Berlin and when brought to the hospital he was diagnosed as being in a diabetic coma. After being administered a shot of insulin he lapsed into insulin shock and died". A later documentary and liner notes dispute this, saying Dolphy collapsed on stage in Berlin and was brought to a hospital. Allegedly, the attending hospital physicians did not know Dolphy was a diabetic and assumed, based on a stereotype of jazz musicians, that he had overdosed on drugs.[11] In this account, he was left in a hospital bed for the drugs to run their course.[62] Ted Curson recalled the following: "That really broke me up. When Eric got sick on that date [in Berlin], and him being black and a jazz musician, they thought he was a junkie. Eric didn't use any drugs. He was a diabetic—all they had to do was take a blood test and they would have found that out. So he died for nothing. They gave him some detox stuff and he died, and nobody ever went into that club in Berlin again. That was the end of that club."[63] Shortly after Dolphy's death, Curson recorded and released Tears for Dolphy, featuring a title track that served as an elegy for his friend.
Charles Mingus said, "Usually, when a man dies, you remember—or you say you remember—only the good things about him. With Eric, that's all you could remember. I don't remember any drags he did to anybody. The man was absolutely without a need to hurt."[22]
Dolphy was buried in Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles. His headstone bears the inscription: "He Lives In His Music."[64]
John Coltrane acknowledged Dolphy's influence in a 1962 DownBeat interview, stating: "After he sat in... We began to play some of the things we had only talked about before. Since he's been in the band, he's had a broadening effect on us. There are a lot of things we try now that we never tried before. This helped me... We're playing things that are freer than before."[65] Coltrane biographer Eric Nisenson stated: "Dolphy's effect on Coltrane ran deep. Coltrane's solos became far more adventurous, using musical concepts that without the chemistry of Dolphy's advanced style he might have kept away from the ears of his public."[66] In his book Free Jazz, Ekkehard Jost provided specific examples of how Coltrane's playing began to change during the time he spent with Dolphy, noting that Coltrane started using wider melodic intervals like sixths and sevenths, and began focusing on integrating sound coloration and multiphonics into his solos.[67] Jost contrasted Coltrane's solo on "India", recorded in November 1961 while Dolphy was with the group, and released on Impressions, with his solo on "My Favorite Things", recorded roughly a year earlier, and released on the Atlantic album,[68] and observed that on "My Favorite Things", Coltrane "accepted the mode as more or less binding, occasionally aiming away from it... at tones foreign to the scale,"[69] whereas on "India", Coltrane, like Dolphy, played "around the mode more than in it."[69]
Dolphy's musical presence was also influential to many young jazz musicians who would later become prominent. Dolphy worked intermittently with Ron Carter and Freddie Hubbard throughout his career, and in later years he hired Herbie Hancock, Bobby Hutcherson and Woody Shaw to work in his live and studio bands. Out to Lunch! featured yet another young performer, drummer Tony Williams, and Dolphy's participation on Hill's Point of Departure session brought him into contact with the tenor player Joe Henderson.
There is a celebration held at Le Moyne College based on a Frank Zappa song, "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue," inspired by him.
Carter, Hancock and Williams would go on to become one of the quintessential rhythm sections of the decade, both together on their own albums and as the backbone of Miles Davis's second great quintet. This aspect of the second great quintet is an ironic footnote for Davis, who was critical of Dolphy's music: in a 1964 DownBeat "Blindfold Test", Miles quipped: "The next time I see [Dolphy] I'm going to step on his foot."[70] However, Davis new quintet's rhythm section had all worked under Dolphy, thus creating a band whose brand of "out" was strongly influenced by Dolphy.
Dolphy's virtuoso instrumental abilities and unique style of jazz, deeply emotional and free but strongly rooted in tradition and structured composition, heavily influenced such musicians as Anthony Braxton,[71] members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago,[72] Oliver Lake,[73] Arthur Blythe,[74] Don Byron,[75] and Evan Parker.[76]
Dolphy was posthumously inducted into the DownBeat magazine Hall of Fame in 1964.[77] John Coltrane paid tribute to Dolphy in an interview: "Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician."[78] After Dolphy died, his mother gave Coltrane his flute and bass clarinet, and Coltrane, who traveled with Dolphy's photograph, hanging it on his hotel room walls,[26] proceeded to play the instruments on several subsequent recordings.[79]
Frank Zappa acknowledged Dolphy as a musical influence in the liner notes to the 1966 album Freak Out![80] and included a Dolphy tribute entitled "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue" on his 1970 album Weasels Ripped My Flesh.
Pianist Geri Allen analyzed Dolphy's music for her master's thesis at the University of Pittsburgh,[81] and paid tribute to Dolphy in tunes like "Dolphy's Dance," recorded and released on her 1992 album Maroons.[82]
In 1989, Po Torch Records released an album titled "The Ericle of Dolphi," featuring Evan Parker, Paul Rutherford, Dave Holland, and Paul Lovens.[83]
In 1997, the Vienna Art Orchestra released Powerful Ways: Nine Immortal Non-evergreens for Eric Dolphy as part of its 20th anniversary box-set.[84]
In 2003, to mark what would have been Dolphy's 75th birthday, a performance was made in his honor of an original composition by Phil Ranelin at the William Grant Still Arts Center in Dolphy's hometown Los Angeles.[85] Additionally, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors designated June 20 as Eric Dolphy Day.[85]
In 2014, marking 50 years since Dolphy's death, Berlin-based pianists Alexander von Schlippenbach and Aki Takase led a project called So Long, Eric!, celebrating Dolphy's music and featuring musicians such as Han Bennink, Karl Berger, Tobias Delius, Axel Dörner, and Rudi Mahall. That year also saw a Dolphy tribute by a Berlin-based group led by Gebhard Ullmann, who had previously founded a quartet named Out to Lunch in 1983.[82] In the United States, the arts group Seed Artists presented a two-day festival entitled Eric Dolphy: Freedom of Sound in Montclair, New Jersey, that year.[12][86]
Dolphy's compositions are the inspiration for many tribute albums, including Oliver Lake's Prophet and Dedicated to Dolphy, Jerome Harris' Hidden In Plain View,[87] Otomo Yoshihide's re-imagining of Out to Lunch!,[88] Silke Eberhard's Potsa Lotsa: The Complete Works of Eric Dolphy,[89] and Aki Takase and Rudi Mahall's duo album Duet For Eric Dolphy.[90]
The ballad "Poor Eric", composed by pianist Larry Willis and appearing on Jackie McLean's 1966 Right Now! album, is dedicated to Dolphy.
Dolphy was the subject of a 1991 documentary titled Last Date, directed by Hans Hylkema, written by Hylkema and Thierry Bruneau, and produced by Akka Volta.[91][92] The film includes video clips from Dolphy's television appearances, along with interviews with the members of the Misha Mengelberg trio, with whom Dolphy recorded in June 1964, as well as commentary from Buddy Collette, Ted Curson, Jaki Byard, Gunther Schuller, and Richard Davis.
Discography
Lifetime releases
1960: Outward Bound (New Jazz, 1960)
1960: Caribé with The Latin Jazz Quintet (New Jazz, 1961)
1960: Out There (New Jazz, 1961)
1960: Far Cry (New Jazz, 1962)
1961: At the Five Spot, Vol. 1 (New Jazz, 1961) – live
1961: At the Five Spot, Vol. 2 (Prestige, 1963) – live
1963: Conversations (FM, 1963) – also released as Music Matador (Affinity)
Posthumous releases (July 1964)
1959–60: Hot & Cool Latin (Blue Moon, 1996)
1960–61: Candid Dolphy (Candid, 1989) – alternate takes from sessions as a sideman
1960–61: Fire Waltz (Prestige, 1978)[2LP] – reissue of Ken McIntyre's Looking Ahead (New Jazz, 1961) and Mal Waldron's The Quest (New Jazz, 1962)
1960–61: Dash One (Prestige, 1982) – out-takes & previously unissued
1961: Memorial Album: Recorded Live At the Five Spot (Prestige, 1965) – live
1961: The Berlin Concerts (enja, 1978) – live
1961: The Complete Uppsala Concert (Jazz Door, 1993) – initially unofficial
1960–61: Here and There (Prestige, 1966) – live
1961: Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vol. 1 (Prestige, 1964) – live
1961: Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vol. 2 (Prestige, 1965) – live
1961: Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vol. 3 (Prestige, 1965) – live. also released as Copenhagen Concert with Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vol. 1.
1961: Stockholm Sessions (Enja, 1981)
1961: 1961 (Jazz Connoisseur, ?) – live in Munich. also released as Live in Germany (Stash); Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise (Natasha Imports); Munich Jam Session December 1, 1961 by Eric Dolphy Quartet with McCoy Tyner (RLR).[93]
1962: Eric Dolphy Quintet featuring Herbie Hancock: Complete Recordings (Lone Hill Jazz, 2004) – also released as Live In New York (Stash); Left Alone (Absord); Gaslight 1962 (Get Back)
1963: The Illinois Concert (Blue Note, 1999) – live
1962–63: Vintage Dolphy (GM Recordings/enja, 1986) – live
1963: Iron Man (Douglas International, 1968) – both Conversations and Iron Man were released as Jitterbug Waltz (Douglas , 1976)[2LP]; Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions (Resonance, 2019)[3CD].
1964: Out to Lunch! (Blue Note, 1964)
1964: Last Date (Fontana, 1964) – for radio program at Hilversum
1964: Naima (Jazzway/West Wind, 1988) – for ORTF radio program at Paris
Compilation: Unrealized Tapes (West Wind) – recorded in 1964 for ORTF radio program at Paris. also released as Last Recordings and The Complete Last Recordings In Hilversum & Paris 1964 (Domino).
Compilation: Other Aspects (Blue Note, 1987) – recorded in 1960 & 64
With Ornette Coleman
1960: Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (Atlantic, 1961)
1959–61: Twins (Atlantic, 1971)
With John Coltrane
Olé Coltrane (Atlantic, 1961)
Africa/Brass (Impulse!, 1961)
Live! at the Village Vanguard (Impulse!, 1962) – rec. 1961
Impressions (Impulse!, 1963)
The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (Impulse!, 1997) – rec. 1961
Live Trane: The European Tours (Pablo, 2001) – rec. 1961–63
The Complete Copenhagen Concert (Magnetic, -)
/Complete 1961 Copenhagen Concert (Gambit, 2009) – rec. 1961
So Many Things: The European Tour 1961 (Acrobat, 2015) – rec. 1961
Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy (Impulse!, 2023) – rec. 1961
With Chico Hamilton
1958: The Chico Hamilton Quintet with Strings Attached (Warner Bros., 1959)
1958: Gongs East! (Warner Bros., 1959)
1958: The Original Ellington Suite (Pacific Jazz, 2000)
1959: The Three Faces of Chico (Warner Bros., 1959)
1959: That Hamilton Man (SESAC, 1959)
With John Lewis
1960: The Wonderful World of Jazz (Atlantic, 1961)
1960: Jazz Abstractions (Atlantic, 1961)
1960–62: Essence (Atlantic, 1965)
With Charles Mingus
1960: Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid, 1960)
1960: Pre-Bird (Mercury, 1961) – aka Mingus Revisited
1960: Mingus (Candid, 1961)
1960: Mingus at Antibes (Atlantic, 1976) – live
1962: The Complete Town Hall Concert (Blue Note, 1994) – live
1963: Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (Impulse!, 1964)
1964: Town Hall Concert (Jazz Workshop, 1964) – live
1964: The Great Concert of Charles Mingus (America, 1971) – live
1964: Mingus in Europe Volume I (Enja, 1980) – live
1964: Mingus in Europe Volume II (Enja, 1983) – live
1964: Revenge! (Revenge, 1996) – live
1964: Cornell 1964 (Blue Note, 2007) – live
With Oliver Nelson
Screamin' the Blues (New Jazz, 1961) – rec. 1960
The Blues and the Abstract Truth (Impulse!, 1961)
Straight Ahead (New Jazz, 1961)
With Orchestra U.S.A.
Debut (Colpix, 1963)
Mack the Knife and Other Berlin Theatre Songs of Kurt Weill (RCA Victor, 1964)
With others
Clifford Brown, Clifford Brown + Eric Dolphy – Together: Recorded live at Dolphy's home, 1954 (Rare Live, 2005)
Ron Carter, Where? (New Jazz, 1961)
Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Trane Whistle (Prestige, 1960)
Sammy Davis Jr., I Gotta Right to Swing (Decca, 1960)
Phil Diaz, The Latin Jazz Quintet (United Artists, 1961)
Benny Golson, Pop + Jazz = Swing (Audio Fidelity, 1961)
Ted Curson, Plenty of Horn (Old Town, 1961)
Gil Evans, The Individualism of Gil Evans (Verve, 1964) – rec. 1963–64
Andrew Hill, Point of Departure (Blue Note, 1965) – rec. 1964
Freddie Hubbard, The Body & the Soul (Impulse!, 1963)
Abbey Lincoln, Straight Ahead (Candid, 1961)
Booker Little, Out Front (Candid, 1961)
Ken McIntyre, Looking Ahead (New Jazz, 1961)
Pony Poindexter, Pony's Express (Epic, 1962)
Max Roach, Percussion Bitter Sweet (Impulse!, 1961)
George Russell, Ezz-thetics (Riverside, 1961)
Mal Waldron, The Quest (New Jazz, 1962) – rec. 1961
Further reading
Belhomme, Guillaume. Eric Dolphy. Biographical sketches, Hofheim: Wolke Verlag, 2023. ISBN978-3-95593-146-9
Horricks, Raymond. The Importance of Being Eric Dolphy. Great Britain: D. J. Costello Publishers, 1989. ISBN0-7104-3048-5
Simosko, Vladimir and Tepperman, Barry. Eric Dolphy: A Musical Biography and Discography. New York: Da Capo Press, 1979. ISBN0-306-80107-8
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to Eric Dolphy. Eric Dolphy at adale.org
Eric Dolphy session and discography at JazzDisco.org
Eric Dolphy pages by Alan Saul (archived)
Eric Dolphy Collection at the Library of Congress
Dolphy played alto saxophone, flute and bass clarinet, and outside of his own work was a favored collaborator of Chico Hamilton, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus. He died of a diabetic disorder in Berlin in 1964, at 36, four months after recording the landmark album “Out to Lunch,” which has just been released on vinyl by Blue Note records, in the first batch of the label’s year-long reissue program of its greatest records. Tickets for the festival will be available in mid-April; information is at seedartists.org.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/eric-dolphy-freedom-of-sound#/story
Eric Dolphy: Freedom of Sound
Seed Artists has gathered world-class musicians and artists to celebrate visionary multi-instrumentalist and composer Eric Dolphy, who died 50 years ago this June. Legends of the Sixties avant garde, today’s leading innovators, from solo cello to large ensemble—the slate and scope are unrivaled. (The nightly schedules are listed at the end of the pitch.)
But it gets even better:
We are profoundly honored to debut Eric Dolphy compositions that have NEVER BEEN RECORDED, NEVER PERFORMED. They have sat unplayed for 50 years, and it is unclear if even Dolphy ever heard them played. From solo bass clarinet to a full ensemble, we will present them both nights in a world premiere of historical importance. This is Holy Grail of Jazz territory.
A Dolphy symposium will feature revelations from his personal papers that show a theoretical and conceptual sophistication far beyond what anyone had imagined. Dolphy Reborn.
And in keeping with Seed’s core mission of Great Art for Good Works, we will donate proceeds to two partner nonprofits: the Jazz Foundation of America (JFA) and the Montclair Academy of Dance and Laboratory of Music (MADLOM).
The pieces are in place, now we need to complete funding. We hope that you will help us to help others, and to make music history.
Unfamiliar with Dolphy? Check out our video at the top.
This, too.
(If you haven't already done so, click into the rectangle at the bottom center of the screen at the end of the pitch video. It's our cellphone-video tribute to Dolphy.)
As fans ourselves,
we’re counting the days (and humbled) to see and hear this unparalleled gathering of legends and young innovators. You’ll find nothing like it anywhere.
Gunther Schuller, giant of modern music? Yes.
Don Byron, Oliver Lake, Vernon Reid…a debut composition from Henry Threadgill, a birdsong suite from Diane Moser, a bass-clarinet quartet, God Bless the Child on cello…And not just music but dance from an Alvin Ailey instructor, a National Book Ward-nominated poet, photography, video--a slate and scope for the devotee and the Dolphy-curious, a tonic for the merely bored. (See the performance schedules at the end of this pitch. You'll be floored.)
A Bit About Seed Artists
Renowned drummer Pheeroan akLaff and his wife, Luz Marina Bueno, founded Seed Artists in Brooklyn in 2005. Seed used jazz and creative music to bridge cultural and generational gaps, spark community engagement, and bring the arts to at-risk youth. From music instruction at underserved schools to concerts at nursing homes and in community gardens. DIY through and through.
When Pheeroan and Luz Marina moved to Montclair, Seed was initially dormant. Then he met Chris Napierala (me) and Michael Schreiber at a yard sale, and we fell into the Jazz Wormhole
We emerged with plans to revive Seed. When we realized that this summer would mark 50 years since Dolphy’s death, and we found no planned tribute (!), we decided to do it ourselves. Absent existing funding, we put in the volunteer hours to create an event that would do Dolphy justice. A grand project, but such a significant anniversary merits an equally significant celebration.
THE SCHEDULE
FRIDAY, MAY 30 – 7pm-10:30pm
Andrew Cyrille & Pheeroan akLaff
What’s It All About, Then? Part One: Jazz, Featuring Eric Dolphy
Question: What’s it all about?
Answer: I don’t know.
But I do know a few things.
I know some of the things that make me tick.
Even though I write (for fun, for real and forever), I would still say that music has always been the central element of my existence. Or the elemental center. Writing is a compulsion, a hobby, a skill, a craft, an obsession, a mystery and at times a burden. Music simply is. For just about anyone, all you need is an ear (or two); that is all that’s required for it to work its magic. But, as many people come to realize, if you approach it with your mind, and your heart and, eventually (inevitably) your soul, it is capable of making you aware of other worlds, it can help you achieve the satisfaction material possessions are intended to inspire, it will help you feel the feelings drugs are designed to approximate. Et cetera.
I know that jazz music has made my life approximately a million times more satisfying and enriching than it would have been had I never been fortunate enough to discover, study and savor it.
During the last 4-5 years, I’ve had (or taken) the opportunity to write in some detail about Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Freddie Hubbard, Ornette Coleman, John Zorn, and Herbie Hancock. This has been important to me, because I feel that in some small way, if I can help other people better appreciate, or discover any (or all) of these artists, I will be sharing something bigger and better than anything I alone am capable of creating.
Before this blog (and PopMatters, where virtually all of my music writing appears), and during the decade or so that stretched from my mid-’20s to mid-’30s, I used to have more of an evangelical vibe. It’s not necessarily that I’m less invested, now, then I was then; quite the contrary. But, if I wasn’t particuarly interested in converting people then (I wasn’t), I’m even less so today. When it comes to art in general and music in particular, entirely too many people are very American in their tastes: they know what they like and they like what they know. And there’s nothing wrong with that, since what they don’t know won’t hurt them. Also, let’s face it, the only thing possibly more annoying than some yahoo proselytizing their religion on your doorstep is some jackass getting in your grill about how evolved or enviable his or her musical tastes happen to be. Life is way too short, for all involved.
On the other hand, back in the day I was obliged to talk about music using only words. Now there is YouTube. You can’t believe everything you read, but you can always have faith in what you hear; the ears never lie. Not when it comes to music. Not when it comes to jazz music.
How to talk about jazz music? Well, perhaps it’s better to determine how not to talk about jazz music. Hearing is believing. That’s it. And if you hear something that speaks to you, keep listening. Whatever effort you put in will be immeasurably rewarded. Trust me. But first, eradicate cliché. Possibly the most despicable myth (that, fortunately doesn’t seem as widespread, perhaps –sigh– because less people talk or care about jazz music in 2010) is one I found myself ceaselessly rebutting back in the bad old days. You know which one: that lazy, anecdotally innacurate and often racist assumption that all jazz artists are (or at least were) heroin addicts. That’s like saying all pro athletes are steroid abusers. Oh wait…
There are several dozen top-tier jazz musicians whose artistic (and personal) lives could be held up as examples any sane person should want to emulate. And while geniuses like Wayne Shorter, Jackie McLean, McCoy Tyner, Max Roach, Henry Threadgill and Sonny Rollins all spring immediately to mind, the one I believe serves as the ultimate example of everything sublime about jazz music is Eric Dolphy. I’ve discussed –and celebrated– the man at length here, as well as here, here and here.
This is an excerpt from my review of Dolphy’s Outward Bound:
It will be difficult to avoid clichés here. In their defense, clichés originate from an authentic place; they are mostly an attempt, at least initially, to articulate something honest and immutable. And so: Eric Dolphy is among the foremost supernovas in all of jazz (Clifford Brown, Booker Little and Lee Morgan—all trumpeters incidentally—also come quickly to mind): he burned very brightly and very briefly, and then he was gone. Speaking of clichés, not a single one of the artists just mentioned—all of whom left us well before their fortieth birthdays—died from a drug overdose. Dolphy, the grand old man of the bunch, passed away at the age of 36, in Europe. How? After lapsing into a diabetic coma. Why? The doctors on duty presumed the black musician who had collapsed in the street was nodding off on a heroin buzz. To attempt to put the magnitude of this loss in perspective, consider that Charles Mingus, perhaps the most difficult and demanding band leader of them all, declared Dolphy a saint, and regarded his death as one of a handful of setbacks he could never completely get over. Dolphy holds the distinction of quite possibly being the one artist nobody has gone on record to say a single negative thing about. His body of work, the bulk of which was recorded during an almost miraculously productive five-year stretch, is deep, challenging, and utterly enjoyable.
One of the paradoxical reasons Dolphy tends to get overlooked, even slighted, is not because of any lack of proficiency, but rather an abundance of it. It does not quite seem possible—particularly for lazier critics and ringleaders amongst the jazz intelligentsia—that such a relatively young musician could master three instruments. In actuality, Dolphy was an exceedingly accomplished alto sax player, drawing freely (pun intended) from Bird while pointing the way toward Braxton. Perhaps most egregiously disregarded is his flute playing, which not only achieves a consistent and uncommon beauty, but more than holds its own against fellow multi-reedists Yusef Lateef and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Nevertheless, it is the signature, unmistakable sounds he makes with the bass clarinet that ensure his place in the pantheon: no one of note, excepting Harry Carney, employed this instrument on the front line before Dolphy and, arguably, no one has used it as effectively and indelibly since…Let there be no doubt that Eric Dolphy warrants mention amongst jazz music’s all-time immortals.
So: a sample of some of Dolphy’s finer moments
1. “Hat And Beard” from Out To Lunch.
This song, the first track from his last proper album, can serve as well as virtually any other composition I can think of to best illustrate what jazz is; what it is capable of conveying. In this song, the primary feeling is ecstasy. The ecstasy of discovery; the ecstasy of shared purpose amongst the musicians (and this is an unbelievable group of masters, including Freddie Hubbard, Tony Williams and Bobby Hutcherson) and the ecstasy of expression. This song’s title is a tribute to Thelonious Monk, but the notes are all Dolphy. Here is his slightly surreal, intentionally off-kilter, totally focused and deeply, darkly beautiful vision fully developed and delivered. This is not the easiest music to absorb, at least initially, but once you “get it”, you stay got.
2. “Come Sunday” from Iron Man.
That Dolphy is able to cover the immortal Duke Ellington so convincingly is remarkable; that he is able to do it so indelibly with only one other musician (Richard Davis) is more than a little miraculous. The sheer volume of feeling in this performance is mind boggling, and life changing. Dolphy’s bass clarinet sings, cries and cajoles. It whispers and it pleads, and then it sighs. By the end, it has exhausted itself; it has said everything there is to say.
3. “Eclipse” from Out There.
Another tribute to another great composer: his friend, mentor and bandmate Charles Mingus. Writing recently about Jimi Hendrix, I observed that “The Wind Cries Mary” captures the feeling of melancholy as well as any song ever has. And it does. But to do similar work without words, as Dolphy does here, is a truly staggering achievement. The mournful cadence of Dolphy’s clarinet here gets right inside you, and the feeling expressed is magnified by Ron Carter’s bowed cello, which weaves in and around, at once among the corners and right within the heart of the song. The sounds these two men achieve are so unusual, so unsettling and (the word has to be used again) so surreal, it almost defies explanation. This is music best categorized as other and the album title, Out There, is more than a little appropriate. Dolphy was indeed “out there” in the sense that most of us are blissful or oblivious inside our little boxes, incapable of hearing, much less expressing, the joyful noises that reside in those most inaccessible spaces: within each of us.
4. “Left Alone” from Far Cry.
So, you might ask, are you really telling me I should want to listen to music that is capable of making me cry?
Yes, I would reply.
And, you might add, why would I want to do such a thing?
It’s simple, I’d say. So that you know you are alive.
5. “Miss Ann” from Last Date.
Eric Dolphy, dead at 36. There is nothing anyone can say that could possibly begin to explain or rationalize that travesty of justice; that affront to life. It is the intolerable enigmas like these that make certain people hope against hope that there is a bigger purpose and plan, a way to measure or quantify this madness. But in the final, human analysis, whatever we lost can never overwhelm all that we received. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It helps that we will always have the gifts the artist left behind. It’s never enough; it’s more than enough.
After the final cut of his final recording, Dolphy offers the following observation: “When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone in the air…you can never capture it again.”
What he said.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIC: A TRIBUTE TO ERIC DOLPHY, 1928-1964--Multi-instrumentalist, Composer, Artist
ERIC DOLPHY, 1928-1964"Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician." – John Coltrane on Eric Dolphy
“When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. You can never capture it again.” – Eric Dolphy
"I'm leaving to live in Europe. Why? Because if you try to do something new and different in this country (the U.S.) people put you down for it."
http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/782.html
In only thirty six years (1928-1964) Eric Dolphy was able to leave a legacy as one of the most unique and influential artists in Jazz. Today we pay tribute to the amazing life and extraordinary music of a true master on his 83rd birthday.
Happy Birthday Eric Dolphy!
Eric Allen Dolphy, Jr. was born on June 20, 1928 in Los Angeles, California. Eric began playing music on harmonica in elementary school before exploring other instruments. Dolphy also sang in the choir at his local church as a child led by Reverend Dr. Hampton B Hawes, the father of Eric’s childhood friend and later legendary Jazz piano player Hampton Hawes. By the time Dolphy was in middle school he won a two year scholarship to the U.S.C. School of Music in a city wide competition but didn’t need it as he would be playing professionally in high school. Eric also did chores for music teacher Lloyd Reese in exchange for lessons and after high school would continue his studies for a short time at Los Angeles City College while gigging locally. He was able to play and perform on alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet and flute. After entering the army and the U.S. Naval School of Music, Dolphy returned home in 1953 and began playing with George Brown, Gerald Wilson and Buddy Collette. Collette suggested to Eric that he make his way to New York and join Chico Hamilton and he did.
In New York Eric would play with just about every legendary Jazz musician in the area. In 1960 he recorded on Ornette Coleman’s album ‘Free Jazz’ as well as played with Freddie Hubbard, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Scott LaFaro, Billy Higgins, Max Roach, Oliver Nelson and Eddie Blackwell among others. Dolphy toured and performed with John Coltrane in ’61 and ’62 contributed to Trane’s albums ‘Africa Brass’, ‘Impressions’, ‘Live at the Village Vanguard’ and ‘Ole’. Also in the early 1960s Eric performed and became close with Charles Mingus and some of those classic albums they made together include ‘Mingus!’, ‘Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus’, ‘Mingus at Antibes’, ‘The Town Hall Concert’, ‘Revenge!’ and more.
Dolphy also performed and recorded extensively as a leader and his first albums include ‘Out There’, ‘Outward Bound’, ‘Far Cry’ with Booker Little and ‘Magic’ all recorded in 1960 among even more that year. Some other notable albums Eric recorded as a leader includes ‘Here and There’ and ‘Live! At the Five Spot’ in 1961 as well as ‘The Illinois Concert’ in 1963 and ‘Out to Lunch!’ with Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Richard Davis and Tony Williams in 1964. Eric left on a European tour with Mingus in early 1964 planning to settle down there with his fiancé after the tour. However, in June 1964 Dolphy suffered a stroke from undiagnosed diabetes and passed away in Berlin at just thirty six years old. That same year Eric was inducted in Down Beat Magazine’s Hall of Fame.
Eric Dolphy’s short life did not prevent him from leaving a legacy as one of the most unique and influential voices in Jazz history. Dolphy was one of the first important bass clarinet players in Jazz as well as one of the most influential flautists. Even with contributions on those instruments he is best known as being one of the greatest alto saxophone players in this music. Eric’s way of living, music and style of play continues to influence and inspire young musicians today to explore themselves and the unknown through their music and find their own voice.
"Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician." – John Coltrane on Eric Dolphy
“When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. You can never capture it again.” – Eric Dolphy
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/eric-dolphy-the-complete-prestige-recordings-by-mike-neely.php
Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings
Dolphys's boyhood dream of playing for the L.A. Symphony would never be fulfilled, but his intensive classical training would be funneled into the career of a major jazz musician and composer. Eric Dolphy's talent and dedication quickly opened doors to the highest echelons of the jazz world including the recordings of Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. His accomplishments also brought him to the attention of such classical music notables as Gunther Schuller and Edgar Varese.
Dolphy's short life extended from 1928 to 1964. During these 36 years he established himself as a significant new voice in jazz, developing the resources of the primary instruments he chose to play - alto saxophone, bass clarinet, and flute. He was also a composer and arranger of note as his work on Coltrane's Africa Brass and on his own album Out To Lunch will attest.
During his career Dolphy recorded with many of the finest musicians of his time and Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings includes the bulk of his recordings as a leader. This superb box set covers the time period of April. 1960 to September, 1961, a time when the incredibly in demand Dolphy recorded enough material to result in the nine discs of this compilation.
The box set opens with Dolphy's composition "G.W." a tribute to his mentor - trumpeter, composer, arranger, and big band leader Gerald Wilson. The introduction to "G.W." is a complex unison alto sax and trumpet passage that establishes the band as being at home in the harmonies of not only the traditions of jazz but also those of 20th century classical music. A spectacular Dolphy solo follows, almost as if brashly announcing a major new voice in jazz. The drama of the opening track - the nod to his mentor, then the fast paced angular alto solo with its intervallic leaps of striking originality - add up to one of the more astounding debut tracks in the history of jazz.
In short, this 1960 recording of "G.W." demonstrates that Dolphy has mastered the most severe challenges of be-bop, and then has added some new challenges of his own. The question becomes not who is this new leader and can he play, but rather who is this young master and who are his peers? After his saxophone virtuosity and sophistication is established (for anyone with the ears to hear), Dolphy proceeds in an almost casual manner to switch to bass clarinet on the next track, doubling the opening melody line of "On Green Dolphin Street" with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet. Dolphy then slides into a lyrical, restrained solo that brings home that this new leader not only is a virtuoso on alto sax (and composer of note) but he is also a master of the bass clarinet. To add another twist - who in 1960 played jazz bass clarinet?
The third track "Les" has Dolphy returning to alto saxophone, significantly ratcheting up the tempo from the opening alto performance "G.W." If there was any doubt about the sax mastery of Dolphy, this track seems intent on burying the issue forever. The interplay between Hubbard and Dolphy is playful and fascinating for its breathtaking precision and imaginative risk taking.
Of course, by the age of 32 Dolphy had extensive experience as a performer and sideman in the studio, but the maturity of his playing, the performance of the band, and the quality of Dolphy's four original compositions suggest to this listener that anyone would be challenged to find the equal of this debut. To try to put this in a larger perspective, on his first recording as a leader Eric Dolphy set the standard for many of the most talented multi-instrumentalists of the next forty years of jazz. David Murray, Julius Hemphill, James Carter, and Marty Ehrlich can all be considered to have followed the lead of Dolphy, but even in this group of astounding talents it is doubtful that the jazz world has yet heard Dolphy's equal.
Part of the pleasure of listening to Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings is hearing the various bands Dolphy played in as a leader or a sideman. The second session in the box set opens with Oliver Nelson's "Screaming the Blues," the title track to the album. This is a far more traditional, gospel and blues influenced session featuring a thoughtful band with a rhythm section that can boast of Richard Wyands, George Duvivier, and Roy Haynes. Not surprisingly, this session has a wonderful, dance like undercurrent that doesn't let up. As a soloist Dolphy shares the lead horn duties with the underrated Richard Williams on trumpet and the always solid Oliver Nelson on tenor sax. These three musicians cohere into a marvelous horn/sax section. Dolphy solos on alto and bass clarinet throughout the session, and although he is a bit more restrained harmonically than during his own sessions, Dolphy fits right in nudging along the other very able soloists.
Sometimes when listening to Dolphy both Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker come to mind in the context of their bands, that although these three great soloists were in many ways conceptually beyond their peers they do fit in somehow in a curious straddling of the past and future. Dolphy could play the blues and the very satisfactory Oliver Nelson session demonstrates how innovation and tradition can mesh in a fruitful alliance. As a closer to the session, Dolphy is featured on a modernistic "Alto-It is," a Nelson boppish composition that features Dolphy in an outrageously showy solo, framed by the horn/sax section in a sharp, vigorous performance - this is powerful ensemble work.
The next session finds Dolphy playing as a sideman on Ken McIntyre's Looking Ahead. Both Dolphy and McIntyre play alto and flute. Again, the band personnel is first rate with Walter Bishop Jr. on piano, Sam Jones on bass, and Arthur Taylor on drums. Five of the six compositions are McIntyre compositions featuring tight ensemble work. As a soloist McIntyre is somewhat predictable and not in class with Dolphy or the other musicians but McIntyre and Dolphy play beautifully on unison passages. The rhythm section casually keeps everything in the groove. The combination of McIntyre on flute and Dolphy on alto works especially well together on "Dianna."
Disc three starts off with the second Dolphy session as a leader. Out There features Ron Carter on cello and George Duvivier on bass. Roy Haynes returns in the drummer slot. The title track of the album has Dolphy in fleet form moving at a be-bop pace with somewhat dissonant harmonies. Dolphy's weaving in and out of the rhythm section in a wide looping manner suggests a different relationship to the rhythm section than the typical be-bop soloist.
The doubled voices of Dolphy on bass clarinet and Carter's bowed cello opens Dolphy's composition "Serene." This is a fascinating composition with a later pizzicato cello solo followed by a concise Haynes and Dolphy solo exchange. George Duvivier holds everything together throughout with a solid bass foundation. The session is interesting throughout with doubled voice combinations of cello and Dolphy on alto or clarinets (bass or B-flat). Solo exchanges and intertwining lines between Carter and Dolphy are particularly interesting; the combination of flute and bowed cello has a fresh sound and is affective throughout. There are flaws. At times Carter's intonation on bowed cello sounds a little off, but overall the exchanges between Carter and Dolphy and between Carter and Duvivier are worth a careful study. The rapport is wonderful.
This daring session was recorded only four months after Dolphy's Outward Bound debut as a leader. The contrast between the extroverted Freddie Hubbard/Dolphy debut exchange and the introverted Ron Carter/Dolphy follow-up exchange is striking. Certainly anyone following the development of the young Eric Dolphy must have cocked their heads at the emotional range demonstrated in these two sessions.
The next session issued as Caribe is not heavyweight Dolphy. It's akin to Charlie Parker's latin tinged South of the Border recordings, although Dolphy plays in a small group setting paired with the Latin Jazz Quintet. The instrumentation includes piano, bass, drums, vibes, timbales, and congas. Throughout Dolphy is the predominant soloist. There is something appealing about hearing Dolphy in this relaxed setting. The band plays comfortably together, and pianist Gene Casey and bassist Bill Ellington are notable. Dolphy provides a bit of intensity to the session but no one gets too worked up, and oddly enough Dolphy fits right in. At times there is a blues or gospel overlay to the proceedings with "Sunday Go Meetin' " being a highlight for the playing of the band as a unit and for Dolphy's flute solo.
The following session finds Dolphy as a sideman in Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis' fourteen piece big band. This is quite a band with the likes of Jimmy Cleveland, Clark Terry , Richard Williams, Jerome Richardson, Oliver Nelson, and Roy Haynes aboard. The able pair of Oliver Nelson and Ernie Wilkens provided the arrangements. With this lineup, and Davis in the solo spotlight, not much is likely to go wrong, and that was the case. The band and Davis are inspired throughout. Dolphy in the second alto sax chair, behind Nelson, doesn't get to solo on these six tracks but the session does leave you wondering how much of Davis did Dolphy listen to growing up. They do share a vocal orientation to the instrument and in moments, and I do stress moments, the bluesy Davis sounds like a much more conservative Eric Dolphy.
The second half of disc four presents another classic Dolphy session as a leader. Far Cry presents the talented quintet of Dolphy, Booker Little, Jaki Byard, Ron Carter, and Roy Haynes. The performance is as good as the cast. What is notable it that the disc opens with two Jaki Byard compositions "Mrs. Parker Of K.C." and "Ode To Charlie Parker." The Byard and Dolphy solos suggest how far away from a classic be-bop conception the band has moved. The "Ode To Charlie Parker" opens with a plaintive trumpet and flute dialogue. Booker Little's beautiful ballad paced solo intertwines with Dolphy's more aggressive, faster paced flute. The be-bop of Dolphy, no matter what instrument he plays, is not the be-bop of the 1945-55 era. The intense linear focus of classic bebop has been broadened rhythmically and harmonically.
Disc five returns us to the Oliver Nelson band of Screamin' The Blues minus the trumpeter Richard Williams. Again, this is Nelson's session. Much of the music is along the lines of Nelson's early blues and R & B influenced work. The rhythm section of Wyands, Duvivier, and Haynes can hardly be praised enough for their precision and clarity of conception as a unit. The rapport and the energy generated between Nelson and Dolphy in their unison work is something to behold; there is great power in their passages together. The solo contrast between the simpler, bluesy sax style of Nelson and Dolphy's sometimes almost baroque solo style is somehow compatible. Dolphy's deep sense of the blues is conveyed through even in the complexities of his most modernist mode. This is another excellent Nelson/Dolphy session. "Images," "Ralph's New Blues," and the title track "Straight Ahead" are highlights.
The following session presents bassist/cellist Ron Carter as the leader with the very able cast of Dolphy, Mal Waldron, George Duvivier, and Charlie Persip. Entitled Where? this session opens with an intriguing bass clarinet and cello unison line in "Rally". The Dolphy/Carter combination of sonorities is odd and surprising. The following track "Duet" features and extended dialog between Duvivier and Carter. Waldron and Persip provide low key, excellent support for the two bass masters at play. At times, one bassist switches off into the solo slot while the other bassist drops back into the trio.
The music recorded that night in July of 1961 takes up three tracks on disc 6, all of disc 7, and two tracks on disc 8. It opens with an extended Dolphy/Little duet on "Someone In Love." This lovely track is followed by Dolphy playing a long solo bass clarinet version of "God Bless The Child." The latter has been discussed as being one of Dolphy's finest performances on record. What is notable about this band is the easy going comfort of these five musicians playing together. Certainly the music is not casual; it's often intense, but there is an underlying feeling of trust and confidence in what is transpiring. In short, the lack of a big ego in the way is part of the success of this band. Waldron, Davis, and Blackwell each solo superbly on the long Dolphy composition "Aggression" highlighting the balance of this unit; they are also an immensely flexible, responsive rhythm section that is a match for the brilliance of the two major soloists. This is classic jazz.
The bulk of disc 8 and all of disc 9 takes us to Copenhagen, Denmark for two concert performances. Dolphy is backed by the Danish rhythm section of Bent Axen on piano, Erik Moseholm on bass, and Jorn Elniff on drums. The fare is standards and two Dolphy compositions. Chuck Israels steps in on one track of the second night playing a 13 minute duet, with Dolphy on flute. This is an able trio though not brilliant. The playing is somewhat uneven but throughout Dolphy soars above the rough spots which usually involve an over eager young drummer or a pianist who at times seems more worried about not making a mistake than being creative. The core of this band is the relationship between Dolphy and the impressive Erik Moseholm on bass.
Some of the highlights of the concert recordings are the opening to "Don't Blame Me," an excellent extended flute solo backed by the trio. The alternate take is also a gem. Dolphy is consistently interesting especially playing bass clarinet on "God Bless The Child" and on Benny Carter's "When Lights Are Low." The duet between Dolphy and Chuck Israels is also memorable. Dolphy plays beautifully track by track and when the band is playing well it becomes obvious why these promising musicians were chosen by Dolphy.
Overall, Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings presents some of the best work that Eric Dolphy recorded in his too short career. The musicians and bands Dolphy recorded with on these discs are always interesting and many of the bands are extraordinary. It has been a pleasure to listen to this music. In our time Eric Dolphy's place in jazz history seems somewhat up in the air. At times he seems to be acknowledged in a cursory manner deprived of the sustained attention that a major figure deserves. By the evidence of this box set alone we are talking about one of the finest jazz musicians to have graced the history of jazz.
It should be noted that 6 of the 9 discs are studio recordings engineered by Rudy Van Gelder. The sound quality is excellent, as one would expect. The live recordings are well recorded with minor flaws. All of the tracks have been re-mastered since the original releases. The accompanying booklet is one of the better box set booklets I've seen, with a clear presentation of the details of the recordings. The photos add up to a memorable jazz essay on Dolphy, along with two written pieces by Zan Stewart and Bill Kirchner. As if it isn't already obvious, this box set is highly recommended.
Personnel
Disc 1) "Outward Bound" with Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbbard, Jaki Byard, George Tucker, and Roy Haynes (tracks 1-9). "Screamin' The Blues" with Oliver Nelson, Eric Dolphy, Richard Williams, Richard Wyands, George Duvivier, and Roy Haynes (tracks 10-11).
Disc 2) above band continued (tracks 1-4). "Looking Ahead" with Ken McIntyre, Eric Dolphy, Walter Bishop, Jr., Sam Jones, and Arthur Taylor (tracks 5-10). "Out There" with Eric Dolphy, Ron Carter, George Duvivier, and Roy Haynes (track 11).
Disc 3) above band continued (tracks 1-6). "Caribe" with Eric Dolphy and the Latin Jazz Quintet, including Gene Casey, Charlie Simons, Bill Ellington, Manny Ramos, and Juan Amalbert (tracks 7-12). "Trane Whistle" with Eddie "Lockjaw Davis," Melba Liston, Jimmy Cleveland, Clark Terry, Richard Williams, Bobby Bryant, George Barrow, Jerome Richardson, Bob Ashton, Oliver Nelson, Eric Dolphy, Richard Wyands, Wendell Marshall, and Roy Haynes. Arrangements are by Oliver Nelson and Ernie Wilkens. (tracks 13-14).
Disc 4) same band continued (tracks 5-12). "Straight Ahead" with Oliver Nelson, Eric Dolphy, Richard Wyands, George Duvivier, and Roy Haynes (track 13).
Disc 5) same band as above (tracks 1-5). "Where?" with Ron Carter, Eric Dolphy, Mal Waldron, George Duvivier, and Charlie Persip (tracks 6-11). "The Quest" with Mal Waldron, Eric Dolphy, Booker Ervin, Ron Carter, Joe Benjamin, and Charlie Persip (track 12).
Disc 6) same band as above (tracks 1-6). "Eric Dolphy at the Five Spot" with Eric Dolphy, Booker Little, Mal Waldron, Richard Davis, and Ed Blackwell (tracks 7-9).
Disc 7) same band as above on the entire disc (tracks 1-5).
Disc 8) same band as above (tracks 1-2). "Eric Dolphy in Europe" with Eric Dolphy, Bent Axen, Erik Moseholm, and Jorn Elniff (tracks 3-7) add Chuck Israels on track 6 only for a duet with Dolphy.
Disc 9) same trio as above with Dolphy on the entire disc (tracks 1-7).
* In the above list, the leader of the session is listed first in order of musicians.
Track Listing
Disc 1) G.W., On Green Dolphin Street, Les, 245, Glad To Be Unhappy, Miss Toni, April Fool, G.W., 245, Screamin' The Blues, March On, March On.
Disc 2) The Drive, The Meetin', Three Seconds, Alto-Itis, Lautir, Curtsy, Geo's Tune, They All Laughed, Head Shakin', Dianna, Out There.
Disc 3) Serene, The Baron, Eclipse, 17 West, Sketch of Melba, Feather, Caribe, Blues In 6/8, First Bass Line, Mambo Ricci, Spring Is Here, Sunday Go Meetin', Trane Whistle, Whole Nelson.
Disc 4) You Are Too Beautiful, The Stolen Moment, Walk Away, Jaws, Mrs. Parker Of K.C., Ode To Charlie Parker, Far Cry, Miss Ann, Left Alone, Tenderly, It's Magic, Serene, Images.
Disc 5) Six And Four, Mama Lou, Ralph's New Blues, Straight Ahead, III-44, Rally, Bass Duet, Softly As In A Morning Sunrise, Where?, Yes Indeed, Saucer Eyes, Status Seeking.
Disc 6) Duquility, Thirteen, We Diddit, Warm Canto, Warp And Woof, Fire Waltz, Like Someone In Love, God Bless The Child, Aggression.
Disc 7) Fire Waltz, Bee Vamp, The Prophet, Booker's Waltz, Status Seeking.
Disc 8) Numbers Eight/Potsa Lotsa, Bee Vamp, Don't Blame Me, When Lights Are Low, Don't Blame Me, Les, The Way You Look Tonight.
Disc 9) Woody'n You, Laura, Glad To Be Unhappy, God Bless The Child, In The Blues, Hi-Fly, Oleo.
Eric Dolphy Turns Eighty
Photo courtesy of Concord Music GroupGod Bless The Child
Eric Allan Dolphy was born eighty years ago on June 20th 1928. An only child, of parents of West-Indian heritage, Eric grew up in L.A.. He loved sports, swimming and tennis in particular. Eric also adored classical music, the French impressionists, Ravel and Debussy and later on, Webern, as his tastes expanded. By age seven, Eric began playing the clarinet, then took up saxophone by the time he turned sixteen. Dolphy also loved the oboe and his folks, Eric Sr. and Sadie, hoped their son might one day fill a chair in the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. But his music teacher, Lloyd Reese led the impressionable teenager down the primrose path to a life in jazz, crushing Eric's parent's plans of a more respectable and secure lifestyle for their son.
by John Kruth
(August 2008)"Lloyd Reese taught Eric Dolphy; Harry Carney also studied with him and so did Ben Webster and Buddy Collette, to name a few," Charles Mingus wrote in the liner notes to his album Let My Children Hear Music.
"Lloyd Reese was a master musician," Mingus said. "He knew jazz and all the fundamentals of music from the beginning. He used to be the first alto player in Les Height's band. And he could play anything."
Shy and introspective as a teenager, Eric spent nearly every waking hour cloistered away in his backyard studio, practicing and studying music. Dolphy fed his voracious musical appetite with everything from field recordings of pygmy yodeling to modern composers like Schoenberg.
Viewing a rare videotape of an interview with Eric Dolphy's parents conducted years ago by Alan Saul, a college student at the time, supplied enormous insight into the multi-instrumentalist's personality and supplied this article with many of the quotes from his folks. There were long awkward silent pauses as Alan, a self-conscious, well-intentioned young hippie, held a legal pad, as he nervously looked over a long list of questions while Dolphy's parents sat on the sofa graciously obliging. Eric Sr. was reserved and thoughtful. He let his wife and his polka dot shirt do most of the talking.
Dolphy's mother Sadie recalled how he got up each morning by five to practice until breakfast and then left for school. After classes, he'd hurry back home again to work on his tone.
"He'd blow one note all day long!" Sadie exclaimed.
"For weeks at a time!" Eric Sr. added. "Then he'd play it and put it on his tape recorder and listen to it. He'd say, "Dad it's got to be right."
I'd say, "It sounds right to me."
But Eric, perfectionist that he was, replied, "No. It's not right yet."
"Sometimes we'd be sleeping and hear him plunking on the piano," Eric Sr. continued. "And I'd say, ‘Hey, what ya doin'?' He'd say, ‘I just got an idea.' And he'd be writing y'know."
"He was gonna be a musician. He wasn't gonna do anything else!" Sadie said.
"He became discouraged when he couldn't get any work. But he kept on working at it because he figured some day, somehow he'd make it."
Like every saxophonist of his generation Eric was heavily inspired by Charlie Parker. Dolphy spent years mastering Bird's technique and concepts, employing them as the foundation for his own imaginative improvisations. Lillian Polen, a close friend of Eric's at this time recalled that Dolphy wholeheartedly "worshipped Bird." She recalled regularly "falling by the Oasis," a small club on Central Avenue in LA to check out Dolphy's band. At the time, Eric worried that people would write him as just another Charlie Parker imitator.
Years later, Eric explained his inspiration for his album title Far Cry: "The title's meaning is that it's a far cry from the impact Bird had when he was alive and his position now. I wrote this to show that I haven't forgotten him or what he's meant to me. But the song also says that as great as he was, he was a far cry from what he could have been. And, finally, it says that I'm a far cry from being able to say all I want in jazz."
Eric came to prominence during a transitional period in jazz. In the evolution of the alto saxophone, his horn bridged the gap between Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman and helped usher be bop into the uncharted realm of the avant-garde or the "New Thing." His unique sense of harmony and jagged melody lines had more in common with the fractured piano of Thelonious Monk than any horn player of his time. His lyrical leaps from one register to the next spanned a broad range of emotion and expression that few musicians then or now have been capable of. Dolphy's vocabulary ranged from a gentle whisper to a full-blown anxiety attack. Like Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, Eric also battled the grim existential atmosphere of cold war era with an irrepressible howl.
"To me, jazz is like part of living, like walking down the street and reacting to what you see and hear. And whatever I react to, I can say immediately in my music," he once said.
"It was evident he had his Charlie Parker together, but little did I realize that he would become one of the groundbreakers of the new music of the Sixties," critic Ira Gitler exclaimed after witnessing Dolphy with Chico Hamilton's Quintet at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958.
At the time, Hamilton's group typified West Coast cool. Their soft tasteful chamber jazz, comprised of guitar, cello and woodwinds, was a forerunner to future New Age bands like the Paul Winter Consort and Oregon. In this setting, Dolphy's fiery approach to improvisation was rather risky. At any moment, Eric could suddenly bust Chico's groovy mood wide open with just a few slurs and squawks from his bass clarinet. Critics that just didn't get it heard Eric's joyous squeals as amateurish, shrill and offensive.
Earlier that year Buddy Collette left Chico Hamilton's Quintet, suggesting Eric Dolphy as his replacement. Eric played in the group a short time before re-locating to New York in the autumn of 1959 when he joined forces with his old friend from L.A., the volatile bassist Charles Mingus.
Back in California, Dolphy had been harshly criticized for playing out of tune.
"The public in general wasn't ready for Eric when he was in my band," Hamilton later admitted. Many complained, suggesting that Chico fire him and find someone more suitable to his smooth sound. "But Eric was such an original type player. He had a legitimate background in music to the extent of the classics and he studied with [William] Kincaid. He did everything correct. He was total music," Hamilton said in his former sideman's defense.
Chico believed it a coincidence that Dolphy became a jazz musician in the first place. He felt Eric's exceptional technique and diversity would have allowed him to pursue any style of music he desired, from classical to R&B.
Eric Dolphy arrived in Manhattan at a time when the revolutionary concepts of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor had turned jazz on its ear. The term avant-garde no longer belonged exclusively just to painters, sculptors and experimental musicians with classical backgrounds (read white Europeans, like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen).Ornette, in his highly personalized mission to redefine beauty, had unleashed a strange new theory of music on the world he dubbed "Harmolodics" (one part harmony/one part motion/one part melody) although his bleating tone on a white plastic alto sax was considered anything but beautiful by many. Meanwhile Cecil's scrambled madcap piano extrapolations were demolishing traditional song structures with a tremendous force known only to a Stravinsky symphony or an atomic blast.
On April Fools Day, 1960 Eric recorded his first album under his own name in for the New Jazz label. The cover painting for Outward Bound by an artist simply known as "The Prophet" presented a desolate green twilight zone where space and the future met. Dolphy's eyes are shut in deep concentration. Planets glow above his head. The album's title immediately identified him with the likes of Sun Ra, Coleman and Taylor. Now in hindsight, it's clear that Dolphy's musical concepts were far more conventional. His cohort and roommate at the time, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard was certainly no match for the likes of Don Cherry when it came to bending the perimeters of jazz. Once Eric played a solo and stepped back from the microphone, his band sounds ten years behind him. Although the rhythm section provided superb support and propelled the music onward and outward, there's little trace of invention or innovation in their playing.
Dolphy employed traditional song structures as his foundation for expression and exploration while Ornette's approach came straight out of Planet X. The kind of freedom practiced and encouraged by members of Coleman's quartet shook the very foundations of jazz at its core. Unless the listener was willing to approach the complexity of Ornette's music with an unbiased mind and open ears, allowing the sound to wash over them without analysis, they would never grasp its full impact.
Coleman's image as the era's premiere iconoclast may have overshadowed many of his peers but Dolphy's role in the avant-garde was unquestionably integral to its development. One listen to his contribution to such milestone recordings as Coleman's Free Jazz and Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth and John Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard will immediately set the record straight.
For whatever reason, many of Eric's best solos were recorded as a sideman. Free from the pressures of leading his own band, Dolphy may have been able to express himself on a deeper level, embellishing his cohort's compositions with his lyrical and explosive reed work. Or perhaps it was the camaraderie that inspired to reach a little deeper. Yet Dolphy's music stands alone as an entirely valid expression unto itself, with or without his association to Mingus, Coltrane and Coleman.
In 1960, pianist Sy Johnson played a two-week stint with Mingus at the Showplace in Greenwich Village. According to author Janet Coleman, Johnson recalled that once a night Mingus would inevitably chase trumpeter Ted Curson down Fourth Street in a rage. The explosive bassist also frequently scolded Dolphy to "play with taste."Eric soon found a fitting, yet temporary position in the Mingus Jazz Workshop, in a piano-less quartet that Charles led with Ted Curson and long-time drummer Dannie Richmond. Their rendition of "Stormy Weather" on The Candid Recordings recorded in the fall of 1960 is a prime example of the group's dynamics, telepathy and imagination.
"He had such a big sound, as big as Charlie Parker's," Mingus claimed. "Inside that sound was great capacity to talk in his music about the most basic feelings. He knew that level of language which very few musicians get down to."
"Near the end of ‘What Love' Mingus and Dolphy (on bass clarinet) have a long and different kind of conversation on their instruments, apparently about Dolphy's intention of quitting the band," Whitney Balliett revealed in Night Creatures. "Eric Dolphy and I were having a conversation about his leaving the band. Mainly it was curse words, except for Eric. Eric didn't curse until the very end of his solo," Mingus joked. "He was absolutely without a need to hurt," Charles explained. The duets at the Five Spot with Mingus playing bass and Dolphy on bass clarinet are among the greatest musical dialogues in the history of the music. "We used to talk to each other, and you could understand – and I mean understand in words – what he was saying to me," Mingus said.
Friction continued to develop between the two and by the end of the 1964 tour Dolphy had grown weary of Mingus' outrageous antics. True to form, Charles lived up to his myth as the mad, sexy genius he was, busting microphones, telephones and doors. He was also arrested for wielding a knife.
"Eric played with Mingus after I did," Composer/multi-instrumentalist David Amram told me in a recent interview. "I played French horn with Mingus in '55. Mingus loved Eric's bass clarinet. Both instruments were unusual in a jazz setting. Mingus could hear these instruments in a different way and adjust his music to what they could do. I was particularly interested in Eric's bass clarinet as I had a part for one in my opera, Twelfth Night. I told him, ‘Some of the registers you're playing on the bass clarinet, I wouldn't dare write because nobody could stay in tune or make it sound good, playing that high.' He said, ‘They should either check me out or practice,' David laughed. "He believed there were no limitations in music, that if you wanted to do it enough, you would find a way. He had a great sense of adventure and daring. He was a true improviser. Remember he had a real foundation in music. There are a lot of free jazz players these days that don't have that kind of background. He could play within the mainstream but he just followed how he felt."
Seldom does a musician's search for a new mode of expression culminate in a riotous response from their audience. The most notorious instance in the twentieth century was Igor Stravinsky's premiere of "Sacre du Printemps" in 1913. A little over fifty years later, Bob Dylan suddenly shed his Woody Guthrie/weary dust bowl bumpkin balladeer guise, put on his black leather jacket and plugged in his Stratocaster at the Newport Folk Festival. The crowd erupted in outrage and anger. In the heat of the moment, the banjo-strumming King of Sing-Along, Pete Seeger was said to have grabbed an ax with the intent of whittling the soundboard into kindling but was thankfully subdued. The folkies felt betrayed by their boy wonder. Before them stood Bob Dylan, like Judas in Beatle boots, defiantly flailing his Fender while crowing, "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm No More!" His message came across loud and clear. He had turned his back on "the cause." Dylan may have sold out to rock and roll as many claimed, but he also happened to be playing some of the best damn music of his career.
With the release of My Favorite Things in the spring of 1961, John Coltrane experienced a wave of popularity unlike anything he'd ever known. With his soaring soprano saxophone, Coltrane transformed Julie Andrews' little ditty from the popular Disney film The Sound of Music into a lilting waltz that was at once romantic, accessible and cool. In the process, Coltrane had unwittingly hipped an entire generation of tweed-clad, flat-topped college kids to jazz. Even girls liked it!
Suddenly reporters from Newsweek scurried down the narrow, red-carpeted stairs of the Village Vanguard to cover the story. But it wasn't long before Rogers and Hammerstein's lovely tune became a vehicle for some of Coltrane's most torrid improvisations.
In no time, the critics attacked Coltrane like a pack of rabid hounds, tearing him apart for blowing half hour solos over a repetitive two-chord vamp. Leonard Feather believed this latest development in John's music was "retrogressive in terms of development in jazz." Feather also complained that Coltrane's endless soloing was monotonous when compared to the lush harmonic complexity of an Ellington arrangement.
"You see, that is another complexity in itself, of playing on 1 or 2 changes." Dolphy countered. Eric actually found it more challenging for a creative musician to play over a sparse framework. The simple repetition laid bare the musician's technique and intent for all to hear. With no place to hide, their shortcomings were certain to become obvious after just a few choruses.
"This automatically gives him more time to think, and it gives him the chance to unfold a lot more. Like in Indian music they only have one [chord], in our Western music we can usually hear one minor chord, but they call it a raga or scale and they'll play for twenty minutes."
Eric understood the rigorous path of discipline and practice that Indian classical musicians must endure to perfect their technique and build a musical vocabulary diverse enough to successfully improvise over a single chord without becoming redundant.
"Music contains like, rhythm and pitch, time, space and all these elements go into improvisation," Dolphy once said. "You have to take that into consideration. It's not a question of running notes, running notes in random."
Eric was deeply inspired by the hypnotic beauty of Indian music, not as a superficial trend but as a form of discipline and expression similar to his own. Years before Beatle George Harrison and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones employed the sitar's exotic twang as a condiment to their catchy pop tunes, Coltrane and Dolphy could be heard improvising within the framework of these scales on John's haunting composition "India."
As fate would have it Eric met the spectacular sitarist Ravi Shankar on his first tour of the U.S. It was a great opportunity for the multi-instrumentalist to learn about ragas, talas and other intricacies of Indian music directly the master of the form.
As Dolphy later explained it: "Classical Indian music is the music of [Indian] people and jazz is the music of the American people, especially the American Negro. Quite naturally, there's something of a connection there, of people expressing themselves in the same way [ancient blues of variable hues]. To the listener that doesn't pay close attention to the notes, the sound will get monotonous. But to the person that listens to the actual notes and the creation that's going on and the building within the players and within themselves, they'll notice that something is actually happening."
In November 1961, Trane toured England bringing Eric Dolphy along to augment his classic quartet. Jazz writer/photographer Val Wilmer believed their performance had "an enormous impact, particularly on local musicians."
Regarding the classic quartet, pianist McCoy Tyner once remarked, "That group was like four pistons in an engine. We were all working together to make the car go." If that was indeed the case, many critics and fans alike looked at the addition of Eric Dolphy as an extraneous fifth wheel.
The reaction in the press to Dolphy joining the group was second only to the Spanish Inquisition. On November 23, Down Beat published a scathing review by John Tynan, who claimed that "melodically and harmonically" the group's collective improvisations sounded like "gobbledygook."
Suddenly John and Eric were perceived as a pair of charlatans, plotting "an anarchistic course," and playing a defiant brand of "anti-jazz" that didn't swing. Both Coltrane and Dolphy were stumped by Tynan's term. Eric found the accusation confusing and absurd. "In fact, it swings so much I don't know what to do – it moves me so much," he replied. "I'd like to know how they explain ‘anti-jazz'. Maybe they can tell us something."
"There are various types of swing," Coltrane theorized. "There's 4/4, with heavy bass drum accents. Then there's the kind of thing that goes on in Count Basie's band. In fact, every group of individuals assembled has a different feeling, a different swing. It's a different feeling than in any other band," John said, regarding his quintet. "It's hard to answer a man who says it doesn't swing."
"It's kind of alarming to the musician when someone has written something bad about what the musician plays but never asks the musician anything about it. At least the musician feels bad. But he doesn't feel so bad that he quits playing," Eric countered. "The critic influences a lot of people. If something new has happened, something nobody knows what the musician's doing, he should ask the musician about it. Because somebody may like it; they might want to know something about it. Sometimes it really hurts, because a musician not only loves his work but depends on it for his living. If somebody writes something bad about musicians, people stay away. Not because the guys don't sound good but because somebody said something that has influence over a lot of people."
See Part II of the Eric Dolphy article
Eric Dolphy Turns Eighty
Photo courtesy of All About Jazz
God Bless The Child, Part II
by John Kruth
An advocate of free jazz, Dolphy was a champion of free speech as
well. Ultimately Eric believed that Tynan was entitled to voice his
opinion, but he questioned the motivation behind the critic's terse
words. Gentle as he was, Eric would not stand by idly while somebody
made ignorant comments that were damaging to both his and Coltrane's
career. Meanwhile, Dolphy lived in a lower Manhattan loft with no heat while the winter snow blew through cracks in the bricks of his humble abode.
The criticism of Coltrane's Quintet continued in Down Beat with a holy war fervor. Eric Dolphy, Coltrane's controversial cohort, was blamed of inciting John to abandon his modal melodies and explore the outer reaches of the avant garde.
John immediately rose to his partner's defense, claiming Eric was a long time friend and a student of jazz with whom he freely exchanged ideas. Coltrane recalled the first time that Dolphy sat in with his group - "Everyone enjoyed it because his presence added some fire to the band," he said.
According to biographer Bill Cole, Dolphy had an enormous influence on Coltrane's music. "Trane made very few big musical decisions without first consulting with him," Cole claimed. "I was always calling him on the phone and he was calling me and we'd discuss things musically, so we might as well be together. Maybe we can help each other some. I know he helps me a lot," Coltrane told Benoit Querson.
"Eric is really gifted and I feel he's going to produce something inspired," Coltrane predicted in 1961. "We've been talking about music for years but I don't know where he's going and I don't know where I'm going. He's interested in progress, however, and so am I, so we have quite a bit in common."
"Eric was a very, very gifted musician and a very nice guy on top of it," McCoy Tyner told me in a recent interview. "He had a very personal approach to playing and enjoyed expanding the limits of imagination. Eric played so many instruments, his pockets were bulging with all these mouthpieces," McCoy said chuckling at the memory. "He was the first guy to come on as a guest with the band. At the time he came along he was doing his own thing and made a tremendous impression. We felt that the quartet was self-contained. Jimmy, Elvin and I felt that we had built something and were still on that journey. We didn't exactly understand where John was going in terms of adding Eric. We were like little kids in a sense like this is our band and we want to keep it that way. But then again it wasn't like we didn't want to share our experience. John was the leader and he was the one that made the final decisions. He decided that maybe if I do this, this will cause something else to happen. And it did! They played so differently. Eric added another dimension to the sound. John never rested on his laurels. He was like a scientist in the laboratory always searching for something new or different. By adding Eric he was expanding the music. John and Eric had a very different type of life experience. Eric had a very academic approach. He studied a lot. John coming from the South had that real gutsy approach. His father was a minister and his grandfather was a minister. He spent a lot of time in church and you could hear that in the music. At the same time there were points where the two met and could make something very interesting happen."
"Eric added a very interesting component to the music," McCoy continued. "John believed in what Eric was doing. He wanted to help him. At the same time he wanted to open the music up. It was a very good experience for Eric as well, being surrounded by the quartet. Ole was one of the highlights of Eric's presence. He had his own approach to the bass clarinet. He had personal things he would do on the instrument and got sounds out of it that you normally didn't hear on a bass clarinet. He was very animated and very enthusiastic."
Augmenting the Coltrane Quartet at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1961 was Eric Dolphy and guitar great Wes Montgomery for an hour long set which consisted of just three tunes, "My Favorite Things," Coltrane's transcendent ballad "Naima" and Miles Davis's "So What." The subsequent review in Down Beat offered praise to Montgomery's "rhythmic flair" while knocking John for making "animal sounds."
Once again it was open season on Eric Dolphy. "While his flute work was generally good, part of his solo sounded as if he were trying to imitate birds. His use of quartertone on ‘Things' led nowhere. And this seemed his greatest hang-up; none of his solos had a clear direction."
The idea of Dolphy enhancing "My Favorite Things" with bird songs on his flute, or in Coltrane's case, creating "animal sounds" on his soprano saxophone seems more playful than something to get bent out of shape about, after all the song's lyric mentions bees, kittens and dogs!
"Eric told me that one morning that when he got up, the birds were singing outside his window and he said, ‘Oh!' and that became part of his music," journalist Nat Hentoff said in a recent phone interview. "This musician embodied what I call the life-force of jazz. You could feel the intensity of his need to express himself in everything he did. But it was always himself. He was one of the true originals in the field."
The basis for Dolphy's approach to improvisation rarely relied on the song's chord progression alone. "They're based on freedom of sound. You start with one line and you keep inventing as you go along. And you keep creating until you state a phrase," he explained to Leonard Feather.
"You use other notes in the chord to give you certain expressions to the song, otherwise you'd be playing what everybody else is playin'. The thing only happens at the moment when you do it, and quite naturally it might change," Eric said, hoping to shed some light on the elusive process of improvisation.
When Eric Dolphy moved to Manhattan in 1960, he first joined the Mingus Workshop, then later that same year he began playing with Ornette Coleman."I heard about him and when I heard him play, he asked me if I liked his pieces and I said I thought they sounded good," Eric told Martin Williams. "When he said that if someone played a chord, [he said] he heard another chord on that one. I knew what he was talking about, because I had been thinking the same things."
Dolphy soon signed on as a member of Coleman's double quartet, which featured two drummers, two bassists, two trumpets and Dolphy and Ornette on reeds and yielded the watermark recording Free Jazz.
"I had known Eric back in the fifties when I shared some music that I had been working on with him," Ornette Coleman told me recently. "He was very open to the things that I was doing. I think that he thought I was not in his class of perfection because I had just come to California from the South. But it didn't bother me. There was an appreciation from one musician to another. I invited him to play on my Free Jazz record and he asked me, ‘Which instrument would you like for me to play?' I said, ‘It doesn't matter. I wasn't concerned about him being the worst or best or whatever. I was concerned about him expressing the things he wanted to."
In retrospect, it's surprising that Coleman's music caused such a maelstrom. Many of his compositions have an almost child-like, singsong quality while others reveal a West-Indian calypso feel. His drummers, Eddie Blackwell and Billy Higgins always swung hard. In his unorthodox approach to group soloing, which had its roots in traditional New Orleans music, Ornette would forge a fresh, new, dimension of sound. No matter how radical his concept of Harmolodics, Coleman never completely abandoned changes that chords (if they had been employed) inferred. "You CAN play every note you like," Dolphy told Leonard Feather, in a desperate attempt to convey the essence of the new music. "Of course, you can only play what you can hear, and quite naturally... more or less I guess what I hear is not your hearing.""As I play more and more, I hear more notes to play against the more common chord progressions. And a lot of people say they're wrong. Well, I can't say they're right, and I can't say they're wrong. To my hearing, they're exactly correct," Eric mused.
It seems that Dolphy was simultaneously cursed and blessed with, as he put it "a whole different type of hearing." Ultimately it was Eric's refreshingly open and inquisitive nature to life and sound that allowed him to utilize a wider range of expression than many of his peers.
"Eric Dolphy is a hell of a musician, and he plays a lot of horn. When he is up there searching and experimenting I learn a lot from him," John Coltrane commented.
"He was just brimming over with ideas all the time," Elvin Jones said. "In fact that was probably his biggest problem… he just had too much to say, and this occasionally would get in the way of his saying it."
Jones felt Dolphy lacked the "self discipline" needed to express all his ideas clearly. Although the last time Eric played with Coltrane's group Elvin felt Dolphy "was better organized in his musical thinking."
Jones also admired Eric's confidence on the bandstand, claiming he "never heard him hesitate" in the heat of the moment. "He was always ready – if you wanted to play, he was there," Elvin declared.
"Eric never stood still with his music," George Avakian once said. The pianist/producer believed one day Dolphy would get his props as "the father of the new thing."
"He was very influential in the avant-garde movement," close friend, bassist Richard Davis said in a phone interview. "He was one of the forerunners in that area. I was fortunate to work with him," Richard said, claiming that Eric was a major inspiration on his musical development.
"I rate him as a genius. I knew what was inside his music; I was familiar with it and how he put it together." Davis believed that whether or not people understood Dolphy's music they could still "appreciate the tremendous feeling in his playing."
Their interpretation of "Come Sunday," Duke Ellington's wistful ballad was their finest of many duets. Notes from Dolphy's bass clarinet sputter and bubble up like black tar on a hot July afternoon while Davis serenely bows the melody. Eric's clarinet suddenly leaps registers in a single bound, reeling and collapsing like Ray Bolger's weak in the knee scarecrow until finally catching up to Richard and taking over the melody, allowing Davis to stretch out.
On classic recordings like Dolphy's own Iron Man and Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth, Eric's alto sax can be heard zigzagging like a crazy figure skater, carving figure eights into your brain. Sound splashes and sloshes around in your ears like Jackson Pollock spilling his drink. Perhaps to some Dolphy's playing comes off as a bit of sonic slapstick at times, but he knows how take it right to the edge, like a carnival clown riding a unicycle on a tight-rope wire who appears out of control. But just before falling to his certain death, he suddenly regains his balance, much to the crowd's relief. If you think for a moment that Eric Dolphy is lost, the joke is on you. His intent was to stretch musical boundaries, not to deliberately shatter them.
"Eric was, first and foremost a person who respected the tradition and wanted to extend the tradition or extend the creativity in accordance with the most positive aspects of what he brought forth from the tradition," Anthony Braxton once said.
"Many musicians did not understand Eric and were critical of his work," Third Stream composer Gunther Schuller claimed. "I could never understand, for example, how perfectly respectable musicians could say that Eric didn't know his changes," Schuller said, sighting Dolphy's inspired soloing on the Mingus arrangement of "Stormy Weather."
"I play notes that would not ordinarily said to be in a given key, but I hear them as proper. I don't think I ‘leave the changes' as the expression goes; every note I play has some reference to the chords of the piece," Eric offered.
In a Down Beat Blindfold Test, Miles Davis once famously quipped that Dolphy sounded "like somebody was standing on his foot."
Avant-garde guitarist/reedman/composer Elliott Sharp had a different response altogether. "It was pure mystery. When I heard Dolphy's bass clarinet playing, it was like a voice from Mars. It was so vocal. It was like he was speaking in tongues," Sharp told me. "I knew I had to get one at some point."
Surprisingly, the daddy of dada rock Captain Beefheart (a neophyte at best on the bass clarinet) found Eric's music "real limited." "It didn't move me," he complained to Lester Bangs years ago in Musician magazine.
"Dolphy didn't MOVE you?" Bangs replied incredulously. "Well he moved me," Beefheart allowed, "but he didn't move me as much as a goose, say. Now that could be a hero, a gander goose could definitely be a hero, the way they blow their heart out for nothing like that."
"Like any mature, creative musician, Eric was not unduly disturbed by such comments," Gunther Schuller countered. "It was his nature to turn everything – even harsh criticism – to some positive, useful purpose. In the seven or eight years I knew Eric, I never heard him say a harsh word about anything or anybody connected with music. This was a sacred territory to him and I think he sincerely believed that anything as beautiful as music could only produce more beauty in people."
"He was always real modest," his mother Sadie recalled. "We never realized either how well thought of he was. He was always a happy person. Even if things weren't going well you'd never notice. He was always happy and always helping someone else, even though he didn't have too much money. He'd always be takin' somethin' to somebody else, some musician, if they were out of work. When musicians came to town and he found out they had a family he would give them his job. He'd take them to the job sometimes because he always had a car. He'd tell them, ‘you have kids while I live at home where I can always eat.'"
Tales of Eric Dolphy's gentle, compassionate nature are almost as legendary as his musicianship. Richard Davis remembered Eric as "a beautiful person." "Even when he didn't have enough for himself, he'd try to help others," he said, recalling Eric's generosity and concern for others. "I remember how he once bought groceries for a friend who was out of work, though he was just as much in need himself."
Mingus simply referred to Eric as "a saint," and named his son the singer, Eric Dolphy Mingus in his honor.
In the spring of 1964, Dolphy left Mingus' band while on a tour of Europe and planned to live in Paris where quite a number of expatriate musicians found themselves welcome with open arms. But that June, Dolphy suddenly died due to complications from diabetes. Two months earlier Mingus had composed and recorded a blues entitled "So Long Eric" which he maintained was not a "eulogy" but a "complaint."Eric Dolphy died in Berlin, on June 29, 1964 just nine days after his thirty-sixth birthday. He'd arrived two days earlier to play a new club called the Tangente. Seriously ill, he barely made it through the first two of the evening's three scheduled sets before having to leave the bandstand. The next day, wracked with pain and delirious, Eric could barely utter the words "Take me home… Take me home..."
The next day Eric Allan Dolphy got his hat. According to doctors at Berlin Achenbach, Hospital the brilliant multi-instrumentalist was a diabetic with too much sugar in his bloodstream. They claimed that Eric was unaware of his condition. He had also suffered a complete collapse of his circulatory system as well.
Sadie Dolphy said her son never suffered from heart disease or diabetes. "He never complained about anything," she lamented. Mrs. Dolphy believed her son died so young as a result of always pushing himself too hard. The funeral took place on July 9, in Los Angeles.
"Whatever I say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, an as a musician," a shocked John Coltrane murmured after hearing the news of his friend's death.
"So close was their relationship that Dolphy's mother gave Trane Eric's bass clarinet because she claims that she had nightmares about Eric playing the instruments," Bill Cole recalled in his biography of John Coltrane. Mingus and Eric's relationship was of a far more complex nature. "There was not a lot of conversation; at times it seemed as though Charles disliked him but at the same time it was also the feeling that he loved him dearly," Danny Richmond surmised. "And there were times when they dueled musically with each other on the bandstand. So that Eric's death I know it affected Charles very, very deeply. I have a feeling that there was something left unsaid between the two of them."
Mingus maintained that Dolphy had been murdered. Charles recalled that a Manhattan physician named Finklestein had given Eric a thorough check-up and a clean bill of health before leaving on their tour of Europe. Before departing Eric had undergone an operation to remove the egg-shaped tumor from his forehead. "This would not have been done if Eric had been a diabetic," Mingus protested.
At the time, drummer Sunny Murray had also been touring Europe with saxophonist Albert Ayler, playing their unique brand of spiritual free jazz in an explosive quartet featuring bassist Gary Peacock and Don Cherry.
"See I was getting strange vibrations all the time we was in Europe," Murray said. "We were getting very in tune with the spirits when the Free Jazz group was over there – we were the most spiritual band in Europe at the time. Eric Dolphy, who had come over earlier with Mingus had remained in Europe to play with us, with the Free Jazz group. He wanted to bust loose and really play free. But he died suddenly. Rumor was that he was poisoned. That set me off and I began to realize that a lot of people were doing things to me to hang me up and I started to get very nervous."
As we know, the sixties was a politically volatile era. Everywhere, the air was rife with revolution and conspiracy. It has been said time and time again of that highly romanticized decade - if you weren't paranoid, you weren't paying attention. Eventually, Coltrane and Dolphy's devotion to music developed into a relentless quest to find God. They began living on a steady diet of honey, and conversation was reserved for all things holy.
"Eric Dolphy died from an over dose of honey," arranger/band leader
Gil Evans believed. "Everybody thinks that he died from an overdose of
dope but he was on a health kick. He got instant diabetes. He didn't
know he had it. He's eating nuts and a couple little jars of honey every
day [and] it killed him. He went into a coma and never came out of it.
"He wasn't that big," Eric Sr. lamented. "Just before he died he was just getting up; just coming into his own, but he passed away."
"No... No..." Sadie answered with a sigh. "It could have been better but life is a struggle and we are people that are used to strugglin'."
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/far-cry-eric-dolphy-fantasy-jazz-review-by-david-rickert.php
Eric Dolphy: Far Cry (2002)
Personnel: Eric Dolphy-bass clarinet, alto sax, flute; Booker Little-trumpet; Jaki Byard-piano; Ron Carter-bass; Roy Haynes-drums.
Record Label: Fantasy Jazz
Style: Straight-ahead/Mainstream
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/eric-dolphy-gone-in-the-air-by-mark-werlin
Eric Dolphy: Gone In The Air
"When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again."—Eric Dolphy
The recording sessions that Eric Dolphy led in the last four years of his life advanced the evolution of jazz. It was a tragedy that Eric Dolphy gave himself so completely and unselfishly to art that he neglected to attend to the mundane demands of bodily health. The impact of his death on June 29, 1964 at age 36 is immeasurable. The sudden loss traumatized his closest friends and deprived the world of his gifts. Dolphy's musical conception was seen by some critics as destructive and incomprehensible, though he affirmed the highest standards of jazz tradition. His most passionate supporters were fellow musical innovators, and his most hostile detractors were complacent musical conservatives. Eric's playing rose up above the din and distractions, like the songs of the birds in his parents' garden.
ACT ONE: preparation
The entrance of Eric Dolphy onto the jazz stage of New York was delayed so long that it could be said the play of his life had only two acts.The first act was set in Los Angeles, where Eric Allan Dolphy was born on June 20, 1928. Eric's musical journey initially followed the same road as many jazz musicians of his generation: instrument study in high school with additional private lessons; then college or conservatory classes in music theory. Dolphy's technical perfectionism and precocious mastery of Charlie Parker's alto saxophone style brought him into contact with composer-bassist Charles Mingus. Eric performed on "The Story of Love," a large-ensemble session in 1949, one of relatively few recordings Mingus made prior to his departure from the West Coast.
In 1952, after a two-year stint in the Army, Dolphy faced the choice of moving to New York with the hope of distinguishing himself in a highly competitive pool of talented bebop players, or staying in Los Angeles and pursuing commercial session work. He chose neither option, and it was a consequential decision. His father improvised a rehearsal studio for him on their property, and for the next six years Eric Dolphy rehearsed privately, and with local and touring musicians. John Coltrane, while on a West Coast tour with the Miles Davis Quintet, visited Eric's studio. Coltrane had only recently emerged from a decade-long rigorous and lonely practice regimen; he understood what Eric was seeking to achieve. The two entered into a close friendship that lasted for the rest of Dolphy's life.
In the 1950s professional jazz musicians paid their dues night after night in smoke-filled clubs. They toured with big bands and small combos, learned how to play to an audience's expectations, and slogged through charts that barely challenged their abilities but earned them a paycheck. For several years, Eric Dolphy paid hardly any of those dues. He found local nightclub work, sometimes in projects with his friends Buddy Colette and Gerald Wilson. What he was hearing had little to do with the West Coast "cool jazz" sound. In long hours rehearsing in his room, he studied the bass clarinet, an orchestral instrument with a four-octave range. Bass clarinet was prominently featured in the work of 20th century Russian and Second Vienna School composers, and brought to a wide listening audience in recorded performances by Harry Carney, a member of the Duke Ellington orchestra. Dolphy's practice regimen allowed him to master this difficult instrument, and to develop a saxophone-like style of playing over the entire range. To Eric, all sounds were beautiful: he listened to the birds in his parents' garden and sought to evoke their songs on his third instrument, the flute.
ACT TWO: performance
At age 30 Eric was propelled out of his rehearsal room onto the wider stage of professional music. Eric's friend Buddy Collette, also a multi-instrumentalist, was leaving the Chico Hamilton band. On Collette's recommendation, Hamilton hired Dolphy and took him on the road and into the studio. Hamilton recorded for nationally-distributed record labels; for the first time, Dolphy's Parkerian alto and distinctive bass clarinet sounds were heard by fellow musicians, critics and jazz listeners. Eric's earliest recording with the Hamilton group was a set of Duke Ellington compositions recorded in August 1958 that producer Dick Bock at Pacific Jazz, reportedly displeased with Eric's distinctive alto saxophone playing, pulled from release. (Chico Hamilton with Eric Dolphy: The Original Ellington Suite was sourced from an LP test pressing located in England and sent to producer Michael Cuscuna, who oversaw its long-belated release in 2000). The setback was a disturbing omen of the critical obstacle course Eric would confront in subsequent years.At the end of 1959, the Chico Hamilton group was disbanded. Dolphy settled in New York, ready for new challenges. He'd felt artistically constrained during his time with Hamilton; he was hearing unusual alternate chords superimposed over the written chords in the charts, and he wanted to play those notes, not just the 'right' notes. Like Mingus, he listened to the developments of 20th century classical music; like Coltrane, he strived to play inside the traditions laid down by preceding generations, but with the freedom to venture outside the boundaries of bebop harmonic conventions.
In a short time, Dolphy advanced to the frontline of new creative music. Signed to the Prestige New Jazz division, he began a busy recording schedule.
Out There
Although not named on the album's liner notes, Esmond Edwards is credited on AllMusic and Discogs with the 'audio production' of Out There. Dolphy's recordings for Prestige, as a leader and as a sideman with Oliver Nelson, Mal Waldron, and Makanda Ken McIntyre, were all produced by Edwards.
Esmond Edwards was an accomplished photographer whose images appear on many classic Prestige and Blue Note covers. He rose from Prestige's mailroom to become an in-house producer. Compared to Blue Note, Prestige was a cut-rate operation; it's a tribute to Edwards' resourcefulness that he could produce a date as accomplished as Out There on the kind of low budgets Prestige owner Bob Weinstock allotted.
From the tightly-arranged alto saxophone and cello unison lines on the title track it is clear that Dolphy and Carter are breathing the same rarefied air. Carter takes the first solo, deploying slurs, slides, bounced bow, and double-stops, a virtuoso display that boasts 'I can play anything you throw at me.' Dolphy constructs an unsettling, innovative melodic solo grounded in familiar rhythmic patterns learned from Charlie Parker's recordings. His articulation is almost preternaturally distinct—the reward of endless hours practicing in his rehearsal room. The long lines of notes, each carrying weight and emphasis, the wide interval leaps and false fingered quarter-tones, the sheer unpredictability of his ideas, generate a sound concept unlike Parker or his successors and imitators.
Dolphy's tribute to Charles Mingus, "The Baron," follows the same structure as "Out There," an opening head of angular lines played in unison, this time by the bass clarinet and cello. A cello solo by Carter ends with Dolphy's sudden entrance—as if he were compelled to interrupt Carter in mid-conversation. Dolphy explores the range of the instrument in a dazzling, modernistic solo. The pressure of recording an album in just a few hours of studio time may have driven his impatience to play as much as possible. There are anecdotes about his tendency to jump in unexpectedly when his fellow players hadn't quite finished.
The arrangement of Mingus' song "Eclipse" with Dolphy on his first instrument, the Bb clarinet, moves the set into chamber music territory. Dolphy interprets the long, sustained-notes theme without undue emphasis, using narrow vibrato, while Carter solos eloquently on the cello and Duvivier bows subtle counter-melodies. Dolphy's solo is a dance-like cascade of melodic invention, with leaps into the upper register and graceful descending arpeggios.
Hale Smith's composition "Feathers," which closes the album, reprises the characteristic alto saxophone sound of Dolphy's earliest work with Chico Hamilton, the purity of tone and masterful control of intonation and dynamics. Over bowed bass and plucked cello, Dolphy expresses more effectively than words can convey the poignant evanescence of the musical moment.
Kevin Gray's excellent new transfer, which is noticeably warmer and more detailed than the earlier Fantasy SACD release, shines a light on the methods used by session engineer Rudy Van Gelder to enhance the unusual qualities of this ensemble. On most of the tunes, Ron Carter's cello is panned to the right channel with Roy Haynes' drum kit, but on some tracks Van Gelder moves him to the center for a closer blend with George Duvivier. RVG's practice of increasing and decreasing the level of reverb in the live mix (made more audible in high resolution), needlessly softens the bite of the bows on strings.
Tracks 1. Out There 2. Serene 3. The Baron 4. Eclipse 5. 17 West 6. Sketch Of Melba 7. Feathers
Personnel Eric Dolphy, alto sax, flute, bass clarinet and Bb clarinet; Ron Carter, cello; George Duvivier, bass; Roy Haynes, drums
Audio production by Esmond Edwards. Recorded at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, August 15, 1960
Mastered for SACD by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio
Live At The Five Spot Vol. 1
Little's tune "Bee Vamp" features Dolphy on bass clarinet. By the middle of his solo, constrained by Waldron's sympathetic but conventional comping, Dolphy alternates between rapid-fire atonal outbursts and articulate phrases that run closer to the chord changes. The tension between Dolphy's avant-garde leanings and Waldron's traditionalism creates a strangely uncomfortable mood; though the ensemble playing is tight and compelling, the players' conceptions are too diverse for the performances to cohere. Dolphy doesn't need the chain and anchor of received musical wisdom.
The original album's entire Side Two was taken up with a 20-minute performance of a Dolphy piece entitled "The Prophet," a tribute to a painter friend whose artwork appears on the covers of Outward Bound and Out There. Back on alto, Dolphy unleashes a fusillade of fiery and inventive phrases, rising to ecstatic fervor. As a child, Eric, like his friend and sometime bandleader Charles Mingus, attended church services that inspired parishioners to spontaneously 'speak in tongues.' As an adult, he was the assistant director of the junior choir at Westminster Presbyterian Church, and a member of its senior choir. He played piano and organ, and had he not been so in thrall to the music of Ellington and Charlie Parker, Eric Dolphy might have committed his life to sacred rather than art music. (Citing Horricks, Raymond, The Importance of Being Eric Dolphy, Tunbridge Wells: D J Costello (Publishers), Ltd., 1989)
In the studio, Eric Dolphy had collaborated successfully with Mal Waldron (The Quest) and Booker Little (Dolphy's Far Cry and Little's Out Front) . But on the evidence of these live performances, Dolphy's restless and untrammeled imagination led to an unresolvable tension with those same colleagues, and restrained the impact of his innovative voice.
Mastering engineer Kevin Gray does wonders with this venerable tape. Distortion is generally low and the clarity of the transfer brings the performances into sharp focus. Rudy Van Gelder had the unenviable task of balancing Eric Dolphy, who Mingus once described as possessing the loudest projection of any saxophonist since Coleman Hawkins, against Mal Waldron's subtle, restrained playing on the Five Spot's out-of-tune piano, Richard Davis' bass, which had a lean timbre with relatively little deep resonance, Booker Little's trumpet and Ed Blackwell's close-miked drums. An enthusiastically appreciative audience adds immediacy to the recording.
Tracks 1. Fire Waltz 2. Bee Vamp 3. The Prophet
Personnel:
Production supervision by Esmond Edwards. Recorded by Rudy Van Gelder at the Five Spot Café, NYC, July 16, 1961.
Mastered for SACD by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio \
Critical Notices
Eric Dolphy contributed to the some of the most conceptually advanced projects in new jazz. He performed and recorded with Charles Mingus' Jazz Workshop at concerts in Europe and club dates in New York; recorded three studio albums for Prestige under his own leadership; participated in a Third Stream music project with composer Gunther Schuller; appeared alongside Ornette Coleman on the iconic album Free Jazz; and resumed a musical conversation with John Coltrane that would culminate in the November 1961 shows at the Village Vanguard that provoked a hostile attack from John Tynan at Down Beat magazine:Coltrane and Dolphy seem intent on deliberately destroying swing. They seem bent on pursuing an anarchistic course in their music that can only be termed anti-jazz.
Even though Down Beat (several months later) offered Coltrane and Dolphy a forum to reply to their critics, the epithet "anti-jazz" was wounding and humiliating. Ill-informed commentary from Tynan, Leonard Feather and other prominent jazz writers, coming at a time when the music was undergoing an organic evolution into new directions, performed a disservice to the entire jazz community and significantly impeded Eric's professional progress. His discography for the following year, 1962, lists no studio recordings under his leadership. He was barely able to make the rent.
Without label support and lacking a large enough audience to retain a regular working band, in the teeth of his tone-deaf critics, Eric Dolphy recorded two studio sessions of increasingly avant-garde music for independent producer Alan Douglas in July 1963. Iron Man and Conversations document Eric's continuing development as a composer and interpreter, and his discernment in identifying younger, promising musicians. The sessions are noteworthy for the presence of Bobby Hutcherson on vibes and Richard Davis on bass, who would make important contributions to Dolphy's subsequent—and final—studio recording.
If the original tapes for the July 1963 sessions are intact, they should be archived and reissued in high resolution digital and LP format. Currently, they are out of print in licensed US editions, and only available on out-of-copyright EU releases.
Out to Lunch!
All the hours of diligent private rehearsal, the demanding apprenticeship with Charles Mingus, the sympathetic encounters with musicians in New York and Europe, and the humiliating attacks by hidebound critics come together in these five performances. Dolphy's conception is now fully realized; he is free to brush brilliant hues and scrape deep textures across the musical canvas. What was lacking in the Booker Little/Mal Waldron ensemble, empathic communication between the players, is vividly present from the opening bars of "Hat and Beard." In Tony Williams, Eric Dolphy finds his Elvin Jones. Williams cavorts, rolls, pounces, explodes in response to Dolphy's bass clarinet multiphonic growls, impossibly fast runs, dizzying subdivisions of meter. Bassist Richard Davis and vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson engage in a conversation of plucked strings and mallet strikes.
Freddie Hubbard, listening closely to what's happening in the piece and challenged to stretch outside his familiar bag of riffs, meets the avant-gardists halfway by incorporating some Dolphy-esque wide-interval leaps and rhythmic figures into his solo. It was perhaps a calculated risk to include Hubbard in the session. He's grounded in bebop, which makes him sound less adventurous than the other members of the ensemble, but his inventive playing and impressive technique keeps the door open to the wider jazz listenership, who had lost too many young trumpet stars in the preceding decade.
For those readers who download the album in hi-res audio, some suggestions for close listening:
"Something Sweet, Something Tender": Near the end, Dolphy's bass clarinet in unison duet with Richard Davis's bowed bass, a small jewel of 20th-century chamber music.
"Out to Lunch" and "Straight Up and Down": The emotive impact of Eric's new, harsh alto saxophone sound, liberated from the conventions of classical tone production—a different kind of beauty; the rhythm section pounding disruptive accents under Hubbard's solo; Hutcherson and Davis improvising in full confidence of their melodic imaginations.
Alan Yoshida's transfer of the original master tape blasts the dust off the windows—you can hear the most subtle nuances of bass clarinet embouchure and feel the impact of sticks pounding drumheads.
Tracks 1. Hat and Beard 2. Something Sweet, Something Tender 3. Gazzelloni 4. Out to Lunch 5. Straight Up and Down
Personnel Eric Dolphy, alto sax, bass clarinet, flute; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Bobby Hutcherson, vibes; Richard Davis, bass; Anthony Williams, drums. Recorded at Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 25, 1964. High-Resolution Mastering (192/24) by Alan Yoshida and Robin Lynn at Blanche Dubois, April 2012.
Curtain
A tour of Europe in spring 1964, which briefly reunited him with Charles Mingus and was well documented in concert recordings, prompted a premature end to Eric Dolphy's second act. Though Mingus made it painfully clear that he wanted Eric to return to the US, Dolphy chose to remain in Europe. At the end of a club engagement in Berlin, he collapsed and was taken to a hospital where doctors treated him unsuccessfully for diabetic coma.The years of constant musical self-emptying left Eric Dolphy no time to attend to the physical toll of the undertaking; for the lack of preventive health care and routine blood testing, a genius of modern American music was lost.
Eric Dolphy's conception of the alto saxophone honored the contributions of Charlie Parker while taking wing in new harmonic directions. As a jazz bass clarinetist he was, and remains, without peer; a sound innovator and an inspiration for subsequent generations of musicians.
Eric said: When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again.
But if you listen closely, you can still hear the echoes.
So long, Eric.
CODA: Eric Dolphy on SACD and hi-res downloads (as of June 2018)
As a leader:
Out There Analogue Productions SACD
Live at the Five Spot Analogue Productions SACD
Outward Bound Analogue Productions SACD (scheduled for release)
Far Cry Analogue Productions SACD (scheduled for release)
Out to Lunch! Blue Note 192/24 download and Universal Japan SHM-SACD
with John Coltrane
Africa/Brass Verve Reissues 24/192 download
Live at the Village Vanguard Verve Reissues 24/192 download
with Freddie Hubbard
The Body and the Soul Analogue Productions SACD and DSD download
with Charles Mingus
Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus
with Oliver Nelson
The Blues and the Abstract Truth Analogue Productions SACD and DSD download
Screamin' the Blues Analogue Productions SACD
Eric Dolphy - 'Out There' (1960) [Full Album]:
2. Serene (Dolphy) – 6:55
3. The Baron (Dolphy) – 13:55
4. Eclipse (Mingus) – 16:53
5. 17 West (Dolphy) – 19:38
6. Sketch of Melba (Randy Weston) – 24:30
7. Feathers (Hale Smith) – 29:10
Eric Dolphy — flute, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, clarinet
Ron Carter — bass, cello
George Duvivier — bass
Roy Haynes — drums
Eric Dolphy Interview (April 10th, 1964):
Rare interview with Eric Dolphy after having played with Charles Mingus' group at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in the evening of April 10th 1964.
Eric Dolphy - 'Out to Lunch!' (1964) [Full Album]:
Recorded and released in 1964
Tracklist:
00:00 Hat and Beard
08:23 Something Sweet, Something Tender
14:27 Gazzelloni
21:51 Out to Lunch
34:00 Straight Up and Down
ERIC DOLPHY QUINTET:
Freddie Hubbard - trumpet
Bobby Hutcherson - vibraphone
Richard Davis - bass
Tony Williams - drums
Eric Dolphy - 'At The Five Spot, Vol. 1' (1961) (Full Album):
Tracklist:
A1 Fire Waltz
A2 Bee Vamp
B The Prophet
Alto Saxophone, Bass Clarinet -- Eric Dolphy
Bass -- Richard Davis (2)
Drums -- Ed Blackwell
Piano -- Mal Waldron
Recorded By -- Rudy Van Gelder
Trumpet -- Booker Little
Eric Dolphy - 'Here and There'-1961:
Track Listing :
"Status Seeking" - 00:00
"God Bless The Child" - 13:18
"April Fool" - 18:52
"G.W. (take 1)" - 23:03
"Dont Blame Me (take 2)" - 35:14
Eric Dolphy - alto sax (tracks 1, 4), bass clarinet (2), flute (3, 5)
Mal Waldron - piano (1)
Booker Little - trumpet (1)
Eddie Blackwell - drums (1)
Richard Davis - double bass (1)
Roy Haynes - drums (3, 4)
Freddie Hubbard - trumpet (4)
George Tucker - double bass (3, 4)
Jaki Byard - piano (3, 4)
Bent Axen - piano (5)
Erik Moseholm - double bass (5)
Jorn Elniff - drums (5)
Track Listing:
http://www.allmusic.com/album/complete-recordings-eric-dolphy-quintet-featuring-herbie-hancock-mw0000140442/credits]
Eric Dolphy - 'Outward Bound' (full LP 1960):
Extraordinary musician Eric Dolphy here in 1960, a post hard bop LP as one
of his earlier solo group recordings. As good an introduction to his
soundworld as any.
Track listing:
All compositions by Eric Dolphy unless otherwise indicated.
"G.W." - 7:57
"On Green Dolphin Street" (Bronislaw Kaper, Ned Washington) – 5:44
"Les" - 5:12
"245" - 6:49
"Glad To Be Unhappy" (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart) - 5:26
"Miss Toni" (Charles "Majeed" Greenlee) - 5:40
Eric Dolphy--'Iron Man' (full album, 1963):
Side 1:
"Iron Man" -- 0:00
"Mandrake" -- 9:13
"Come Sunday" (Ellington) -- 14:05
Side 2:
"Burning Spear" -- 20:35
"Ode To Charlie Parker" (Byard) -- 32:35
Musicians:
Eric Dolphy -- bass clarinet, flute, alto saxophone
Richard Davis -- bass
Clifford Jordan -- soprano saxophone
Huey (Sonny) Simmons -- alto saxophone
(William) Prince Lasha -- flute
Woody Shaw Jr. -- trumpet
Robert (Bobby) Hutcherson -- vibraphone
J.C. Moses -- drums
Eddie Khan -- bass ("Iron Man")
Eric Dolphy - A great solo on 'Take the A Train'
Live in concert on April 12, 1964
filmed in Norway:
Eric Dolphy - Bass Clarinet
Charles Mingus - Bass
Eric Dolphy - Bass Clarinet
Clifford Jordan - Tenor Sax
Johnny Coles - Trumpet
Jaki Byard - Piano
Dannie Richmond - Drums
Eric Dolphy, who contributed immensely to the sound of free jazz, played with John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Oliver Nelson and others. His bass clarinet and flute playing pioneered the use of these instruments in jazz. Left us MUCH too early, at age 36. A huge soul.
Charles Mingus - Live in Belgium, Norway & Sweden 1964 --Full Concerts--featuring Eric Dolphy
All compositions and arrangements by Charles Mingus
00:00-00:45 Intro
00:46-05:33 So Long Eric
05:35-11:20 Peggy's Blue Skylight
11:23-32:03 Meditations On Integration
Filmed in Norway on April 12.1964:
32:30-54:46 So Long Eric
56:30-1:11:40 Orange Was The Colour Of Her Dress,Then Blue Silk
1:13:53-1:16:20 Parkeriana
1:16:22-1:29:05 Take The "A" Train(Eric Dolphy on Bass Clarinet)
Filmed in Sweden:
ERIC DOLPHY-- "Jim Crow":
Charles Mingus & Eric Dolphy Sextet (The Complete Bremen Concert):
Tracklist:
1. A.T.F.W. (Art Tatum-Fats Waller) 4:51
2. Sophisticated Lady 4:09
3. So Long Eric 26:49
4. Parkeriana 21:49
------
1. Meditations On Integration
2. Fables of Faubus
Compositions and arrangements by Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Jaki ByardJohn Coltrane Quintet with Eric Dolphy - Complete 1961 Concert:
John Coltrane — tenor saxophone/soprano saxophone
Eric Dolphy — bass clarinet/alto saxophone/flute
McCoy Tyner — piano
Reggie Workman — bass
Elvin Jones — drums
Eric Dolphy--"God Bless The Child" (Live)
Bass Clarinet solo, 1963--Illnois Concert:
Drums: J. C. Moses
Piano: Herbie Hancock
Producer: John Garvey
Bass: Eddie Khan
Flute, Clarinet, Bass, Alto Saxophone: Eric Dolphy
Composer: Billie Holiday
Composer: Arthur Herzog
ERIC DOLPHY QUINTET:
Eric Dolphy (Alto Saxophone, Bass Clarinet, Flute)
Booker Little (Trumpet)
Ron Carter (Bass)
Roy Haynes (Drums)
Jaki Byard (Piano)
ERIC DOLPHY (1928-1964)
Discography
Authorized releases are ones issued with Dolphy's input and approval, with all but the Blue Note
LP appearing in Dolphy's lifetime. Dates for authorized albums are year
of release; for posthumous compilations and sideman sessions by year of
recording. Some releases with Dolphy as a sideman were issued much
later than the date of the recording sessions.Authorized releases
- 1960: Outward Bound (New Jazz)
- 1960: Out There (New Jazz)
- 1961: Far Cry (New Jazz)
- 1961: At the Five Spot, Vol. 1 (New Jazz) (live)
- 1964: Out to Lunch! (Blue Note)
Posthumous compilations:
- 1959: Hot & Cool Latin
- 1959: Wherever I Go
- 1960: Candid Dolphy
- 1960: Status
- 1960: Dash One (Prestige)
- 1960: Fire Waltz
- 1960: Magic
- 1960: Other Aspects (Blue Note)
- 1960: Eric Dolphy
- 1961: Here and There
- 1961: Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vols. 1-3 (Prestige) also released as Copenhagen Concert (live)
- 1961: The Complete Uppsala Concert
- 1961: Stockholm Sessions
- 1961: Quartet 1961 also released as Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise (live)
- 1961: At the Five Spot, Vol. 2 (Prestige) (live)
- 1961: Memorial Album (Prestige) (live)
- 1962: Vintage Dolphy
- 1962: Eric Dolphy Quintet featuring Herbie Hancock: Complete Recordings
- 1962: Berlin Concerts (live)
- 1963: Iron Man
- 1963: Conversations (both Conversations and Iron Man were released as a double LP titled Jitterbug Waltz)
- 1963: The Illinois Concert (Blue Note) (live)
- 1964: Last Date (live)
- 1964: Naima
- 1964: Unrealized Tapes
- 1964: The Complete Last Recordings In Hilversum & Paris 1964
As sideman
- Clifford Brown + Eric Dolphy - Together: Recorded live at Dolphy's home, 1954 (Rare Live Records, 2005)
- Where? (New Jazz, 1961)
- Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (Atlantic, 1960)
- Olé Coltrane (Atlantic, 1961)
- Africa/Brass (Impulse!, 1961)
- Live! at the Village Vanguard (Impulse!, 1961)
- Impressions (Impulse!, 1963)
- Trane Whistle (Prestige, 1960)
- The Latin Jazz Quintet (United Artists, 1961)
- Pop + Jazz = Swing (Audio Fidelity, 1961)
- The Original Ellington Suite (Pacific Jazz, 1958 [2000])
- The Chico Hamilton Quintet with Strings Attached (Warner Bros., 1958)
- Gongs East! (Warner Bros., 1958)
- The Three Faces of Chico (Warner Bros., 1959)
- That Hamilton Man (SESAC, 1959)
- Where? (New Jazz, 1961)
- Plenty of Horn (Old Town, 1961)
- The Individualism of Gil Evans (Verve, 1964)
- Point of Departure (Blue Note, 1964)
- The Body & the Soul (Impulse!, 1963)
- Caribe (Prestige, 1960)
- Jazz Abstractions (Atlantic, 1960)
- Straight Ahead (Candid, 1961)
- Out Front (Candid, 1960)
- Looking Ahead (New Jazz, 1960)
- Mingus Revisited (aka Pre-Bird) (Mercury, 1960)
- Mingus at Antibes (Atlantic, 1960 [1976])
- Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (Candid, 1960)
- Mingus (Candid, 1960)
- The Complete Town Hall Concert (Blue Note, 1962 [1994])
- Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (Impulse!, 1963)
- Charles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy: Cornell 1964 (Blue Note, 1964 [2007])
- Town Hall Concert (Jazz Workshop, 1964)
- Revenge! (Revenge, 1964 [1996])
- The Great Concert of Charles Mingus (America, 1964)
- Mingus in Europe Volume I (Enja, 1964 [1980])
- Mingus in Europe Volume II (Enja, 1964 [1988])
- Screamin' the Blues (New Jazz, 1960)
- The Blues and the Abstract Truth (Impulse!, 1961)
- Straight Ahead (New Jazz, 1961)
- Debut (Colpix, 1963)
- Mack the Knife and Other Berlin Theatre Songs of Kurt Weill (RCA Victor, 1964)
- Pony's Express (Epic, 1962)
- Percussion Bitter Sweet (Impulse!, 1961)
- Ezz-thetics (Riverside, 1961)
- The Quest (New Jazz, 1961)
