Eric Dolphy

sun ra would be the king of this, no? people with 4000 rock CDs and 40 sun ra CDs. and pharoah sanders too, probably.

a little-known fun-fact about me: i listen to almost NO free jazz. maybe in my old age. i listen to jazz from the 20s to the 50s and then i mostly skip to the 70s.and not the atonal 70's. not to say that there aren't a ton of jazz records that i like from the 60's, but most of them wouldn't be considered free jazz. i'll get to it all eventually, but there is so much from the 40s/50s that i haven't heard yet. and that's the stuff that really dig. when i've heard every hampton hawes record then maybe i'll get to cecil taylor.

There's also a ridiculously lively Dolphy - Mingus duologue on Mingus in Europe ...whether on Vol.1 or Vol.2, tho, me donts remember any more, alas :/

good lord i love eric dolphy. "hat and beard"!

I'll raise my hand as another rock guy who fell head-over-heels for Dolphy the minute I heard him. (No homo.)

Still my favorite jazz soloist, especially in contexts like the Mingus stuff or Ole! where he has a strong foil.

booker little is a totally underrated trumpet player btw who died at the age of 23

Love the vol.1 and 2 Dolphy/Little 5 Spot albums! Little's playing is awesome on there. Have the vol.3 which is actually titled something like Booker Little Memorial Album, but haven't warmed to that one yet.

S: Charles Mingus, The Great concert of Charles Mingus

D: Fuckers who let him die without treatment cause they thought he was overdosing.

So glad I got Out to Lunch in the Tower implosion. Long overdue.

Yeah, Dolphy's circumstance of death is still teeth-grindingly maddening today.

I read somewhere recently that in his last days he was basically living on honey and weed. What a waste.

That doesn't sound like good fare for a diabetic. Well, the honey anyhow. Don't know about the weed.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B000000YNU/sr=8-1/qid=1202019095/ref=dp_image_0/103-3676940-5584655?ie=UTF8&n=5174&s=music&qid=1202019095&sr=8-1

Don't know if you guys can see that, but it was supposed to be the cover of Ron Carter's Where?, on which Dolphy plays real goodly.

I heard Out to Lunch for the first time last Spring and was disappointed to find it didn't really do anything for me, but I'm loving the shit out of his playing on this. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

Loving the sound of the bass clarinet!

one of my favorite pieces of music film. dolphy's gotta be, what, a few months from death there?

can't really fathom 'Out to Lunch' "not doing anything" to anyone predisposed to like Dolphy ... I mean that's just crazy, it's his masterpiece

well i guess maybe those solo "God Bless the Child" are his masterpiece, but in terms of ALBUMS ...

I know, right? I was surprised too. I need to run by it again.

ah .. it is what it is .. you also might wanna make your way toward that Coltrane 'Europe Tours' box set .. much of which had been bootlegged for a while but finally came out when that Pablo box was released a couple of years ago. Just a fucking insane pairing .. we all know the Village Vanguard LP, but the Europe tour was insanity in its niceness

Will keep an eye out, thanks.

Still saving up for the Seven Steps box, though!

Gah Columbia & your exorbitantly priced 34 disc sets

can't really fathom 'Out to Lunch' "not doing anything" to anyone predisposed to like Dolphy ... I mean that's just crazy, it's his masterpiece

I understand OTL "not doing anything" for a Dolphy fan. I love Dolphy, and before a major CD theft a couple of years ago, I had just about everything he's ever played on. "Out To Lunch" is great, but it's awfully mannered. I understand Blue Note allowed for lots of rehearsal time, and I'm not averse to rehearsing per se, but OTL sounds rehearsed to me, in a way that doesn't serve the music as well as I'd like it to.

I personally much prefer the "Iron Man" and "Conversations" sessions from the previous year, compiled as "Dolphy Sound," featuring Woody Shaw, Bobby Hutcherson, Clifford Jordan, Prince Lasha, Sonny Simmons...

supposedly tony williams lobbied hard to get dolphy in miles' band (in the position later filled by wayne shorter). miles was dead against it, but holy shit, can you imagine?

That would've been crazy.

That rejection would have come before Sam Rivers' short tenure in Davis' band, meaning that Williams must have had a pretty serious mission trying to get Miles with more "out" musicians.

williams loved the avant-garde players. he used to sit in with cecil taylor, bill dixon, and others in the loft above the village vanguard during set breaks when miles' band was playing downstairs. miles wasn't happy about it, especially when williams expressed his preference for, and desire to play with, the more "out" musicians (dixon reportedly advised williams to stick with miles: "i'm not working. cecil's not working. miles is working.")

Lawrence, do you know what the loft above the Vanguard was called? Or what years it was active?

I'm interested in the lofts in NYC (I interviewed Rivers at the former site of Rivbea, Joe Lee Wilson at the former site of Ladies Fort, etc.)...

i think at that time (early/mid 60s) it was known as the Contemporary Center.

http://images.umvd.com/aec/Toenails/84855c8f145c4735a6ad14cab78b638c.jpg

ok that looks awesome

First place I ever heard "Green Dolphin Street."

Yeah, one of teh three great "Out..." Dolphy albums, with "Out There" and "Out To Lunch"!

speaking of "Free Jazz," nobody has mentioned Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation By The Ornette Coleman Double Quartet

I haven't heard a ton of Dolphy, but love everything I've heard. Ingenuity, Integrity, Soul.

Brian Case once (approvingly) described Dolphy's bass clarinet as "snorting like a happy hippo" which I think entirely apt.

I attended a Cecil Taylor workshop a year or two ago where he talked about the sole time he played with Dolphy, in a loft on 14th street. CT admitted that he was not able to figure out what Dolphy was doing, and therefore not able to play with him effectively.

...This confounded me and my expectations.

In a way, I can see what Cecil means. Dolphy often made big harmonic/melodic leaps, whereas someone like Jimmy Lyons stayed within certain harmonic regions for longer periods.

I agree with you, Sarax3, considering Lyons plus some of CT's other reed-playing sidemen of the era. Lyons was definitely of a Charlie Parker mold, Shepp was awfully blues-based, and Ayler, though clearly steeped in his own conception, didn't exactly have an impenetrable system.

It makes sense that two artists with such developed and unique methods of playing and composing may have trouble being compatible.

Still, when I think of the skill, imagination, and vitality of both artists, I easily imagine them finding common ground. (Hence, the confounding...)

Curious how Dolphy seemed to fit into the music of that other renegade/revolutionary pianist Little Richard fairly comfortably (have a look at the horn section the next time you watch The Girl Can't Help It - there he is, complete with trademark goatee).

Also his successful spell with Chico Hamilton probably indicated that more space was an advantage for him - note how on Out To Lunch he uses Bobby Hutcherson's vibes instead of piano.

Dingbod--that's insane!

Are we sure?

I've never heard of Dolphy with Little Richard, I can only find a blog entry mentioning it, and if memory serves, the Simosko bio/disco makes no mention. I even tooled around on Youtube, to no avail...

He's definitely on there, though.

I remember watching the film as a kid on Saturday afternoon BBC2 and my dad pointed him out (first on the left?) and it was definitely him. Dolphy's presence was confirmed in the NME about ten years later.

Neat!

Is the sound on the RVG edition of Out to Lunch significantly better than the original issue CD (which I have)? Some of those RVG's can be a bit hit and miss. I'm in Tokyo right now so perhaps I should consider picking up one of the Japanese edtions...

I think the sound might be why I was so turned off by it the first time!

It was my first RVG and I was horrified. Then I realized it was a trend, but I haven't gone back to OTL since.

yeah, we had the RVG discussion on one or two other threads. Short version: avoid them

thanks for the advice :)

fwiw it took me a while to realize. it was totally "doth my ears deceive me?" b/c I knew RVG had engineered so many originally great-sounding records. I think it was the Maiden Voyage that pushed me over the edge, but I only felt sure of my opinion once I realized that others were experiencing the same

some of the RVG's that i've heard have been a bit on the bright side. and an overly 'bright' sounding OTL would be too tiring for my ears.

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".

jfc I only today learned how the man died. Now I'm fucking angry.

In 1964, Dolphy fell into a coma due to undiagnosed/untreated diabetes in Berlin. He was a teetotaler who didn't smoke, but docs, hearing he played jazz, assumed he'd OD'd and didn't even take a blood test. He died at 36 for absolutely no reason https://t.co/CiAlZYeTzA

— jo livingstone (@Jo_Livingstone) June 29, 2020

jeez

Shocking waste of a life. Monk and Powell also had some very rough treatment by cops and doctors who decided a few rounds of electroconvulsive therapy might make them better!

I forgot to add the clubs to head therapy from the cops as well.

cops & their psychiatric equivalents basically destroyed monk’s career and life, it’s amazing he got anything done

on dolphy, he gets respect but still feels underrated somehow, maybe bc he didn’t start an obvious “movement”, falls somewhere between bop and “free” with most of playing, recorded lots of his best stuff as sideman. had he lived he would have certainly gone to wilder places, was planning collaboration with ayler, would have done ascension etc. I would also have liked to hear him with/against mid-60s sonny rollins, maybe in the band with don cherry. and an anthony braxton style solo album with all his instruments would have been amazing

dolphy solo recordings: inner flight 1 & 2 (flute), tenderly (alto), various god bless the childs (bass clarinet)- any more?

also did he play regular clarinet anywhere except for that one track on “out there”?

I dunno about solos, but i'll always rep for Where and The Quest which are others albums with a lot of Dolphy greatness on them

not had a good Dolphy listening spree for years now, sounds like a plan!

also did he play regular clarinet anywhere except for that one track on “out there”?

He plays clarinet on "Warm Canto" on "The Quest". There's a Dolphy docu on YouTube called "Last Date".

on dolphy, he gets respect but still feels underrated somehow, maybe bc he didn’t start an obvious “movement”, falls somewhere between bop and “free” with most of playing, recorded lots of his best stuff as sideman. had he lived he would have certainly gone to wilder places, was planning collaboration with ayler, would have done ascension etc. I would also have liked to hear him with/against mid-60s sonny rollins, maybe in the band with don cherry. and an anthony braxton style solo album with all his instruments would have been amazing

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I don't usually get too hung up on artists who passed early & wondering what could have been but Dolphy does feel like for all of the greatness he produced in his lifetime he was only getting started and he that he set a template for so many horn players who followed him (playing multiple different instruments for inst) and that he already had formed a relationship with the early Euro free scene (Mengelberg & Bennink on Last Date), who knows he could've been making records with Derek Bailey & Brotzmann as well.

so damned sad

"Jazz on a Summer's Day," a concert film of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, has a couple of brief scenes of Dolphy playing with the Chico Hamilton Quintet ... it was on TCM recently

He has always been my favorite jazz soloist.

another great album with some prime Dolphy is Max Roach's Percussion Bitter Sweet.

the lyrics to the vocal track Mendacity (with nice Dolphy solo) still ring true (politicians are a bunch of cunts).

Eric Dolphy is definitely one of the great tragedies in an art form that's had far too any. It's very possible he hadn't reached his full potential which is simply astonishing when we have a masterpiece like Out to Lunch. With the loss of Coltrane and Dolphy and what they were beginning to explore with the possibilities opened up by free jazz, the loss is pretty immense. It would've been fascinating to see how things would've played out in the coming decade.

TIL Eric Dolphy recorded Ornette Coleman’s “Free Jazz” and his own “Far Cry” on the same day. And at two studios separated by a ~30 min drive, no less. Just incredible!

— Ezra Brooks (@ezbrooks) November 25, 2020

two of the best purchases I've made this year were two double LP reissues from the early 70's, one just called Dolphy which includes Out There and Outward Bound, and another called Copenhagen Concert which is vols 1 and 3 of Live in Europe. On Prestige, they sound amazing and can be found for bargain prices (I paid $10 a piece). You don't get the cool original artwork but you do get some liner notes.

i have that same Copenhagen Concert 2xLP. it's awesome and sounds so good