Eric Dolphy

Biography:

“This is not music to roller skate by,” wrote A.B. Spellman of jazz multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy’s 1964 release Out to Lunch.  Consisting entirely of compositions written by Dolphy, Out to Lunch demands attention from the listener from its first notes.  By the third song on the album, Dolphy has taken the lead on three different instruments (alto sax, flute, and bass clarinet), and the listener through a synthesis of avant-garde, bebop, and free jazz.  The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recording describes the album as a “the compositionally sophisticated work of a man finding his voice,” but it would be Dolphy’s last recording, and the end to a short, intense and influential recording career.

Born and educated in Los Angeles California, Eric Dolphy got his start playing soprano and baritone sax in west coast big bebop bands.  After touring extensively in a long run with Chico Hamilton, Dolphy moved to New York in 1959, where he quickly formed musical partnerships with jazz greats John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman (contributing to Coleman’s controversial album Free Jazz).  His music with Mingus included the incredible bass and bass clarinet duo ‘What Love’ on the album Presents Charles Mingus (1960); displaying Dolphy’s ability to express himself on any instrument he chose to play.  In 1961 he joined Coltrane’s group in time to play on two important albums: Live at the Village Vanguard and Impression.   From the beginning of his New York years, Dolphy’s saxophone style showed signs of radical evolution that while rooted in jazz disciplines, contained strong elements of dissonance and leaping “vocalized interval jumps” (Richard Cook’s Jazz Encyclopedia).  Mingus called Dolphy one of his “most talented interpreters” and a “saint” (Young Saint with a Horn – Milo Miles).

Eric Dolphy was known as “the kindest of men, who seemed to do so much in music just for the love of it” (Richard Cook’s Jazz Encyclopedia).  In an interview with Nat Hentoff  for the liner notes for Far Cry, Dolphy expressed his feelings for jazz by saying, “jazz is like part of living, like walking down the street and reacting to what you see and hear;  jazz changes as you change.”  Dolphy believed in the rapid and constant reinvention of jazz and its ability to be an expression of the human voice.  “I want to say more on my horn than I ever could in ordinary speech,” he explained to Nat Hentoff (Far Cry).  This meant pushing the boundaries of the “conventional diatonic way” of playing to open up the “fundamental emotions at the core of jazz” (Far Cry).

Eric Dolphy’s vision, like so many jazz greats, would never be fully realized.  While touring with Mingus throughout Europe in 1964, Dolphy died of a heart attack at the age of 36 (believed to be hastened by a diabetic condition).  He is remembered for his generosity of spirit and as a much loved “outsider whose real impact is only slowly being assimilated” (Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings).

Thanks to the Manieri grant, Anacortes Public Library has a great collection of Eric Dolphy’s work.  Have a listen to Out to Lunch to hear Dolphy’s experimentation with three different instruments.  Check out Dolphy’s work with the great Booker Little on Far Cry.  Hear his work with Charles Mingus on Cornell 1964 and Passions of a Man.  Get lost in Dolphy’s contribution to the highly improvisational double quartet work of Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz.  A keyword search of the library’s catalog will display every album Dolphy plays on in our collection.

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