Eric Dolphy

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Eric Allan Dolphy (June 20, 1928 – June 29, 1964) was a jazz musician who played alto saxophone, flute and bass clarinet and was educated at Los Angeles City College. Dolphy was the first important bass clarinet soloist in jazz, and one of the first viable flute soloists in jazz. On early recordings, he occasionally played traditional B-flat soprano clarinet. His unique and individual style utilised wide intervals, speechlike effects and exotic scales.

Classical music played a large role in Dolphy's early training and remained important to him. Dolphy performed and recorded Edgard Varese's Density 21.5 for solo flute as well as other classical works, and participated heavily in Third Stream efforts. Dolphy's work is sometimes classified as free jazz, though he insisted that his compositions and solos were grounded in a thorough, if occasionally unorthodox, use of harmony.

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Life and career

Dolphy was born in Los Angeles, California and performed locally for several years. It is believed that he first recorded as a member of a large group led by bebop drummer Roy Porter in 1949. Dolphy had the benefit of a music room built as an extension to his parents' home, and it was here that he met and rehearsed with Clifford Brown, Max Roach and other well-known musicians when they were working on the American west coast.

Dolphy came to wider prominence in drummer Chico Hamilton's quintet in 1958, and had a particularly fruitful relationship with bassist Charles Mingus, which began in 1959 and continued intermittently until Mingus's European tour of 1964.

Dolphy recorded or played with such important jazz musicians as John Coltrane, Oliver Nelson, Ornette Coleman, Freddie Hubbard, Andrew Hill, George Russell, Bobby Hutcherson and Tony Williams. Dolphy had a unique capacity to make his instruments "speak." Charles Mingus considered Dolphy his most talented interpreter and Coltrane described Dolphy as the only horn player he could conceivably play with as an equal in the early 60's (before the free jazz explosion).

His residency alongside Coltrane at the Village Vanguard in late November 1961 is now legendary, but it provoked jazz conservatives to brand Coltrane and Dolphy's work as 'anti-Jazz' in an article in Downbeat magazine, despite or because of its apparent innovation. This upset Dolphy, and his colleague Coltrane wrote a response to the magazine. 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.

Dolphy's recording career as a leader began with the Prestige label. His association with that label lasted from April 1960 to September 1961. In all, he was present at 13 sessions for the company, though not all of them feature him as leader. Enough music was available for Prestige to eventually release a 9-cd box set featuring 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 features Ron Carter on cello.

"Far Cry" was also recorded for Prestige in 1960 and featured trumpeter Booker Little, who would die tragically at the age of 23 the next year; the album's first three tracks explicitly dealt with Dolphy's allegiance to and respect for Charlie Parker, a link Dolphy was always at pains to stress when addressing critics and listeners. Dolphy would record several unaccompanied cuts, then a rarity for reed instrumentalists. This album contains one the most memorable examples: Dolphy's solo interpretation of the Gross-Lawrence standard "Tenderly" on alto saxophone.

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. 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 was deeply influential for a generation of jazz players, and remains a cornerstone in the modern jazz movement. On this album, Dolphy cemented an association with Bobby Hutcherson (they had also recorded together the previous year). Together with his work with Andrew Hill on the pianist's Point of Departure, his working relationship with Hutcherson is one of the intriguing might have beens of jazz history. Dolphy's 1964 Blue Note recording Out to Lunch is often regarded not only as his finest, but also as one of the greatest jazz recordings.

Dolphy had intended to settle in Europe (his fiancée was working as a ballerina in Paris) but he died in Berlin from undiagnosed diabetes on June 29, 1964.

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